Hard Living, Perceived Entitlement to a Great Marriage, and Marital Dissolution

Journal of Marriage and the Family 62 (August 2000): 708–722708

LAURA SANCHEZ Tulane University

CONSTANCE T. GAGER Swarthmore College*

l

Hard Living, Perceived Entitlement to a Great Marriage,

and Marital Dissolution

Using the two waves of the National Survey ofFamilies and Households (NSFH), we examinethe effects on marital dissolution of couple’s gen-der attitudes, perceived unfairness, marital dis-agreements, and relationship alternatives, explor-ing whether these dimensions of marriageinfluence marital dissolution, net of serious formsof hardship commonly noted in divorce research.With event history methods, we find that hus-bands’, but not wives’, perceived disagreementsand alternatives are associated with higher oddsof marital dissolution, though couples’ maritalhappiness strongly mediates the effects of hus-bands’ dissatisfaction. Wives’ traditional attitudesare associated with lower odds and husbands’with higher odds of marital dissolution. We findno significant effects of unfairness perceptions ondivorce. A nonviolent relationship is associatedwith lower odds of marital dissolution, but accu-mulated assets and debt and husbands’ drug oralcohol abuse are not associated significantly withmarital dissolution. Our analysis contributes todivorce research by demonstrating the importanceof gender attitudes and low physical conflict and

Department of Sociology, Tulane University, 220 New-comb Hall, New Orleans, LA 70118 ([email protected]).

*Department of Sociology and Anthropology, SwarthmoreCollege, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore, PA 19081.

Key Words: alcohol, divorce, gender roles, marital disso-lution, separation, violence.

by showing that instances of perceived dissatis-faction might not matter for couples as much asmarital happiness as an influence on divorce.

Two perspectives shape contemporary divorce re-search. First, a number of researchers have ex-amined several demographic and life-course pre-dictors of divorce, including age at marriage,parental status, childhood family history, and raceor ethnicity (Booth, Johnson, White, & Edwards,1984; Greenstein, 1990; Kurdek, 1993, 1991;Martin & Bumpass, 1989; South & Spitze, 1986).Other researchers have examined a second, moresocial-psychological, microrelational set of pre-dictors, studying how marital problems, conflicts,and psychological difficulties undermine marriageand spur divorce (see Amato & Rogers, 1997, andWhite, 1990, for reviews). The former body ofwork is limited; although it often uses nationallyrepresentative samples, it does not examine themarital processes that lead to divorce. The latterbody of work does emphasize the processes ofmarital breakdown, but much of this research usesnonrepresentative samples, retrospective historiesfrom divorced or separated individuals, and re-ports from a single marital partner (Amato & Rog-ers, 1997; Booth et al., 1985, 1986; Burns, 1984;Hopper, 1993; Kitson & Sussman, 1982; Kurz,1995; White, 1990).

This study builds upon past research by usingnationally representative, couple-level data to ex-amine how divorce is rooted in the process of

709Hard Living and Marital Dissolution

marital breakdown via marital problems and dis-cord, controlling for demographic and socioeco-nomic indicators. We address two aspects of themore microrelational processes of divorce. First,we examine how violations of wives’ and hus-bands’ feelings of entitlement to a satisfying andequitable marriage affect their decision to divorce.Specifically, we examine gender differences in theeffects of perceptions of marital unfairness, opendisagreements, and perceived alternatives to themarriage, controlling for gender attitudes. We ex-pect that wives and husbands might differ in howthey define and assess the importance of equity,discord, and relationship alternatives. Our re-search questions grow out of the burgeoning lit-eratures on distributive justice and perceptions ofentitlement (Blair, 1993; Blair & Johnson, 1992;DeMaris & Longmore, 1996; Hawkins, Marshall,& Meiners, 1995; Lennon & Rosenfield, 1994;Major, 1993; Pyke & Coltrane, 1996; Ross & VanWilligen, 1996; Sanchez, 1994; Thompson, 1991,1993), as well as social-psychological perspec-tives on social exchange and equity theories (Ler-ner & Mikula, 1994a; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959).Although there are multiple theories about part-ners’ preferences for an equality-based, equity-based, or needs-based relationship exchange ori-entation (Clark & Chrisman, 1994; Desmarais &Lerner, 1994; VanYperen & Buunk, 1994), theseliteratures mainly indicate that comparisons andopen negotiations about sharing, entitlements, du-ties, and alternatives are constant undercurrentswithin marriages, which decidedly affect wives’and husbands’ satisfaction and desires about re-lationship longevity (Arendell, 1995; Hochschild,1989, 1997; Larson & Reed, 1994).

Second, we examine whether gendered issuesof perceived entitlement in married life matter inthe decision to divorce, after controlling for farmore physically harmful, severe forms of maritalstrain, like financial instability and debt, violence,and drug or alcohol abuse. The recent entitlementliterature shows that perceived unfairness, opendisagreements, and relationship alternatives areassociated with marital instability, but a largebody of work demonstrates that marital problemslinked to spousal irresponsibility, drug or alcoholabuse, and violence also encourage marital dis-solution. We examine both components simulta-neously to assess whether severe forms of hard-ship overshadow couple disagreements over moregeneralized marital interaction and satisfaction is-sues as predictors of marital dissolution. Thiscomparison merits study because significant veins

of family sociology and social psychology indi-cate that women’s and men’s changing expecta-tions about how homemaking and employmentshould be divided loom large as a contemporarystrain on married couples (Attridge & Berscheid,1994; Crosby, Farrell, & Cameron, 1994; England& Farkas, 1986; Hochschild, 1989; Mikula & Ler-ner, 1994; Sprecher & Schwartz, 1994), but nostudy heretofore tests whether gendered conflictover fights, perceived unfairness, and alternativesencourages divorce.

