The quip that “there are two marriages in every marital union, his and hers” is attributed to Jesse Bernard in her 1972 book, The Future of Marriage[i]. To this quip, she added that marriage is better for men than for women. Over the ensuing decades since the book’s publication, researchers have added to a growing body of literature about “his and her” marriages, although research outcomes have not been consistent. Are “his and her” marriages a thing of the past, thanks to greater gender equality?
Since 1972, many changes have occurred in the roles of husbands and wives in the workplace and in the home. Have these societal changes lead to changes in the experience of “his and her” marriages? The authors of this 2014 meta-analysis gathered over 100 studies on marital satisfaction.
The study had three goals:
- To determine if wives and husbands differ in their marital satisfaction
- To uncover the magnitude of differences, if they exist
- To identify if any variables moderate gender differences in satisfaction
The meta-analysis included 173 reports published after 1970, with a total of 101,110 participants. Moderators (variables that influence the relationship between gender and marital satisfaction) were included in the analyses, such as education, income, race, type of sample, location of study, and marital duration.
The researchers found there was a significant difference in marital satisfaction between women and men, although the effect size was very small (.04). Therefore, “wives were only 7% less likely to be satisfied than husbands” (p. 117).
However, key differences were observed in dis-aggregated data based on clinical populations (those receiving marital therapy). Among couples in therapy, the effect size was larger “with wives 51% less likely to be satisfied than husbands” (p. 117). Since marital therapy is an indicator of marital distress, and some couples in therapy may decide to divorce, these results “may reflect the fact that unhappy wives have already dissolved their marriage” (p. 118). Prior research has found that it is wives who initiate marital therapy 73% of the time, and wives are more likely than husbands to initiate divorce proceedings.
A few moderators did affect the relationship between gender and marital satisfaction. Husbands who had been married for 0-4 years were slightly less satisfied than their wives, although it was a very small effect. Another small effect was found for husbands’ satisfaction in low-income marriages. Wives in Asian samples were 1.6 times less satisfied than their husbands, although there were few Asian samples in the meta-analysis.
In answering the question about “his and her” marriages today, it appears that in community samples (couples not in therapy) there were virtually no differences in satisfaction between wives and husbands. These results starkly contrast with the clinical (in therapy) couples in which much more dissatisfaction was expressed by wives.
Citation: Jackson, J. B., Miller, R. B., Oka, M., & Henry, R. G. (2014). Gender differences in marital satisfaction: A meta‐analysis. Journal of Marriage and Family, 76(1), 105-129.
©Jennie Dilworth, Ph.D
[i] Bernard, J. (1972). The future of marriage. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.