@prefix vivo: . @prefix edm: . @prefix ns0: . @prefix dcterms: . @prefix dc: . @prefix skos: . vivo:departmentOrSchool "Land and Food Systems, Faculty of"@en ; edm:dataProvider "DSpace"@en ; ns0:degreeCampus "UBCV"@en ; dcterms:creator "Starr, Elizabeth L."@en ; dcterms:issued "2009-07-03T00:00:00"@en, "1998"@en ; vivo:relatedDegree "Master of Arts - MA"@en ; ns0:degreeGrantor "University of British Columbia"@en ; dcterms:description """The old adage, "Birds of a feather flock together" appears to be true when investigating compatibility and consequent marital satisfaction for wives. This study focused on gender role ideology constellations within a couple, specifically comparing ideologically compatible couples and ideologically incompatible couples (wife being more egalitarian than husband). It was hypothesized that wives' marital outcomes of conflict and satisfaction were affected by the intervening interpersonal and symbolic variables of perceptions of appreciation and fairness (with family work), which are each in turn affected by ideological incompatibility. This unique alternate interpersonal incompatibility model was tested against an intrapersonal congruency model already hypothesized by Greenstein (1996a). Using the NSFH 1987-88 data set, my hypothesized comprehensive path model was estimated with path analysis, but was rejected. A reestimated path model was constructed during the exploratory phase of path analysis. Results supported my unique interpersonal incompatibility model over the intrapersonal congruency model, as well as discovering unpredicted significant paths. My reestimated comprehensive path model explained 20% of wives' marital satisfaction variance. The interpersonal, symbolic, and emotional variable of wife's perceptions of appreciation (for family work) was found to be significantly related to all endogenous variables in the reestimated path model. In fact, this variable directly explained 4% of wives' marital satisfaction variance. It appears that appreciation is an important variable to include in understanding interactions within couples."""@en ; edm:aggregatedCHO "https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/10025?expand=metadata"@en ; dcterms:extent "6773406 bytes"@en ; dc:format "application/pdf"@en ; skos:note "PREDICTING WIVES' MARITAL SATISFACTION: EXAMINING THE INTERPERSONAL VARIABLES OF IDEOLOGICAL INCOMPATIBILITY AND PERCEPTIONS OF APPRECIATION AND FAIRNESS by ELIZABETH L. STARR B.A., The University of British Columbia, 1996 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES School of Family and Nutritional Sciences Family Studies We accept this thesis^as^conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA December 1998 ® Elizabeth L. Starr, 1998 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of fAnillv aid A/ufcJiOMal'Z'ieitfr* The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada -Hi Date /\\/0\\/emW dO Ifffj DE-6 (2/88) ii Abstract The old adage, \"Birds of a feather flock together\" appears to be true when investigating compatibility and consequent marital satisfaction for wives. This study focused on gender role ideology constellations within a couple, specifically comparing ideologically compatible couples and ideologically incompatible couples (wife being more egalitarian than husband). It was hypothesized that wives' marital outcomes of conflict and satisfaction were affected by the intervening interpersonal and symbolic variables of perceptions of appreciation and fairness (with family work), which are each in turn affected by ideological incompatibility. This unique alternate interpersonal incompatibility model was tested against an intrapersonal congruency model already hypothesized by Greenstein (1996a). Using the NSFH 1987-88 data set, my hypothesized comprehensive path model was estimated with path analysis, but was rejected. A reestimated path model was constructed during the exploratory phase of path analysis. Results supported my unique interpersonal incompatibility model over the intrapersonal congruency model, as well as discovering unpredicted significant paths. My reestimated comprehensive path model explained 20% of wives' marital satisfaction variance. The interpersonal, symbolic, and emotional variable of wife's perceptions of appreciation (for family work) was found to be significantly related to all endogenous variables in the reestimated path model. In fact, this variable directly explained 4% of wives' marital satisfaction variance. It appears that appreciation is an important variable to include in understanding interactions within couples. iii Table of Contents Abstract ii Table of Contents iii List of Tables vi List of Figures vii Acknowledgements viii Dedication ix Introduction 1 Conceptual Distinctions 3 Chapter One Literature Review 6 The Division of Household Labour 6 Who Does What? 7 Who Shares? 11 Intrapersonal Congruency, Perceptions of Fairness, and Marital Outcomes 14 Intrapersonal Congruency and Perceptions of Fairness 14 The Distributive Justice Framework 16 Perceptions of Fairness and Marital Conflict and Satisfaction 19 Interpersonal Incompatibility, Perceptions of Appreciation and Fairness, and Marital Outcomes 23 Interpersonal Congruency and Marital Conflict and Satisfaction 23 Expanding the Distributive Justice Framework 3 0 iv Ideological Incompatibility, Appreciation, and Perceptions of Fairness 32 Ideological Incompatibility, Justifications, and Perceptions of Fairness 3 9 Summary and Hypotheses 43 My Comprehensive Path Model 45 Hypotheses 4 9 Chapter Two Method 50 The Data 50 The Sample 52 Concepts and Measures 58 Preliminary Measures 58 Exogenous Variables 68 Endogenous Variables 71 Control Variables 77 Chapter Three Results 86 Data Analysis Strategy 86 Descriptive Statistics 87 Preliminary Analyses 89 Analyses of Causal Models 101 Estimating the Comprehensive Path Model 106 Chapter Four Discussion 117 