DASHED EXPECTATIONS VERSUS REAL

HARDSHIP AS CAUSES OF MARITAL

DISSOLUTION

Our work grows out of recent literature on mar-riage formation and dissolution that suggests thatthe marriage contract in American culture is fun-damentally changing (England & Farkas, 1986;Gager & Marini, 1996; Oppenheimer, 1988,1994). This research suggests that women andmen no longer expect to divide homemaking andbreadwinning according to a strict gender divisionof labor. Rather, women and men expect that mar-riage will have far more parallel divisions of paidwork and family tasks. However, the crux of thisliterature argues that a significant structural prob-lem in contemporary marriage is that althoughwomen and men expect greater sharing and ac-knowledge greater normative support for sharing,routine negotiations and fairly stable traditionalnorms within marriage have not caught up withthese expected changes in the marriage contract(Desmarais & Lerner, 1994; Hochschild, 1989;Lerner & Mikula, 1994b). As a consequence, re-cent delays in marriage formation and increasesin divorce might be associated with women’s andmen’s ambiguity about what to expect from mar-riage and how to reconcile the degree to whichthey are masculine or feminine in their orienta-tions toward each other as marital partners(VanYperen & Buunk, 1994).

Gendered Perceptions of Entitlement to a High-Quality Marriage

We see this literature as linked tightly to distrib-utive justice, entitlement, and exchange literatures(Mikula & Lerner, 1994; Sprecher, 1988). Distrib-utive justice theory contends that a person’s feel-ings about what he or she rightfully deserves in-dividually and in relation to others shape his orher satisfaction with a given distribution of re-

710 Journal of Marriage and the Family

wards and costs in a relationship (Molm, 1991;Molm, Quist, & Wiseley, 1994). Many of the clas-sic empirical studies using distributive justice the-ory document that women feel satisfied with payinequities in the workplace because they believethe procedures for allocating rewards are fair andfeel a lower sense of the worth of their own workthan do men, regardless of the objective qualityof that work (Major, 1987, 1989).

Recently, family sociologists and social psy-chologists have incorporated distributive justicetheories into their research to account for women’sand men’s apparent satisfaction with marital gen-der inequalities in an era of rising egalitarianismin attitudes (Major, 1993; Sprecher & Schwartz,1994; Steil, 1994; Thompson, 1991). The implicitassumption within this research is that as womenaccrue more power, in material or socioemotionalways, they might become more willing to end amarriage, if they become dissatisfied. This re-search generally shows that as women feel un-fairly treated in their relationship, and simulta-neously perceive greater social and financialalternatives to their current marriage, have greatercontrol over own economic resources, and holdmore egalitarian attitudes, they are more likely tobe dissatisfied with the union and to act on theseperceptions (DeMaris & Longmore, 1996; Green-stein, 1996; Lennon & Rosenfield, 1994; Van-Yperen & Buunk, 1991).

Entitlement and distributive justice literaturesdo not just focus on changes in wives’ roles andexpectations as determinants of divorce. Indeed,much of this research describes theories abouthow divorce is tied either to men’s unwillingnessto alter the traditional marriage contract or to theirslow adaptation to women’s increased employ-ment and decreased homemaking activities(Hochschild, 1989; Lerner & Mikula, 1994a; Steil,1994). Hochschild’s work on ‘‘the economy ofgratitude’’ indicates that men may be willing tooffer ‘‘token’’ signs of greater involvement andsharing in homemaking and in routine, daily mar-ried life, but that they view minor incremental in-creases in their home-life participation as far sur-passing their masculine obligations (Hochschild,1989). Thus, some scholars reason that both wom-en and men give men’s home-life preferences andperceived dissatisfactions greater weight in cou-ples’ decision making because the normative ex-pectation still is that women are supposed to man-age the emotional, caregiving, routine parts ofmarriage (Komter, 1989). In fact, social-psycho-logical theorists suggest that relatively stable,

widely held norms about men’s breadwinning andwomen’s homemaking encourage even egalitari-an-minded spouses to fall back on traditional roleenactment (Emler & Hall, 1994; Steil, 1994; Thi-baut & Kelley, 1959).

This research argues that despite all the currentsocial ferment about changing gender roles, theprimary ideology about marriage remains thatwomen should ‘‘make a house a home’’ and will-ingly guard and foster married life. Hochschild(1989) suggests that contemporary marriage isfraught with a structural paradox for women. Thatis, wives want more equality, equity, and personalsatisfaction within marriage, but they cannot cam-paign for it effectively because of continuing gen-der inequalities in the larger society. Thus, wivesperceive more unfairness, inequity, and disagree-ments but feel extreme pressure to dissociate fromthese feelings, especially given women’s greaterfears about the material costs of contemporary di-vorce. We expect that husbands’ perceptions ofmarital dissatisfactions, measured as perceived un-fairness, open disagreements, and perceived rela-tionship alternatives, might matter more thanwives’ in the decision to divorce.

Entitlement to a Marriage Free of SeriousHardship

Many studies suggest that far more serious prob-lems outweigh gender attitudes and negative re-lationship assessments as factors that deterioratethe relationship so seriously that the marriage ends(Amato & Rogers, 1997; Arendell, 1995; Kitson,1992; Kurz, 1995). These studies emphasize theseverely destabilizing effects of financial prob-lems, alcohol and drug abuse, and physical vio-lence. Financial problems are associated with in-creased levels of stress among spouses, decreasedlevels of family satisfaction, troubled feelingsabout breadwinning failures, and marital duress.Among divorced respondents, financial problemsare cited frequently as a major complaint aboutthe failed marriage (Amato & Rogers, 1997;Burns, 1984; Colburn, Lin, & Moore, 1992; Kit-son & Sussman, 1982; McCloskey, 1996; Pittman& Lloyd, 1988). Alcohol and drug abuse, primar-ily by the husband, are also important predictorsof marital dissatisfaction, marital aggression andhostility, and divorce (Leonard & Blane, 1992;Kaestner, 1997; Kantor & Straus, 1987; Kitson &Sussman, 1982). Last, physical violence, particu-larly husbands’ abuse and battery, is associatedstrongly with divorce (Ellis & DeKeseredy, 1989;


Colburn et al., 1992; Katz, Arias, Beach, Brody,& Roman, 1995; Ulrich, 1991), with some schol-ars suggesting that physical aggression is partic-ularly prevalent during the more advanced stagesof divorce as couples begin to separate physicallyand husbands face their inability to cope with feel-ings of anger and loss (Arendell, 1995; Kurz,1995, 1996).

