Berta Esti Ari Prasetya
Faculty of Psychology Satya Wacana Christian University
This study aimed to investigate the correlation between socioeconomic variables which were husband’s income, wife’s income, combined income of husband and wife, percentage of wife’s income (over combined income of husband and wife) with wife’s marital satisfaction. A total of 129 Filipino wives participated in this study. Pearson-r correlational analyses were performed. Among the socioeconomic variables investigated, only percentage of wife’s income was significantly correlated with wife’s marital satisfaction (r = - .21, p < .05). Husband’s income, wife’s income, and combined income of husband and wife were not significantly correlated with marital satisfaction.
Key words: wife’s marital satisfaction, husband’s income, wife’s income, combined income of husband and wife, percentage of wife’s income.
INTRODUCTION
Married couples are likely to be together for an extended period in an intimate relationship that involves heavy emotional investments. Marriage, therefore, has broad implications for the individual’s mental and physical health (Carstensen, Graff, Levenson, & Gottman, 1996). Unhappy marriages may entail physical violence as well as abuse (Markman, Renick, Floyd, & Stanley, 1993) and even murder (Tariq & Anila, 1993). Low marital quality was found to decrease psychological well-being, increases psychological distress (Ross, Mirowsky, & Goldsteen, 1990), physical health (Wickrama, Lorenz, Conger, & Elder 1997) and is associated with greater increases in depressive mood over time for females than for males (Dehle & Weiss, 1998).
Even so, researches also suggest that marriage affects men differently from women. Married men appear to be healthier than single men irrespective of marital satisfaction, but interestingly, the married women derive health benefits from their marriage only when their marriage is happy. (Hess & Soldo, 1985; Levenson, Carstensen, & Gottman, 1993; Ross et al., 1990). In influencing their children’s emotional changes, marital satisfaction in mothers (wives) is also found to be more crucial compared to the marital satisfaction of fathers (husbands) (Belsky & Fish, 1991). This finding shows that having a happy marriage or marital quality appears to be more crucial and significantly beneficial for wives rather than for husbands. That is why this researcher is interested to study marital satisfaction among wives.
The next questions will be: how to achieve wives’ marital satisfaction? Many possible answers can be proposed to answer this question.
In a materialistic society, money is believed to play an important role in determining the person’s happiness. During the courtship periods, parents often times need to check whether their sons in laws to be, are people who have permanent-good jobs, having enough savings for their future life, or even must come from a family that have an equal economic status with their daughters. Often times, when this requirement is not fulfilled, parents may object their daughter’s marriage with that person. Some parents seem to believe that economic status is one of the important determinants of a successful marriage. Is it true? Is the amount of money that the couples have are correlated with their marital satisfaction?Other interesting issues that may affect wives’ marital relationship nowadays are the wife’s economical status. Nowadays, more and more women in Asia have gained access to increasing levels of education and coincidentally, to an increased level of work force participation (Asian Development Bank, 1994). Medina (2001) noted that married women today are not only doing household chores and children rearing, but are also becoming active income contributors.
One of the traditional family beliefs mentions that a husband is supposed to be the main breadwinner in the family. The fact that in this changing society, the role of a breadwinner may be replaced by the wife, and that more wives have good jobs and earn a lot more than the husbands, may challenge the traditional belief of the role of husband and wife in the family. Does this condition affect their marital satisfaction? Specifically, does the percentage of the wives’ income over the combined income of the couple is correlated with their marital satisfaction? Those are the questions that are tried to be answered in this study.
Review of Literature
Marital Satisfaction
Definition of marital satisfaction. Aldous (1996) defined marital satisfaction as how couples feel about each other. Or as Fincham and Bradbury (1987) put it, marital satisfaction acts as an affective measure of marital quality. Spanier and Cole (as cited in Schumm, et al., 1986) defined marital satisfaction as a subjective evaluation about how an individual feels about his/her spouse, his/her marriage and his/her marital relationship. According to these definitions, then, marital satisfaction is a subjective matter, depending upon how a marriage lives up to the expectations of the individual concerned (L. Scanzoni & J. Scanzoni, 1976).
This study will investigate marital satisfaction using the subjective indices approach. It means, that marital satisfaction will be examined in this study in terms of perceived marital satisfaction rather than the actual marital satisfaction.
