Objective
This study examines the association between marital satisfaction and cognitive function, while distinguishing between the effects of improving and declining marital satisfaction. Moreover, ...potential differences in these asymmetric effects of marital satisfaction between middle‐aged and older adults are explored.
Background
Marital satisfaction is known to promote cognitive function. However, previous studies have assumed that the effects of improving and declining marital satisfaction are symmetrical.
Method
Using seven waves of data from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging 2006–2018 (N = 7407), we employ a novel asymmetric fixed effects model to estimate the effects of improving and declining marital satisfaction separately. Stratified analyses were conducted by age group and gender.
Results
The association between declining marital satisfaction and cognitive function (b = −0.292, p < .001) was stronger than the association between improving marital satisfaction and cognitive function (b = 0.102, p < .001). These asymmetric effects were predominantly driven by older adults. The effect of declining marital satisfaction on cognitive function was significantly greater for older adults than middle‐aged adults (−0.395 vs. −0.148). We did not find gender differences.
Conclusion
Findings suggest that the negative impact of declining marital satisfaction on cognitive function outweighs the positive effects of improving marital satisfaction, especially among older adults. Reducing marital dissatisfaction and fostering healthy marital relationships are crucial strategies to promote the cognitive well‐being of older adults.
The aim of the current meta-analysis was to aggregate concurrent and longitudinal empirical research on associations between the interparental relationship and both children's maladjustment (i.e., ...externalizing and internalizing symptoms) and children's responses to interparental conflict (i.e., emotional, behavioral, cognitive, and physiological). Based on major theoretical frameworks, we distinguished between six dimensions of the interparental relationship: relationship quality, conflict frequency, hostile, disengaged, and unconstructive forms of conflict, and child-related conflict. A final selection of 169 studies for child maladjustment and 61 studies for child responses to conflict were included. The findings revealed by the expansive and fine-grained approach of this meta-analysis support and challenge theoretical hypotheses about the relative predictive value of dimensions of the interparental relationship for children's functioning. Although hostility was specifically more strongly associated with children's externalizing behavior and emotional responses to conflict, disengaged and unconstructive conflict behavior posed similar risks for the other domains of child functioning. In addition, relationship quality, conflict frequency, and child-related conflict warrant more attention in theoretical frameworks, as these dimensions posed similar risks to child functioning as the different forms of conflict. Moreover, most associations between the interparental relationship and child functioning endured over time. Also, developmental and gender differences appeared to depend on the specific forms of interparental conflict and the domain of child functioning. In sum, the results support the growing consensus that prevention and intervention programs aimed at children's mental health could benefit from an alternative or additional focus on the interparental relationship.
Public Significance Statement
This meta-analysis pooled findings from previous research on associations between different aspects of the interparental relationship and children's maladjustment (i.e., externalizing and internalizing problems) and responses to interparental conflict (i.e., emotional, behavioral, and physiological reactivity, and cognitive appraisals of the interparental subsystem). The findings highlight the importance of both the general quality of the relationship between parents as well as five aspects of interparental conflicts (i.e., conflict frequency, the level of hostile, disengaged and unconstructive conflict behavior, and the amount of child-related conflicts) as robust predictors of children's maladjustment, concurrently and over time. Moreover, the findings confirm that children's emotional and behavioral reactivity to interparental conflicts, and their cognitive appraisals of the interparental subsystem, are fruitful directions for understanding why interparental conflict leads to maladjustment in children.