Although these severe problems might be tiedto women’s and men’s gender-typed marital pre-rogatives and entitlements, they are of a whollydifferent magnitude of seriousness than troublednegotiations over sharing housework and spend-ing money or disagreements over time spent to-gether. Thus, we address two contesting bodies ofresearch. The first states that shifts in the marriagecontract and in women’s and men’s expectationsabout family responsibilities place strains on mar-riage that might encourage divorce. The secondstates that more severe, sometimes life-threateningproblems are far more important when modelingdivorce than disagreements about how to defineequitable sharing of tasks, time, and life. We ex-amine how destructive, dangerous threats to per-sonal well-being mediate marital dynamics aboutsense of entitlement to a good, fair life in the di-vorce process.

The theoretical context for our hypotheses isthat marriages exist in an environment in whichwives are not entitled to let their attitudes, per-ceived grievances, and alternatives count as muchas husbands’. Wives face the fact that husbands,if they end the marriage, are more likely to havegreater economic opportunities, relationship alter-natives, and social supports than wives (England& Farkas, 1986). In marriage, wives are more re-sponsible for taking into account spouses’ viewsbecause of gendered expectations about women’snurturance, care, and concern (Thompson, 1991).In general, we expect wives to be more egalitarianin attitudes than husbands because of their greaterinterests in realigned family and employment ac-tivities. But, in some sense, wives’ own attitudesand opinions suffer a discount. To be sure, manywomen and men are reworking the psychodynam-ics of their relationships such that both of theirviews are given equal consideration, but these in-dividuals remain social innovators.

In the present analysis, we measure couples’perceptions of unfairness, disagreements, and al-ternatives to the marriage in order to representtheir feelings about the equitability of their mar-riage. Perceptions of unfairness and open dis-agreements about the sharing of housework,

working for pay, and spending money representmore of the basic principles of the distributive jus-tice perspective, with greater perceived unfairnessand open acknowledgment of disagreement strain-ing the marriage as couples see more costs thanrewards (Attridge & Berscheid, 1994; Holmes &Levinger, 1994; Sprecher & Schwartz, 1994). Re-search using both waves of the NSFH indicatesthat perceptions of unfairness affect cohabitors’likelihood of either breaking up or marrying (San-chez, Manning, & Smock, 1997), and perceptionsof unfairness and disagreements affect marriedcouples’ likelihood of separating (Bumpass &Sweet, 1995). Perceived social and economic al-ternatives reflect a direct evaluation of the relativerewards of the current union (Kurdek, 1991, 1993;Rusbult, 1983; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959). A studywith NSFH data shows that perceived social andeconomic alternatives influence married and co-habiting couples’ perceptions of unfairness overtime (Sanchez & Kane, 1999). We also includecouples’ gender attitudes, expecting that nontra-ditional individuals might feel less inclined to stayin a marriage; they might feel less attached tomarriage and more entitled to prefer their individ-ual interests over those of the union. VanYperenand Buunk (1994) find that egalitarian attitudes,particularly for wives, are associated with a great-er uncertainty about the quality and stability of themarriage and with lower marital happiness. Re-cent NSFH1 and NSFH2 studies show that gen-der-role attitudes influence a variety of relation-ship outcomes, including whether cohabitorsbreak up or marry (Sanchez et al., 1997), howmarried couples divide housework and employ-ment after the transition to parenthood (Sanchez& Thomson, 1997), men’s time in child care (Al-dous, Mulligan, & Bjarnason, 1998), and marriageformation (Sassler & Schoen, 1999).

As a control, we measure couples’ marital hap-piness because social-psychological literature sug-gests that (a) happiness and satisfaction increasepartners’ commitment to an intimate relationship(Kurdek, 1993; Rusbult, 1983); (b) perceived in-equities matter only for couples whose relation-ship happiness has substantially deteriorated(Sprecher & Schwartz, 1994); and (c) happiness,and the trust and commitment that happiness im-plies, encourages partners to discount or turn ablind eye to occasional instances of inequity(Holmes & Levinger, 1994).

We pose three hypotheses. First, wives willhave more egalitarian attitudes and will perceivemore unfairness and open disagreements than hus-


bands, whereas husbands will perceive more al-ternatives to the marriage than wives. Second,husbands’ egalitarian attitudes, perceived unfair-ness, disagreements, and alternatives will influ-ence marital dissolution more than wives’, be-cause wives’ views might be discounted withinthe relationship. Third, predictors of material andphysical hardship will be far stronger determi-nants of marital dissolution than will gender atti-tudes, perceived unfairness, open disagreements,and perceived alternatives. Access to a securestandard of life and nonviolence in the relation-ship mediate and outweigh disagreements andnegative evaluations of marital tasks, responsibil-ities, and rewards as a cause of marital dissolution.

METHOD

We use the National Survey of Families andHouseholds, 1987–1988 (NSFH1; Sweet, Bum-pass, & Call, 1988) and its follow-up survey from1992–1994 (NSFH2). The NSFH1 is a nationallyrepresentative sample of adults and their spousesor cohabiting partners. NSFH2 attempted to inter-view all primary respondents and partners, wheth-er or not couples remained together and whetheror not the partner participated in NSFH1. Oursample begins with participating NSFH1 couplesin which both partners were age 40 or under, bothwere in first marriages, and the secondary partnercompleted the interview (n 5 2,035). We selectedthe age restriction because detailed between-sur-vey fertility histories were obtained at Time 2 forrespondents who were age 40 or under at Time 1.We also selected couples in first marriages be-cause higher order marital status might be asso-ciated with different exchange and equity orien-tations than first marriages, and we did not wantto develop sets of moderating hypotheses aboutmarital status and the focal independent controls.Last, we selected secondary partners who com-pleted the self-administered questionnaire becausewe wanted both partners’ responses in order todevelop couple-level measures.

We obtained information for 1,742 (86.5%) ofthese couples in the second survey, from one orthe other spouse or both. Of these couples, 273were no longer married or living together (i.e.,264 couples separated or divorced; in 9 couples,a partner died). Item nonresponse reduces the ef-fective sample size to 1,721, with 257 couples ex-periencing separation or divorce between inter-views, and 217 couples experiencing separation or

divorce within 5 years of first interview, the lengthof time we follow these couples in our analyses.

Marital Dissolution

We define marital dissolution as the end of therelationship through separation or divorce, and wetake the termination date from the first occurrenceof either event.