Factors that determine marital satisfaction. Bradbury, Fincham, & Beach (2000) summarized that there are factors that determine marital satisfaction, which are: (a) cognitive function of the person, such as attribution style of that person in explaining the negative partner behavior and other events between husband and wife; (b) affective function of the person; (c) physiological concomitants of interactions between husband and wife; (c) patterns in behavior of the person such as withdrawn or demand patterns; (d) violence that exists between husband and wife; (e) sociodemographic factors, such as age, number of children, socioeconomic status, length of marriage; (f) life stressor and transition in life; (g) macrocontext, such as level of neighborhood, national economic, regions where the couples live in, and so forth.
Socioeconomic Variables
Collins dictionary defined the term socioeconomic as circumstances or development involves combination of social and economic factors. Economic means concern with the organization of the money, whereas socio as an adjective that refers to something that related to social factor, means relating to the status or rank that someone has in society. In short, socioeconomic is defined as things that are related with organization of money and how it may affect the status or rank of a person in society.
In this study, socioeconomic variables refer to: (a) the husband’s income, (b) the wife’s income, (c) the combined income of husband and wife, and (d) the percentage of wife’s income over the combined income of husband and wife.
Correlation of Socioeconomic Variables and Wives’ Marital Satisfaction.
Bradburry et al. (2000) noted that socioeconomic factor is one of the important factors in determining couple’s marital satisfaction. It is crucial and important for the survival of the family life, as Notarius & Markman (1993) mentioned that financial problem can shake even the strongest and happiest couples. Furthermore they reason that couples who have a good financial saving can use it to buy facilities that can help their togetherness merrier. It goes without saying that good financial condition will tend to bring a merrier marital relationship. Research conducted by Wilkie, Ferre, & Ratcliff, (1998) confirmed this by mentioning that there is a positive correlation between family income and marital satisfaction of the couples.
Rogers and DeBoer (2001) found that increases in married women’s absolute and relative income significantly increase their marital happiness and well-being, whereas divorce is not significantly affected by increases in married women’s income. Nevertheless, increases in married women’s income may indirectly lower the risk of divorce by increasing women’s marital happiness. Furthermore Scanzoni (1978) argues that women’s economic contributions are the foundation of satisfying marital relationship and are necessary for establishing equality between partners and effective marital interaction.
It is worthy to note, that Kapur's data (as cited in Khan, 2004) suggested that as long as the wife's job status, income, and total number of working hours do not exceed those of the husband's, the degree of conflict will not be severe. A research done by Philliber and Hiller (1983) found that problems do occur in marriages when the wife’s attainments are higher than her husband’s. Similarly, Khan’s (2004) study on marital instability in Dhaka, Bangladesh with special reference to dual-earner couples showed that the working wives who are superior to their husbands in educational and income levels are more likely to suffer from increased tension and dissatisfaction in their married life.
Even so, other research suggested a different finding, as revealed in a research that was done by Huber and Spitze (1980). They studied the effect of the relative income of husbands and wives in relation to the thought of divorce. In that study, it was found that the marital quality is not reduced by the wife's achievements exceeding the husband's. Rogers (1999) also found in his research that increases in wives' income does not significantly affect either husbands' or wives' perception of marital discord.Statement of the Problems:
1. Is husband’s income correlated with wife’s marital satisfaction?
2. Is wife’s income correlated with wife’s marital satisfaction?
3. Is combined income of husband and wife correlated with wife’s marital satisfaction?
4. Is percentage of wife’s income over the combined income of husband and wife correlated with wife’s marital satisfaction?
Hypotheses
1. Husband’s income is positively correlated with wife’s marital satisfaction. The higher the husband’s income, the higher the wife’s marital satisfaction.
2. Wife’s income is positively correlated with wife’s marital satisfaction. The higher the husband’s income, the higher the wife’s marital satisfaction.
3. Combined income of husband and wife is correlated with wife’s marital satisfaction. The higher the combined income of husband and wife, the higher the wife’s marital satisfaction.
4. Percentage of wife’s income over the combined income of husband and wife is negatively correlated with wife’s marital satisfaction. The higher the percentage of wife’s income over the combined income of husband and wife, the lower the wife’s marital satisfaction.
METHOD
This was an explanatory and correlational type of study that tried to test the hypotheses proposed earlier. A survey method, specifically the questionnaire method, was used in data collection, considering that this method could be very economical, it could touch on some sensitive questions, social background information, attitudes, beliefs, values, behavior intentions, and some subjective phenomenon (Singleton & Straits, 1999), which was the nature of the issues of this study. A convenience sampling method was used in data collection.
Measurements
This study dwelled on subjective evaluations on the part of the participants. It was based on self-report measurements. In order to collect the data, this study used:
1. Personal Data Sheet. The participants were asked to give information about their sociodemographic background by answering questions in a Personal Data sheet. The participants’ answer to the questions about their husband’s income and their personal income will be treated as the data of socioeconomic variables that will be used in the data analysis.
2. Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale. Wife’s marital satisfaction was measured by Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale (KMS). It contained three questions that were theoretically based on Spanier and Cole’s (as cited in Schumm, et al., 1986) conceptual distinction between satisfaction with spouse, marriage, and the marriage relationship. The total score ranged from 3 to 21.
This scale has been administered to different kinds of populations. It performed reliably with Cronbach’s alpha was.89 for women (Schumm, Scanlon, Crow, Green, & Buckler, 1983b). In the present study, the reliability testing resulted in a Cronbach’s alpha of .96. All the items showed high item-total reliability, ranging from .91 to .93. Evidence for the validity of the scale was provided by the study of Grover, Paff-Bergen, Russell, and Schumm, (as cited in Sabatelli, 1988) and also Schumm, et al. (1986).
3. Open-ended Questions. Together with the other questionnaire, an open-ended question was posed to the participants regarding what they think about the variables that were studied. The answer to this open-ended question was content analyzed and was treated as additional information to deepen the analysis of the study.
Participants
The subjects of this study were Filipino married women, who were 25-55 years old, who were working, living with the husband, and were residing in Metro Manila during the time of the data gathering. There were 129 respondents who participated in this study.
The mean of their length of marriage was 11.38 years. The mean age of the participants was 36.9 years. Most of them have two children.
The personal data of the participants revealed the following profile on educational attainment: high school (2.3%), college (72.7%), master’s degree (22.7%), and doctoral degree (2.3%). These participants were employees of private institutions (45.6%), teachers or professors (24%), nurses (22.4%), licensed professionals (3.2%), self-employed (3.2%), and government employees (1.6%).
RESULTS
Socioeconomic Variables
The participants’ responses to the Personal Data Sheet showed that these participants came from different socioeconomic groups, as reflected in their report on their monthly income that ranged from Php 5,000 to Php 300,000. Median income was Php 15,000. The total monthly income together with the husband’s ranged from Php 6,750 to Php 400,000 with the median total monthly income of Php 30,000.
The mean of the percentage of wife’s income (over the combined income of husband and wife) was .52. It means that, in general, the percentage of wife’s contribution to the family income was 52%.
Wife’s Marital Satisfaction
The participants’ responses to the KMS revealed that the mean score of the participants was 16.08 with standard deviation of 4.17. This revealed that the marital satisfaction of the participants in this study is high relative to the highest possible score.
Correlation of Socioeconomic Variables and Marital Satisfaction
Correlational analyses using Pearson-r correlation were performed for this study. The result of correlational analyses showed that there was a negative correlation between the percentage of wife's income (over the combined income) and marital satisfaction (r = -.21, p <.05). There were no significant correlations found between wife's income, husband's income, and combined husband's and wife's income with marital satisfaction of the wife (see Table 1).
Table 1
Correlation Between Socioeconomic Variables and Marital Satisfaction
Socioeconomic variables | r | Significance |
Husband’s income | .10 | p > .05 |
Wife’s income | -.02 | p > .05 |
Combined income of husband and wife | .04 | p > .05 |
Percentage of wife’s income over the combined income of husband and wife | -.21* | p < .05* |
* p < .05.
DISCUSSION
The result of this study does not confirm past research that points the evident of correlation between family income and marital satisfaction (Wilkie et al., 1998). Blumstein and Schwartz (as cited in Medina, 2001) stated that the income or the amount of money that the couples have per se may not be the most important factor regarding the basic problems with money. Instead, it is the attitudes and behavior with regard to the income management that matters. Furthermore they mentioned that the social meaning of the economic factor is probably more important to look at. How the husband and wife share the same perceptions and expectations about family budgeting, spending, and saving may be more crucial in affecting marital relationship than merely the amount of money that the couples have (Blumstein and Schwartz, as cited in Medina, 2001).
This study points that the wife's percentage income to the total family income is negatively correlated with wife’s marital satisfaction. This result does not confirm some of the earlier researches done in Western society, that gave support to the notion that the wife’s attainment that exceeds those of the husband’s does not affect their marital satisfaction (Huber and Spitze, 1980; Rogers, 1999). Instead, this study seems to be in accord with the earlier study done by Hornung and McCullough (1981) and Philliber and Hiller (1983) asserted that problems do occur in marriages when the wife's attainments are higher than her husband's. Marital and life satisfactions were less among men whose attainments were less than their wives and among women whose attainments were greater than their husbands'. The relationship is even stronger among people with high achievement orientation.