Uncertainty and isolation have been linked to mental health problems. Uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to trigger mental health problems, which include anxiety, stress, ...and depression. This paper evaluates the prevalence, psychological responses, and associated correlates of depression, anxiety, and stress in a global population during the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic. A cross-sectional study design was adopted. 678 completed forms were collected during the COVID-19 quarantine/lockdown. An online questionnaire was designed and DASS-21 was used as the screening tool. A non-probability sampling technique strategy was applied. 50.9% of participants showed traits of anxiety, 57.4% showed signs of stress, and 58.6% exhibited depression. Stress, anxiety, and depression are overwhelmingly prevalent across the globe during this COVID-19 pandemic, and multiple factors can influence the rates of these mental health conditions. Our factorial analysis showed notable associations and manifestations of stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms. People aged 18–24, females, and people in non-marital relationships experienced stress, anxiety, and depression. Separated individuals experienced stress and anxiety. Married people experienced anxiety. Single and divorced people experienced depression. Unemployed individuals experienced stress and depression. Students experienced anxiety and depression. Canada, the UK, and Pakistan are all countries that are experiencing stress and depression as a whole. An extended number of days in quarantine was associated with increased stress, anxiety, and depression. Family presence yielded lower levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. Lastly, lack of exercise was associated with increased stress, anxiety, and depression.
This meta-analysis reviewed 126 published empirical articles over the past 50 years describing associations between marital relationship quality and physical health in more than 72,000 individuals. ...Health outcomes included clinical endpoints (objective assessments of function, disease severity, and mortality; subjective health assessments) and surrogate endpoints (biological markers that substitute for clinical endpoints, such as blood pressure). Biological mediators included cardiovascular reactivity and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activity. Greater marital quality was related to better health, with mean effect sizes from r = .07 to .21, including lower risk of mortality (r = .11) and lower cardiovascular reactivity during marital conflict (r = −.13), but not daily cortisol slopes or cortisol reactivity during conflict. The small effect sizes were similar in magnitude to previously found associations between health behaviors (e.g., diet) and health outcomes. Effect sizes for a small subset of clinical outcomes were susceptible to publication bias. In some studies, effect sizes remained significant after accounting for confounds such as age and socioeconomic status. Studies with a higher proportion of women in the sample demonstrated larger effect sizes, but we found little evidence for gender differences in studies that explicitly tested gender moderation, with the exception of surrogate endpoint studies. Our conclusions are limited by small numbers of studies for specific health outcomes, unexplained heterogeneity, and designs that limit causal inferences. These findings highlight the need to explicitly test affective, health behavior, and biological mechanisms in future research, and focus on moderating factors that may alter the relationship between marital quality and health.
How does emotion regulation in one social context spillover to functioning in another? We investigate this novel question by drawing upon recent evidence that 3 categories underpin the most commonly ...assessed emotion regulation strategies: disengagement, aversive cognitive perseveration, and adaptive engagement. We examine how these emotion regulation categories during marital conflict are associated with conflict resolution and assess the associated implications for functioning during a subsequent family activity. We also develop and compare observational and self-report measures of emotion regulation. Couples (N = 101) were video-recorded discussing a major conflict and reported on their emotion regulation during the discussion. Couples then participated in a family activity with their 5-year-old child, and reported on the quality of the family experience and responsiveness toward their child. Observational coders rated how much each participant exhibited each type of emotion regulation during the conflict discussion. Greater disengagement and aversive cognitive perseveration were associated with lower conflict resolution, and in turn, less positive experiences and poorer parental responsiveness during the family activity. Greater adaptive engagement had the opposite effects, but only disengagement and aversive cognitive perseveration had independent effects when controlling for the other emotion regulation categories. Finally, observational and self-report measures were only weakly associated, but illustrated the same pattern of effects. These novel findings suggest that emotion regulation strategies have important flow-on effects beyond the context initially enacted. The results also indicate that self-report versus observed measures of emotion regulation reveal similar patterns, but may capture different intrapersonal and interpersonal elements of emotion regulation.
To provide an estimate of the burden of postpartum depression in Indian mothers and investigate some risk factors for the condition.
We searched PubMed®, Google Scholar and Embase® databases for ...articles published from year 2000 up to 31 March 2016 on the prevalence of postpartum depression in Indian mothers. The search used subject headings and keywords with no language restrictions. Quality was assessed via the Newcastle-Ottawa quality assessment scale. We performed the meta-analysis using a random effects model. Subgroup analysis and meta-regression was done for heterogeneity and the Egger test was used to assess publication bias.