Previous research indicates that a significantproportion of separated couples attempt at leastone reconciliation, although the majority of suchreconciliations fail and end in divorce (Wineberg,1996; Wineberg & McCarthy, 1993). We chooseseparation as a form of dissolution because we areinterested in the failure of the premise that themarriage is an indissoluble, lifetime commitment.Physical separation marks a moment in which thecouple defines the relationship as so troubled thatthe parties require physical or psychological spacefrom each other, regardless of the eventual out-come. Although Wineberg (1996) suggests thatthis choice might slightly overestimate maritalbreakdown, he indicates that the overestimate islikely minimal, given that most reconciliations doultimately end in legal divorce.

Gender Attitude and Relationship AssessmentMeasures

Gender attitudes. We construct measures of gen-der attitudes from spouses’ responses to fiveitems. Three items tap approval or disapproval of(a) mothers who work full time when their youn-gest child is younger than age 5, (b) childrenyounger than 3 years old being cared for all dayin a day-care center, and (c) mothers who workpart time when their youngest child is youngerthan age 5. Two items tap agreement or disagree-ment with the statements ‘‘It is much better foreveryone if the man earns the main living and thewoman takes care of the home and family’’ and‘‘preschool children are likely to suffer if theirmother is employed.’’ The disapproval items werescored on a 7-point scale and the disagreementitems on a 5-point scale. We recoded indicators torepresent increasingly traditional attitudes, stan-dardized each item, and averaged the standardizedscores. The Cronbach’s alpha reliabilities for eachindex were .82 for wives, .81 for husbands.

Perceptions of fairness. We construct couple-levelperceptions of fairness from wives’ and husbands’separate evaluations of the fairness in their rela-


tionship in housework, working for pay, andspending money. The separate items represent a5-point scale, ranging from very unfair to him tovery unfair to her, with the category fair to bothas the midpoint. We construct eight dichotomouscategories measuring couples in which: (a) bothspouses perceive fairness; (b) both perceive un-fairness to the husband; (c) both perceive unfair-ness to the wife; the wife perceives fairness whileeither (d) the husband perceives unfairness to thewife, or (e) the husband perceives unfairness tohimself; the husband perceives fairness while ei-ther (f) the wife perceives unfairness to herself,or (g) the wife perceives unfairness to the hus-band; and (h) a residual category. Because veryfew NSFH husbands and wives agree that the di-vision of housework is unfair to the husband, wecode this combination to the residual category. Wedid not construct indices from these three itemsbecause of very low reliabilities (wives’ alpha 5.41, husbands’ alpha 5 .31).

Disagreements. We construct spouses’ perceiveddisagreements from the wives’ and husbands’ sep-arate evaluations of the following items: ‘‘Howoften, if at all, in the last year have you had opendisagreements about each of the following?Household tasks, money, and spending time to-gether.’’ The scores range from 1 (never) to 6 (al-most every day) and are summed to create additiveindices (wives’ alpha 5 .70, husbands’ alpha 5.73).

Perceived alternatives to the marriage. We con-struct indices for spouses’ perceived alternativesto the marriage from the wives’ and husbands’separate evaluations of the following items:

Even though it may be very unlikely, think fora moment about how various areas of your lifemight be different, if you separated. For each ofthe following areas, how do you think thingswould change? Your standard of living, your so-cial life, your career opportunities, your overallhappiness, and your sex life.

The scores range from 1 (much worse) to 5(much better) and are summed to create additiveindices (wives’ alpha 5 .76, husbands’ alpha 5.79).

Material and Physical Hardship Measures

Assets and debts. Measures of couples’ capital as-sets and debt are constructed from three items. We

construct two cumulative measures of primary re-spondents’ estimated sale value and remainingdebt from any homes, real estate, businesses orfarms, and motor vehicles owned by the couple.A measure of couples’ unproductive debt is con-structed from primary respondents’ estimated ac-cumulated debt for the following items:

Credit card or charge accounts that you’re payingoff gradually; installment loans for major pur-chases such as furniture or appliances, but otherthan auto loans; educational loans; personal loansfrom banks and other business, other than mort-gage or auto loans; personal loans from friendsor relatives; other bills you’ve owed more than2 months; and home improvement loans.

The three measures are logged total dollar values.

Serious violence in relationship. We construct acouple-level report of physical violence in the re-lationship from a series of questions about argu-ments. Wives and husbands who reported physicalarguments in the past year were asked two ques-tions about the severity. We asked, ‘‘During thepast year, how many fights with your husband orwife resulted in: ‘your hitting, shoving, or throw-ing things at him or her’ or ‘his or her hitting,shoving, or throwing things at you?’’’ We con-struct five dichotomous categories measuring cou-ples in which (a) both spouses report that neitheris violent, (b) both spouses report that both areviolent, (c) the husband reports that both spousesare violent, whereas the wife reports that neitheris violent, (d) the wife reports that both spousesare violent, whereas the husband reports that nei-ther is violent, and (e) a residual category. Theresidual category includes 9 couples in which bothpartners agreed that only one spouse was severelyviolent and 63 couples who disagreed about seri-ous violence but in which violence was reportedby at least one partner.

Husbands’ hard living. We measure whether hus-bands abuse alcohol or drugs with a dichotomousvariable tapping whether either husbands or wivesreported an alcohol or drug problem for the hus-band. We do not construct a similar measure forwives’s hard living because only 16 wives werereported by either the wife or the husband to havea drinking or drug problem, compared to 100 hus-bands.

Other independent controls. Controls consist ofsocioeconomic, demographic, marital quality, and


division of labor variables. We include dummyvariables representing gender of the primary re-spondent, race or ethnicity of the couple, regionof residence, metropolitan status, whether spousesexperienced divorce of their parents as children,and couples’ educational attainment. We use con-tinuous measures of each marriage’s duration inyears at first interview, the family’s logged earn-ings in the year prior to first interview—an eco-nomic dependency ratio measured as husband’s orwife’s yearly earnings or wife’s 1 husband’s year-ly earnings—and the average of the spouses’ re-ported marital happiness during Time 1. Division-of-labor measures included wife’s and husband’sTime 1 weekly employment hours, the wife’sweekly housework hours, and the wife’s timespent in housework as a proportion of the couple’stotal weekly housework time.