This study also validates Khan’s study (2002) that the working wives who are superior to their husbands in educational and income levels are more likely to suffer from increased tension and dissatisfaction in their married life. The wives tend to believe that their husbands perceived them as taking over male professional roles, and it threatens their husband’s sense of patriarchal power; which then leads to marital disharmony that further will affect their marital satisfaction.
Wilkie et al. (1998) found that more equitable sharing of breadwinning offers more benefits in marital satisfaction for husbands than for wives. This role preference affects marital satisfaction mainly through perceptions of "fairness". They found that for both husbands and wives, feeling as if one is doing more than their fair share is dissatisfying. In relation to the wife's percentage income over the combined income of husband and wife, a high percentage of the wife's income may be interpreted by the wife as an unfairness in part of the husband. The wife may think that she is doing more than her fair share, because the husband is not doing his breadwinner role, therefore it leads to dissatisfaction with her marriage. The importance of fairness is also revealed in the participants' responses to the open-ended question, "Because I believe that the wife/husband should be equal in duties/responsibilities especially regarding family matter. So when my husband fails to do the duties/responsibilities I feel abused".
It is also possible that the negative decrease of marital satisfaction experienced by the wife who has higher income than the husband is caused by the negative reaction of the husband towards the wife's higher earning. As Parsons and Bales's study (1955) found that the wife’s income negatively affects marriage by threatening the spouse’s role complementarities, as the husband perceives this as a challenge to his status as the family’s primary breadwinner. This is reflected also in a wife's response to open-ended question, "Sometimes, because my husband felt insecure about my career. He cannot accept that I earn more to support the family, that's why sometimes he does not appreciate my effort in working to help family needs", "He would always accuse me of treating him like one of my staff. He's so insecured; so much pride. You can never ask him to do things for you, You can never even tell him how you feel about something because he thinks he's always right. Yes, so much so that he wants me to feel that he's the boss by not letting me decide things. He would always want me to tell him anything that I want to decide on. He would always want to keep his money from me. He would always let me pay for all the bills because he thinks I earn more than he does"
In this study the correlation between the percentages of the wife’s income over the combined income of husband and wife, although it yielded a significant result, but the correlation was found to be satisfaction low only. In relation to this, other factors may also play important role in affecting the marital of the wives despite of the wife's higher percentage of income. Vannoy and Philliber's study (1992) found that when wives are in higher status occupations than their husbands' the more they will be sensitive to the perception of support from their husbands. They asserted that wives who are more successful than their husbands experience higher quality marriage the more they perceive their husbands are in favor of them working. In this case, the attitudes of the husbands are important in determining the marital quality of those wives who are more successful than their husbands to help them in achieving their marital satisfaction. This condition is also reflected in one of the responses of the participants. A wife asserted that the husband's support, the give-and-take relationship, and the ability of the wife to still give quality time for the husband, make the higher position of the wife becomes less important in determining their marital satisfaction. "It is not an issue whether I am working and more successful than him. There is a give-and-take in our relationship and this makes our marriage even stronger . . . He is proud of my achievements in my career [italics added]. Same with me, I respect his career and make it a point I give quality time with him. What important is both of us work to support our family."
Conclusions and Recommendation
This study shows that the correlation between some of the socioeconomic variables which are the wife's income, husband's income, and the combined income of husband and wife do not yield any significant result with wife’s marital satisfaction. However, it was found that there is a negative correlation between the percentage of wife’s income (over the combined income of husband and wife) and her marital satisfaction. The higher the percentage of the wife's income (over the combined income), the lower her marital satisfaction.
This research suggests that the amount of money that the couple’s have may not be that crucial in determining wife’s marital satisfaction. This finding would give hope that those who have less in terms of socioeconomic status can still achieve a high level of marital satisfaction. At the same time, it gives warning to those who have a higher socioeconomic status that there is no guarantee that their high socioeconomic status will make them experience high level of marital satisfaction. In this case, other things than material necessity may need to be considered in achieving wife’s marital satisfaction.
The couples whose wife earn higher than the husband may need to give attention to the impact of her higher earnings to her own marital satisfaction. It is not to tell the couples that the wife may be better not to have a higher earning than the husband’s, instead, it simply suggests that the couples have to find ways to avoid this latent problem. The participants’ responses in the qualitative analysis of this study suggested that if the husband provides support, appreciations, acceptance, and understanding of the wife’s higher earning may help the couples to achieve marital satisfaction even if the wife earns more than the husband.
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can i get the pdf copy of this thanks so mush
BalasHapuscan i pdf copy too?
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