Marital and Family Role Satisfaction

This paper reports the association between several independent variables and marital satisfactions. Marital satisfaction was conceptualized as both a global measure of marital happiness associated with the entire marital relationship and also as a global measure of satisfaction from participation in specific family role activities. Social background factors, husband-wife similarity in social background, adequacy of performance of family roles, husband-wife consensus about family expectations and performance, and conformity of spouse's behavior to expectations were included as independent variables. Data were collected via mailed questionnaire from a random sample of adult residents of the state of Utah. Matched data from both husband and wife were obtained from 775 couples. The measures of husband-wife disagreement about marital roles and the performance of these roles were the most significant correlates of the measure of willingness to marry the same spouse again. Adequacy of role performance of both self and spouse and spouse's conformity to expectations emerged as the strongest predictors of satisfaction derived from playing family roles.