Last, we measure parental status based on theprimary respondent’s report, with four dummyvariables representing couples that had: (a) nochildren; (b) no children at the time of the firstinterview but a pregnancy or one or more childrenbefore separation or censoring; (c) had one ormore children at the first interview but no furtherpregnancy or birth; and (d) had one or more chil-dren at the first interview and a later pregnancyor birth before separation or censoring.

We estimate discrete-time event history modelsto examine the determinants of marital dissolutionby duration of marriage. This method avoids pro-portionality assumptions and permits the use ofboth fixed and time-varying variables (Allison,1984). We base our analyses on couple-years; thatis, we follow couples either until they separate ordivorce or until we censor them at the end of theirfifth year after the first interview. NSFH coupleswere reinterviewed between 5 and 7 years aftertheir first interview. We select 5 years as the cen-sor date to assure that all couples potentially sup-ply an equal number of exposure periods; we dothis in order to prevent couples interviewed at lon-ger intervals from being overrepresented in thecouple years of exposure. Again, of the 257 cou-ples experiencing separation or divorce betweensurvey waves, 217 separate within the first 5 yearsafter the first interview. The sample of 1,721 cou-ples provides 8,154 couple-years of exposure.

RESULTS

Table 1 presents descriptive statistics for our Time1 focal measures. Husbands have significantlymore traditional gender attitudes than wives, and

husbands perceive significantly more disagree-ments and alternatives to the marriage. Both wivesand husbands perceive greater unfairness to thewife in housework tasks, and the majority of cou-ples agree that the division of working for pay andspending money is fair to both spouses. Differ-ences in means tests indicate that wives perceivegreater unfairness in housework than husbands butnot in working for pay or spending money. Onaverage, couples carry approximately $4,000 inunproductive debt, own $79,000 in capital wealth,and owe $37,000 on these assets. Last, approxi-mately 12% of couples have at least one partnerreporting physical violence in the year prior tofirst interview, and 6% report hard living by thehusband.

Multivariate Analyses of Marital Dissolution

Table 2 presents nested discrete-time event historymodels, showing only coefficients for perceivedfairness from models with all baseline controls,gender attitudes, perceived alternatives, and hard-ship measures. We do not present models withboth perceived fairness and open disagreementsbecause of multicollinearity.

None of the separate nested models for per-ceived fairness of housework, working for pay, orspending money improves the overall model fits.In these equations, the only significant coefficientsuggests that for perceived fairness about spend-ing money, couples in which the wife perceivesunfairness to herself, whereas the husband per-ceives fairness, have higher odds of marital dis-solution than couples in which both perceive fair-ness. We also construct individual-level measuresand find that, for husbands, greater perceived un-fairness to the wife in housework and working forpay is associated with lower odds of marital dis-solution (results not shown). But, again, thesemeasures do not improve the overall model fit,thus the findings are tentative.

In Table 3, we present nested discrete-timeevent history models and show only coefficientsfor the focal measures. Each of the four modelsadds a block of focal measures to a baseline equa-tion with control variables. For each of the rela-tionship assessment measures, we examine the ef-fects of the wife’s and husband’s reportsseparately and then together to test for multicol-linearity. Our results in all cases are robust. Forour final model, Model 4, we systematically testremoving control measures, with no significantchange in effects for our focal measures. We also


TABLE 1. DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR MARITAL DISSOLUTION AND FOCAL INDEPENDENT VARIABLESa

Marital Dissolution .13b (.33)c

Gender attitudes (unstandardized)Wife’s attitudes 18.43d (5.82)Husband’s attitudes 19.60 (5.74)

Housework Working for Pay Spending Money

Perceived fairnessBoth fair 43.1% 63.0 67.6Both unfair to him 2.7 1.6Both unfair to her 16.8 2.0 1.7She fair; he unfair to her 13.1 6.7 5.0She fair; he unfair to him 2.7 5.2 5.9He fair; she unfair to her 15.9 5.1 6.0He fair; she unfair to him 2.4 7.7 6.4Residual 5.9 7.6 5.8Wife’s perception 3.35d 2.97 3.00Husband’s perception 3.29 3.01 2.99

DisagreementsWife’s perception 6.63d (2.71)Husband’s perception 6.83 (2.82)

Perceived alternatives to the marriageWife’s perception 11.54d (3.16)Husband’s perception 12.50 (3.34)

Assets and debts (logged dollars)Capital assets 10.32 (1.71)Capital debts 8.23 (4.03)Unproductive debt 5.86 (3.52)

Serious violence in relationshipNeither violent 87.9%Both violent 2.7Husband says both violent; wife says neither 2.4Wife says both violent; husband says neither 2.8Residual (conflict over who is violent) 4.2

Husband’s hard living (alcohol or drug abuse)5.8%

Note: N 5 1,721.aSource. National Survey of Families and Households, 1987–1988 and 1992–1994. bMeans. c(Standard deviations).dStatistically significant mean difference.

TABLE 2. DISCRETE TIME EVENT HISTORY ANALYSIS OF EFFECTS OF PERCEIVED UNFAIRNESS ON MARITAL

DISSOLUTIONa

Housework Working for Pay Spending Money

(Both fair)Both unfair to him .52 (.35) .09 (.47)Both unfair to her 2.15 (.22) 21.681 (1.02) .45 (.43)She fair; he unfair to her 2.491 (.28) 2.25 (.35) 2.01 (.35)She fair; he unfair to him .15 (.37) 2.09 (.34) 2.20 (.32)He fair; she unfair to her .53 (.38) .29 (.27) .60** (.25)He fair; she unfair to him 2.00 (.20) .421 (.25) 2.16 (.34)Residual .11 (.30) .09 (.26) .22 (.27)22 log-likelihood 1734.813 1729.767 1733.621

Note: N 5 1,721.aSource: National Survey of Families and Households, 1987–1988 and 1992–1994. b22 log-likelihood for baseline model

with all controls and focal measures 1741.238.*p , .101. **p , .05. ***p , .001.


