The Nature and Predictors of the Trajectory of Change in Marital Quality Over the First 4 Years of Marriage for First-Married Husbands and Wives

• Published in: Journal of family psychology Vol. 12; no. 4; pp. 494 - 510
• Main Author: Kurdek, Lawrence A
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Psychological Association 01-12-1998
• Subjects: Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Biological and medical sciences; Changes; Depression; Depression (Emotion); Family environment. Family history; Female; Human; Human Sex Differences; Husbands; Male; Marital quality; Marital Relations; Marriage; Married couples; Medical sciences; Mood disorders; Newly wed; Prediction; Predictors; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Quality; Social psychiatry. Ethnopsychiatry; Symptoms; Wives; Mood disorder; Human; Marital relation; Attitude; Social interaction; Risk factor; Prediction; Satisfaction; Depression; Evolution
• ISSN: 0893-3200; 1939-1293
• DOI: 10.1037/0893-3200.12.4.494

Both spouses from 198 first-married newlywed couples
provided information regarding marital quality and depressive
symptoms for at least 2 of 4 annual assessments. Husbands and wives
showed equal rates of linear decline in marital quality. For both
husbands and wives, decreases in marital quality were accompanied by
increases in the severity of depressive symptoms, even with controls
for the severity of symptoms not linked to depression. In contrast
to previous evidence, plausible longitudinal causal paths between
depressive symptoms and marital quality were generally
nonsignificant and did not differ between husbands and wives. It is
proposed that future studies of marital quality adopt a doubly
developmental perspective in which attention is directed to the
trajectory of change in "risk factors" for marital distress, the
trajectory of change in marital quality, and the link between these
2 trajectories.