Thirty-eight studies involving 20 043 women were analysed. Studies had a high degree of heterogeneity (
= 96.8%) and there was evidence of publication bias (Egger bias = 2.58; 95% confidence interval, CI: 0.83-4.33). The overall pooled estimate of the prevalence of postpartum depression was 22% (95% CI: 19-25). The pooled prevalence was 19% (95% CI: 17-22) when excluding 8 studies reporting postpartum depression within 2 weeks of delivery. Small, but non-significant differences in pooled prevalence were found by mother's age, geographical location and study setting. Reported risk factors for postpartum depression included financial difficulties, presence of domestic violence, past history of psychiatric illness in mother, marital conflict, lack of support from husband and birth of a female baby.
The review shows a high prevalence of postpartum depression in Indian mothers. More resources need to be allocated for capacity-building in maternal mental health care in India.
The present study aimed to examine the factor structure and measurement invariance of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for children and adolescents (ERQ-CA) in Chinese youth (N = 484, M
age
= ...10.43, SD
age
= .88). Three versions (i.e., ERQ-CA-10, ERQ-CA-9, and ERQ-CA-8) of the ERQ-CA were tested and compared using confirmatory factor analysis, measurement invariance, and correlation analysis. Results showed that the eight-item version of the ERQ-CA (ERQ-CA-8) fit the data best in all conditions. However, measurement invariance across gender and after a one-year retest interval was achieved using all three versions of the measurement. The three ERQ-CA versions exhibited similar patterns of correlates with external measures (i.e., perceived parental marital conflict, r = −.17 to −.20, ps < .001, emotion expression, and callous-unemotional traits, r = −.26 to −.29, p < .001). Furthermore, the ERQ-CA-10 (i.e., the original ERQ-CA) showed better reliability than the other two versions. In conclusion, although further validity studies are needed, our findings suggest that the original ERQ-CA as well as the ERQ-CA-8 both have good psychometric properties and can be used to measure emotion regulation strategies in Chinese youth.
Using data from the 2006 Family Module of the East Asian Social Survey (N = 3,096), this article examines associations of marital satisfaction with divisions of housework and gender ideology in four ...East Asian societies: urban China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Compared with Japanese and Korean married women and men, Chinese and Taiwanese spouses were more satisfied with their marriage and had more egalitarian divisions of housework, but simultaneously they held less egalitarian gender ideologies. Multivariate analyses showed that relative share of housework was negatively associated with marital satisfaction for Japanese and Korean men and for Korean and Taiwanese women. Egalitarian gender ideology was significantly associated with lower marital satisfaction only among Taiwanese women. In addition, the negative association between housework and marital satisfaction was more pronounced for Taiwanese women who espoused more egalitarian gender ideologies. The authors discuss how differences in macro-level social contexts explain these cross-society variations.
•The impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable populations, such as new parents and their infants, must be considered.•Only fathers reported significantly higher parenting stress during the pandemic than in ...the previous year.•Only during the pandemic did fathers report higher parenting stress than mothers.•Lower presence of meaning, higher search for meaning, and less marital satisfaction were related to higher parenting stress.
The outbreak of COVID-19 has forced parents to deal with a challenging crisis, which may have increased their stress levels, negatively affecting their parenting and putting their infants at risk of abuse.
To examine the contribution of the pandemic to parenting stress, exploring differences in parenting stress among new parents before and during the crisis, the role of background and personal variables, and the possibility that the study phase moderated the associations of gender and personal resources with parenting stress.
Israeli parents (n = 1591) whose first child was 3–12 months old were recruited twice through social media: in 2019, before the spread of COVID-19 (n = 985); and in March 2020, during the pandemic (n = 606).
Sociodemographic variables, perception of the childbirth as traumatic, lower meaning in life, higher search for meaning, less marital satisfaction, and study phase all contributed to greater parenting stress. In addition, the association between gender and stress was moderated by study phase, with fathers reporting a greater increase in stress during the pandemic. Moreover, only during the pandemic did fathers report higher parenting stress than mothers.
The findings highlight the vulnerability of new parents of young infants to parenting stress during the crisis, and the special attention which should be paid to fathers. They indicate the value of strengthening meaning in life and preserving good marital relationships as resources that help to cope with the heightened parenting stress at this time.
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