TABLE 3. DISCRETE TIME EVENT HISTORY ANALYSIS OF EFFECTS OF GENDER ATTITUDES, RELATIONSHIP ASSESSMENTS,AND HARD LIVING ON MARITAL DISSOLUTIONa

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Gender attitudesWife’s attitudes 2.35*** (.11) 2.37*** (.12) 2.34*** (.12)Husband’s attitudes .32*** (.12) .33*** (.12) .32*** (.12)

DisagreementsWife’s perception .02 (.03) .01 (.03) 2.02 (.03)Husband’s perception .05* (.03) .02 (.03) .01 (.03)

Perceived alternatives to the marriageWife’s perception .04 (.02) .03 (.03) .01 (.03)Husband’s perception .06*** (.02) .06*** (.02) .04 (.02)

Assets and debts (logged)Capital assets 2.06 (.07) 2.09 (.07) 2.10 (.07)Capital debt .03 (.03) .04 (.03) .03 (.03)Unproductive debt 2.00 (.02) 2.01 (.02) 2.00 (.02)

Serious violence in relation-ship (both violent)

Neither violent 21.04*** (.30) 2.94*** (.31) 2.80*** (.31)Husband says both violent;

wife says neither .08 (.44) .00 (.44) .12 (.45)Wife says both violent;

Husband says neither .23 (.39) .21 (.39) .31 (.40)Residual (conflict over who

is actually violent) 2.37 (.40) 2.34 (.41) 2.32 (.41)Husband’s hard living .10 (.28) .09 (.27) .01 (.28)Couple’s averaged marital

happiness 2.37*** (.08)22 log-likelihoodb 1768.213 1775.844 1740.119 1719.345

Note: n 5 1,721.aSource: National Survey of Families and Households, 1987–1988 and 1992–1994. b22 log-likelihood for baseline model

with all controls 1805.742.*p , .10. **p , .01. ***p , .001

examine each set of focal measures alone and thenwith its companion sets of measures. (For exam-ple, we examine gender-role attitudes separatelyand then with disagreements and perceived alter-natives). In all cases, our results are robust. TheAppendix presents the full model with baselinecontrols.

Gender attitudes, negative relationship assess-ments and marital dissolution. Model 1 presentsthe relationship-assessment and gender-attitudemeasures added to the baseline model. Theseitems improve the nested model at the .001 level(22 log-likelihood n37.529, 6 df ). The effects ofdisagreements and perceived alternatives supportour hypotheses. Husbands’ perceived disagree-ments and alternatives to the marriage are asso-ciated with higher odds of marital dissolution,whereas wives’ are not.

As expected, wives with more traditional atti-tudes are less likely to divorce, suggesting that

egalitarian wives might feel more entitled to endan unsatisfying marriage compared to traditionalwives. However, contrary to our hypotheses, hus-bands’ traditionalism is associated with higherodds of marital dissolution.

We tested interactions between wives’ and hus-bands’ measures of gender attitudes, open dis-agreements, and perceived alternatives to the mar-riage, expecting decreased odds of maritaldissolution for spouses’ mutually traditional atti-tudes and increased odds of marital dissolution forspouses’ mutual perceptions of disagreements andalternatives to the marriage. None of these inter-actions significantly improves the model, indicat-ing independent effects of spouses’ gender atti-tudes and husbands’ perceived disagreements andrelationship alternatives. Thus, for relationship as-sessments, we find some limited evidence thathusbands’ views matter more than wives’ viewsas correlates of marital dissolution. However, forgender attitudes, we find that both spouses’ atti-


tudes matter, though in opposite directions fromeach other.

Material and physical hardship and marital dis-solution. Model 2 presents the material and phys-ical hardship measures added to the baseline mod-el, improving the nested model at the .001 level(22 log-likelihood n 29.898, 8 df ). Compared tocouples in which both spouses report violence,couples who report no violence are less likely todivorce. However, couples’ capital assets anddebts and husbands’ hard living do not affect mar-ital dissolution. We experiment with various op-erationalizations of debt and debt-to-asset ratios,with no change in noneffects. We also test wheth-er husbands’ hard living had effects, dependingon whether the wife or the husband was the solespouse who perceived drug or alcohol abuse, butthis variation also has no effects.

Additional analysis (not shown) indicates thatadding just the asset and debt and husbands’ hardliving measures does not significantly improve theoverall nested model fit, wheras adding the cou-ple-level measure of violence does. Compared tocouples in which both partners perceive mutualserious violence, the odds of marital dissolutionare lower for couples with no violent assaults inthe year prior to first interview. The odds are notsubstantially different for couples who disagreeabout the occurrence or responsibility for the vi-olence. Regardless of reporter bias, the findingsindicate that the perception or experience of se-rious violence by either spouse substantially de-stabilizes the marriage.

Model 3 indicates that adding the gender atti-tude and relationship assessment measures to anested model with the material and physical hard-ship measures improves the overall fit at the .001level (22 log-likelihood n 35.725, 6 df ). Seriousviolence mediates the effect of husbands’ per-ceived disagreements by reducing the coefficientto nonsignificance. Thus, husbands’ perceived dis-agreements do not necessarily increase the oddsof marital dissolution; rather, disagreements thatturn violent do. Serious violence does not mediatethe effects of the husbands’ perceived alternativesto the marriage or the spouses’ gender attitudes.If we add the material and physical hardship mea-sures to a nested model with the gender-attitudeand relationship-assessment measures, we also im-prove the overall fit (22 log-likelihood n 28.094,8 df ). Both sets of measures substantially improvethe overall model.

Model 4 adds couples’ averaged perceived

marital happiness to the equation and significantlyimproves the overall fit at the .001 level (22 log-likelihood n 20.774, 1 df ). Marital happiness me-diates husbands’ perceived alternatives by reduc-ing the effects of their perceived social andeconomic alternatives to the marriage to nonsig-nificance. Marital happiness does not mediate theeffects of gender attitudes or physical violence. Inunshown analyses, we examine adding the gender-attitude, relationship-assessment, and material andphysical hardship measures to a model with thebaseline controls and marital happiness. Both setsof gender-attitude, relationship-assessment, andmaterial and physical hardship measures substan-tially improve the model, net of marital happiness.

