The Impact of Illness on Late-Life Marriages

This paper reports on 76 late-life marriages in which either a husband or a wife is recuperating from a hospital stay. High satisfaction was found in most of the marriages, and spouses generally provided a high level of support. Socioeconomic status, the gender of the caregiver, and the level of disability of one spouse had minimal impact on the dimensions of marital quality or the social support potentials in the dyad. However, compared with the widows also studied, the married were more socially isolated and the couples tended to satisfy each other's needs with little help from others. The analysis uses qualitative data on marital satisfaction which suggest that the criteria for success differs from those in earlier stages of the family cycle.