Do Demographics Affect Marital Satisfaction?

This study examined the effects of age, education, number of children, employment status, and length of marriage on marital satisfaction. Seven hundred and eighty-seven nonrandomly selected married adults from the Flanders region in Belgium completed the Maudsley Marital Questionnaire (MMQ) (Arrindell, Boelens, & Lambert, 1983a Arrindell, W. A., Boelens, W. and Lambert, H. 1983a. On the psychometric properties of the Maudsley Marital Questionairre (MMQ): Evaluation of self-ratings in distressed and ‘normal’ volunteer couples based on the Dutch version. Personality and Individual Differences, 4: 293–306. CROSSREFCSACrossref, Web of Science ® , Google Scholar). The results indicated a statistically significant difference between the marital satisfaction of the first married and remarried adults. A gender-level analysis showed a statistically significant difference between the marital satisfaction of men and women. Among the demographic variables, the effect of length of marriage was highly significant with marital satisfaction. In a separate analysis, we found that the effect of age and number of children had a statistically significant effect on the sexual adjustment of the respondents. Accordingly, we found that age, number of children, and length of marriage were significantly positively correlated with sexual adjustment (MMQ-S) and educational attainment with general-life adjustment (MMQ-GL) problems.