Summary

Overall, we receive mixed support for each of ourthree hypotheses, but the main findings indicatethat relationship assessments are mediated largelyby marital happiness and that physical violence isa prime material hardship that influences divorce.In support of our first hypothesis, we find thatwives are more nontraditional and perceive great-er unfairness in housework, and husbands per-ceive more relationship alternatives. However, in-consistent with our expectations, husbandsperceive more open disagreements. This findingsuggests that wives might interpret some disagree-ments as simple discussions, whereas husbandsmight interpret them as substantial arguments.This finding is consistent with Gottman’s (1994)research, which shows that heated exchangesleave husbands more distressed than wives.

Our second hypothesis also receives mixedsupport. Contrary to this hypothesis, perceptionsof unfairness do not affect marital dissolution.However, husbands’ perceived disagreements andrelationship alternatives have initial significant ef-fects on marital dissolution, whereas wives’ donot. This finding is consistent with the hypothesisthat husbands feel more entitled to act on per-ceived dissatisfactions than do wives. However,couples’ overall marital happiness mediates thehusbands’ reactions to open disagreements andtheir perceptions of the relative rewards of endingthe relationship. This finding suggests that internaljudgments about relationship inequities do not de-stabilize marriage; rather, instability arises frompossibly explosive fights in which very unhappy,dissatisfied partners do not arrive at mutually sat-isfying resolutions about the perceived inequities,and the husband perceives viable alternatives to


the marriage. This finding corroborates Sprecherand Schwartz’s (1994, p. 32) observation that ‘‘itmay be that only when satisfaction and rewardsdip below a particular threshold do individuals be-gin to behave unfairly toward their partner and/orbegin to become aware of inequities that mighthave existed before.’’

Last, our third hypothesis is not supported.Husbands’ alcohol or drug abuse and couples’ fi-nancial status do not affect marital dissolution ormediate husbands’ perceived alternatives. How-ever, serious violence, along with husbands’ per-ceived alternatives, pose threats to marital stabil-ity, with serious violence mediating the effects ofhusbands’ perceptions of open disagreements.This latter finding indicates that an important cor-relate of marital dissolution is the extent to whichopen disagreements or fights escalate violently.

DISCUSSION

The implicit assumption of much of contemporarydistributive justice and equity literatures is thatwomen’s perceptions of unfairness, disagree-ments, and perceived relationship alternatives, incombination with their more egalitarian attitudesand greater material resources, undermine theirwillingness to accept inequity in marriage (Attridge& Berscheid, 1994; Mikula & Lerner, 1994). Thisargument implies that women’s greater social andeconomic independence fuels their sense of enti-tlement to end poor marriages. We find that de-spite the recent focus on wives’ perceptions ofunfairness and inequity in family life, husbands’perceptions are more important predictors of di-vorce. Thus, our findings corroborate qualitativework showing that wives faced with marital in-equalities and severe disagreements feel pressureto ‘‘suppress the politics of comparison’’ (Gager,1998; Hochschild, 1989, p. 49). But we furtherfind that even husbands’ perceived disagreementsand alternatives are mediated by couples’ overallhappiness. Our findings suggest that distributivejustice and equity researchers need to examinewives’ and husbands’ perceptions of equity andperceived alternatives more closely, in order tounderstand how shifts in women’s and men’s paidand family work obligations and perceived dis-satisfaction with those shifts affect marriage anddivorce.

We underscore that two unexpected findingsshould instruct distributive justice and equity re-searchers to develop better measures of rewardingpersonal relations. First, despite the voluminous

literature on housework fairness perceptions, theseperceptions have no effect on divorce, nor do fair-ness perceptions about working for pay or spend-ing money. On the one hand, we might interpretthese noneffects as support for Major’s (1987,1993) theory that men and especially women ex-pect inequalities in their personal interrelation-ships and do not view these as necessarily ineq-uitable or justifiably disruptive. On the other hand,fairness perceptions might be exceptionally vola-tile, fleeting, and malleable, thereby changing ac-cording to daily and periodic relationship contin-gencies. Further, Smith, Gager, and Morgan(1997) find that housework fairness perception re-ports are bidimensional. Although some respon-dents home in on the task of a subjective assess-ment of relationship equity, others tend to give thesocially desirable response of ‘‘fair.’’ Thus, per-ceptions of fairness might not be useful to mea-sure marital outcomes or dynamics. Family soci-ologists must move beyond simple zero-sumassessments of unfairness (see Hawkins, Marshall,& Meiners, 1995). Moreover, spouses might bevery aware of the tradeoffs they make betweenmomentary instances of perceived unfairness andrelationship benefit over a marriage’s projectedlife course. As Holmes and Levinger (1994, pp.158–159) report,

The very process of building a close relationshipwill serve to reduce individuals’ ongoing con-cerns with justice. This diminished focus on jus-tice will help stabilize a relationship and increaseits ability to accommodate to everyday strains.A challenge for any close relationship is that ob-jective differences in contributions are bound tooccur. Closeness increases the ability of a coupleto be resilient in the face of such dilemmas bystrengthening processes of tolerance and loyalty,making imbalances less visible and minimizingtheir significance.

Holmes and Levinger (1994) say that perceivedinequities only fuel a sense of injustice, if a part-ner perceives the inequities to be long, enduring,and met with unresponsiveness by an uncaring,intransigent partner—when the imbalance is seenas exploitation rather than a momentary or agreed-upon strain.

The gender attitude findings also merit specialattention, given their inconsistency with our per-ceived entitlement argument. We expected thatboth wives’ and husbands’ traditionalism wouldbe associated with lower odds of marital dissolu-tion, because nontraditional spouses might feelless attached to marriage and more entitled and,


in some sense, permanently ‘‘ready’’ to end a poorunion (VanYperen & Buunk, 1994). Instead, wefind that wives’ traditionalism is associated withlower odds of marital dissolution, whereas hus-bands’ traditionalism is associated with higherodds. These effects are not due to multicollinear-ity.

This finding might convey something aboutwhat is attractive to women in contemporary mar-riage markets. Oppenheimer (1994, 1997) arguesthat the recent period of economic insecurities,low fertility regimes, and women’s accelerated so-cial independence tipped the most adaptive mar-riage relationship toward one with more collabo-rative, parallel male and female roles andactivities. She says that the considerable lifetimepressure on women and men to perform and shareboth employment and homemaking activitiesmeans that couples must rely on premarital selec-tion rather than postmarital socialization to assurea mutually satisfying division of duties and obli-gations (1997). That is, women and men mightfind it increasingly important to find a partnerwilling to share roles according to their prefer-ences before they take their vows, rather thanhope to train him or her ‘‘on the marital job.’’

