Depression and Marital Power: An Equity Model

Sociological research consistently finds a negative association between depression and social power. A straightforward extrapolation suggests that, other things being equal, a married person is least depressed if he or she completely dominates in the marriage. How ever, marriage is a close, long-term relationship in which the psychological benefits of personal control may be limited by a need for reciprocity and mutual control. In this article, an equity model of the relationship between depression and marital power is developed and tested, using data from a national, random sample of married couples. The results show that each spouse is least depressed if marital power is shared to some extent. There is a U-shaped relationship between depression and marital power. However, the husband's depression is lowest only if he has more marital power than is associated with his wife's lowest depression, and vice versa. The higher the husband's earnings, the greater the amount of his marital power that is associated with both his and his wife's lowest depression, and the more traditional a wife's sex-role beliefs, the greater the amount of her husband's marital power that is associated with her lowest depression. The division of marital power in the average marriage is closer to the level that minimizes the husband's depression than it is to level that minimizes his wife's depression.