CHANGE IN POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE AFFECT IN THE

MARITAL RELATIONSHIP: DYADIC ANALYSIS OF

HUSBANDS AND WIVES

Brenda L. Volling

Mixed Emoticon Conference

Institute for Social Research

October 24, 2015

Collaborators

Richard Gonzalez Tianyi YuWonjung Oh

Volling, B.L., Oh, W., Gonzalez, R., Kuo, P.X., & Yu, T. (2015). Patterns of marital relationship change across the transition

from one child to two. Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice, 4, 177-197.

Patty Kuo

Points from yesterday

1. “Context, context, context, I can’t emphasize this enough” –Susan Charles

2. “Certain life events are just filled with mixed emotions”-Jeff Larsen

3. “Positive is always greater than negative”-Rich Gonzalez

4. Why are mixed emotions important?

“Context, context, context, I can’t emphasize this enough”•Relationships are contexts and adult romantic relationships or attachments are one of the most emotionally charged and important affective contexts of daily life.

“Certain life events are just filled with mixed emotions”•Birth of an infant and the transition to parenthood is one of them

•Second-time mothers have feelings of joy at another child and making the family complete, but also feelings of guilt, wondering if they can love the second as much as the first, or worrying they are ruining the firstborn’s life.

•One consistent finding of the TTP: Decline in marital satisfaction (happiness) after the birth of the infant.

•Unequal division of household and child care labor often blamed for the decline; DoL becomes more traditional after the birth with women doing more than men.

Marital Relationship Change

Important for targeting intervention

Family Transitions Study

•Goal: Longitudinal investigation to examine changes in child and family functioning following the birth of a second child (prenatal, 1, 4, 8 12 months).

•241 two-parent families.

•Mothers’ average age: 31.6 yrs; fathers’ average age: 33.2 yrs

•Married 5.7 7 years, on average

•Older sibling: Mean age of 31.5 months at infant’s birth (54.5% firstborn girls)

•85% European-American, 5% African-American, 3% Asian, 3% Hispanic, 4% other

•Median income:$80,000, range (< 20K to > $150K)

•Most were college-educated

Repeated Measures at Prenatal (P), 1, 4, 8, and 12 months.

• Intimate Relations Questionnaire (Braiker & Kelley, 1979).

• Husbands’ and wives’ reports of • Love (affect)• Maintenance (behavior)• Ambivalence (affect)• Conflict (behavior)

Positive marital relations (love and maintenance)Negative marital relations (ambivalence and

conflict)

“Positive is always greater than negative” –or is it?• Huge individual differences

• Maybe most relationships are more positive than negative but maybe some have more negative than positive (80/20 versus 60/40).

• There are mixed emotions in marital relationships

• Recent efforts to identify groups of individuals sharing common characteristics (person-centered)

• Longitudinal Growth Mixture Models capture individual differences in trajectory patterns within a sample

Is there a problem?

A Dyadic Approach

Positive is always greater and spouses are similar

Positive is always greater.BUT…..one spouse is different from the other

C2, n = 100 (43.7%) Mother Positivity Father Positivity Mother Negativity Father Negativity

Intercept 14.07*** 13.47*** 13.20*** 13.35***

Linear Slope -.095** .018 .015 -.004

AAR .035 .037 .019 -.092*

C1, n = 79 (34.5%) Mother Positivity Father Positivity Mother Negativity1 Father Negativity1

Intercept 12.68*** 13.01*** 13.44*** 12.58***

Linear Slope -.014 -.109* .213*** -.015

AAR .057 .172*** -.038 .079

.

C5, n = 18 (7.9%) Mother Positivity Father Positivity Mother Negativity Father Negativity

Intercept 14.12*** 12.59*** 11.39*** 11.14***

Linear Slope .091 .122* .210 .187

AAR -.059 .015 -.498*** -.112

C6, n = 12 (5.2%) Mother Positivity Father Positivity Mother Negativity Father Negativity

Intercept 10.27*** 12.73*** 8.63*** 11.444***

Linear Slope .258** -.121 -.236** -.048

AAR -.090 -.103 -.366** -.337*

Can we find differences across groups that might explain these different relationship patterns?•Yes, we can

•Prenatal differences before the infant was born•Mothers were more depressed•Mothers had higher neuroticism scores•Pregnancy was more likely to be unplanned•Couples reported more marital dissatisfaction•Marital communication about the division of child care

• Destructive marital communication (yelling, screaming, blaming, threatening, name-calling) versus constructive marital communication (reflective listening, discussions, problem-solving)

In other words, positive and negative affect in marital communication patterns

“Why are mixed emotions important?”Children are living in these families !Postpartum maternal depression is a major risk factor for the development of infant emotion dysregulation and insecure mother-infant attachments

Open marital conflict in front of children is a major risk factor for the development of childhood psychopathology

Collaborators:

• Richard Gonzalez, Ph.D.

• Heather Flynn, Ph.D.

• Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Ph.D.

• Timothy Johnson, M.D.

Post- docs

• Tianyi Yu, Ph.D.

• Wonjung Oh, Ph.D.

• Carolyn Dayton, Ph.D.

• Amy Kolak, Ph.D.

• Denise Kennedy, Ph.D.

• Matthew Stevenson, Ph.D.

• Catherine Hiltz, Ph.D.

Graduate Students

• Elizabeth Thomason

• Ju-Hyun Song

• Patty Kuo

• Emma Beyers-Carlson

• Paige Safyer

Thanks to the families and the invaluable research staff of the Family Transitions Study.

This research was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01HD042607, K02HD047423)

• Than

Thank You