What might be problematic is that men withtraditional attitudes might be less willing to shareprovider status with wives and more dissatisfiedwith women’s changing family and economic ac-tivities (Kane & Sanchez, 1994; Wilkie, 1993).Hence, they might be less willing or able to adaptto pressures within the marriage that call for ne-gotiating changes in their marital duties (Bowen& Orthner, 1983). The positive effect of husbands’traditional attitudes on divorce might indicate thedifficulty of resorting to postmarital socializationto cope with shifting employment, marital, andfamily demands for couples in which the husbandendorses only clearly demarcated gender roles.

Our study has some limitations that should beaddressed in future research. First, our debt mea-sures come from primary respondent reports only,and they reference couples’ cumulative debt. Abetter measure would detail both spouses’ relativecontribution toward debt and whether debts wereaccrued prior to or after marriage. Second, thenonsignificance of our hard-living measures con-flicts with previous research (Kitson, 1992; Kitson& Sussman, 1982) and might be an artifact ofquestion wording. Husbands and wives identifiedwhether the spouse or self had a problem but didnot clarify the severity. Third, the fairness-percep-tion measures had a number of weaknesses. They

tapped only three domains—ones probably tiedmost strongly to stereotypes and normative ex-pectations about wife and husband duties. Also,the flat assessments did not distinguish whethercertain partners experienced what VanYperen andBuunk (1994) call a ‘‘sleeper effect,’’ whereby aninitial sense of unfairness grows in intensity andsalience and ultimately negatively colors an entirehistory of relationship events and imbalances thatwere previously viewed as benign or just (seeHopper, 1993, for evidence of these reinterpreta-tions in the discourse of divorced individuals).Last, Lerner and Mikula (1994b) suggest that en-titlement perceptions in marriage are tied to threebases of normative expectations: (a) traditionalnorms about wives’ and husbands’ roles; (b) so-cial norms about equality and reciprocity of careand exchange; and (c) internal, personal rulesabout entitlement and justice. The battery of fair-ness-perception items in this analysis did not askrespondents to pinpoint the normative expecta-tions or feeling rules they applied to their assess-ments, thus possibly confounding a host of con-flicting emotions or judgments in their responses.Most important, family sociologists should ex-plore further how informal relations within mar-riage are rooted in gendered beliefs about whosefeelings and opinions should count more duringroutine and extraordinary marital events and pro-cesses.

This study further indicates that serious phys-ical violence is a powerful determinant of divorce,a finding previously shown in panel studies ofmarried individuals and in retrospective studies ofdivorced individuals (see Amato & Rogers, 1997;Arendell, 1995; Kurz, 1995). Our findings supportresearch showing the disruptive effects of familyviolence on marriage, but we cannot measure howgendered entitlement dynamics spur serious vio-lence. We recommend that quantitative family so-ciologists develop better indicators of the relation-ship between perceived entitlements and privilegeand expressions of physical dominance and coer-cion.

NOTE

This research was supported by Grants 1 F32 HD08097-01 from the National Institute of Child Health and Hu-man Development and SER-9510584 from the NationalScience Foundation. We thank April Brayfield for help-ful suggestions.

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APPENDIX

DISCRETE TIME EVENT HISTORY ANALYSIS FOR FULL

BASELINE MODEL AND ALL FOCAL MEASURESa b

Coefficient SD

Intercept 1.57 (1.20)Exposure in years .05 (.05)Years of marriage by first in-

terview 2.09*** (.02)

Demographic characteristics

Both partners non-HispanicWhite .17 (.19)

Primary respondent female 2.03 (.15)Northeast 2.19 (.28)North central .16 (.22)South 2.14 (.22)Smsa .15 (.17)

Family and education background

Both spouses nonintact fami-lies .48* (.25)

Wife: intact family .09 (.21)Husband: intact family .19 (.19)Missing family information 22.75*** (1.03)Both some college 21.40*** (.38)Both college 21.25*** (.29)Wife only college 21.10*** (.32)Husband only college 21.04*** (.29)Residual education 2.47*** (.19)

Income

Log of total family income 2.02 (.07)Economic dependency ratio .11 (.18)

Parental status

No child/ren Time 1, child/renTime 2 21.54*** (.29)

Child/ren Time 1, no fertilityTime 2 2.49*** (.23)

Child/ren Time 1, additionalchild/ren Time 2 21.77*** (.26)

Time 1 work status

Wife’s total weekly houseworkhours 2.01 (.00)

Wife’s or couple’s total weeklyhousework hours 2.42 (.50)

Wife’s weekly hours in paidemployment 2.00 (.00)

APPENDIX. CONTINUEDa b

Coefficient SD

Husband’s weekly hours inpaid employment .00 (.01)

Couple’s averaged marital hap-piness 2.37*** (.08)

Focal Measures

Couple’s gender attitudes

Wife’s traditional attitudes 2.34*** (.12)Husband’s traditional attitudes .32*** (.12)Missing info. dummy for hus-

band’s attitudes .86*** (.27)

Disagreements

Wife’s perception 2.02 (.03)Husband’s perception .01 (.03)

Perceived alternatives to the marriage

Wife’s perception .01 (.03)Husband’s perception .04 (.02)

Assets and debts (logged dollars)

Capital assets 2.10 (.07)Capital debts .04 (.03)Unproductive debt 2.00 (.02)

Serious violence in relationship

Neither violent 2.80*** (.31)Husband says both violent;

wife says neither .12 (.45)Wife says both violent; hus-

band says neither .31 (.40)Residual (conflict over who is

actually violent) 2.32 (.41)

Husband’s hard-living .01 (.28)

22 log-likelihood 1719.345

Note: n 5 1,721.aSource: National Survey of Families and Households,

1987–1988 and 1992–1994. bOmitted categories: at leastone partner non-White; male primary respondent; West;non-Smsa; both spouses intact families; both spouses highschool; no children Time 1 or Time 2; both spouses mu-tually violent; husband has no drug or alcohol problems.

*p ,.10, **p ,.05, ***p , .001.

Documents

Hard Living, Perceived Entitlement to a Great Marriage, and Marital Dissolution