Intrapersonal Congruency Model 120 Interpersonal Incompatibility Model 123 Reestimated Comprehensive Path Model 137 Limitations and Strengths 144 V Implications 147 Future Research 148 Conclusions 151 References 155 VI List of Tables Table 1. Descriptive Statistics for all Variables in Analyses 88 Table 2. Correlation Matrix of Significant Controls and Endogenous Variables 90 Table 3. Correlation Matrix of Model Variables (Excluding Controls) 95 Table 4. Standardized Regression Coefficients for the Intrapersonal Congruency Model 104 Table 5. Standardized Regression Coefficients for the Interpersonal Incompatibility Model 105 Table 6. Standardized Regression Weights for the Reestimated Path Model Ill vii List of Figures Figure 1. Intrapersonal Causal Connections 24 Figure 2. Interpersonal Causal Connections 44 Figure 3 . Comprehensive Causal Model 48 Figure 4. Hypothesized Comprehensive Path Model 107 Figure 5. Reestimated Comprehensive Path Model 112 VI11 Acknowledgement s First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge my thesis supervisor, Dr. Richard Bulcroft, for his invaluable guidance and encouragement, which enabled me to complete this thesis. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude for his willingness and dedication to spending time with me as a graduate student. In addition, I would like to acknowledge my other two thesis committee members: Dr. Dan Perlman and Dr. Nancy Langton. They too provided me with support and insight, and helped to bring my thesis to fruition. Dedication IX I would like to dedicate my thesis to my loving partner, Alan, who gave me constant support, faith, and love throughout its development. I truly appreciate all these gifts and I thank you. 1 Introduction Is there a secret of success to a happy and stable marriage? Indeed, understanding the determinants of marital satisfaction is complex due to its multifaceted arenas of influence. My thesis is an attempt to better understand some of these multifaceted influences that intertwine and relate to marital satisfaction for wives. It incorporates many broad areas of theoretical and empirical research, such as gender roles, division of household labour, and marital satisfaction. To begin, I will give a brief chronology of how these literatures have developed. The area of gender role ideology constellations and marital outcomes flourished in the 1980s, whereas research in recent years has ignored such ideological constellations in marriage. However, the areas of the division of household labour and perceptions of fairness have recently developed within the last decade. Literature on the symbolic meaning of family work and emotional responses to family work has expanded just in the last couple of years. Within all of these literatures, there are many existing gaps that I hope to begin to fill. For instance, I want to bridge the most recent literature on symbolic meanings of family work (i.e., appreciation) with the older body of literature on gender role ideology constellations and marital outcomes, in the hopes of better explaining these marital outcomes. Incongruency in gender role ideology has been linked to marital conflict and dissatisfaction, but only when the 2 incongruency is between an egalitarian wife and a traditional husband (Bowen, 1987; Bowen & Orthner, 1983; Craddock, 1983). Incongruent pairs of the traditional wife/egalitarian husband type and congruent couples (both egalitarian or both traditional) report lower marital conflict and higher marital satisfaction, thereby making these constellation types ideologically compatible. I propose that intervening variables in this equation are perceptions of appreciation and fairness with the division of household labour. Perceptions of fairness have been directly linked to marital satisfaction (Blair & Johnson, 1992; Sanchez, 1994; Suitor, 1991). Indeed, as Greenstein (1996a) notes, perceptions of fairness are more important for marital outcomes than objective realities. With respect to perceptions of appreciation, the evidence is less conclusive, although Hawkins, Marshall, and Meiners (1995) found \"feelings of appreciation\" to be the strongest predictor of perceptions of fairness among wives. The distributive justice framework is used to understand wives' perceptions of fairness. However, this framework only explains intrapersonal process (i.e., discrepancy between one's ideology and behaviour), it has not been clearly extended to explain interpersonal processes (i.e., differences in ideologies between a husband and a wife). Further, its missing link is the interpersonal value outcome of appreciation and the symbolic meaning of family work. I argue that perceptions of appreciation and perceptions of fairness are interpersonal in nature, because 3 it is through symbolic interactions with one's spouse that feelings of appreciation and fairness develop. As Hochschild (1989a) points out: \"When couples struggle, it is seldom over who does what. Far more often, it is over the giving and receiving of gratitude\" (p. 18). The comprehensive causal model that I use to explain how ideological incompatibility can impact marital satisfaction has two main parts. First, I link intrapersonal congruency, perceptions of fairness, marital conflict, and marital satisfaction. Then I add the links of ideological incompatibility, perceptions of appreciation, perceptions of fairness, and the remaining flow of the model. My purpose of this study is to explore how ideological incompatibility affects the marital outcomes of conflict and satisfaction for wives, with perceptions of appreciation and fairness as intervening variables. These effects will be considered independent of the effects of gender role ideology' and division of household labour interactions (intrapersonal congruency) that have been documented in the research literature to date. Examining interpersonal processes clarifies the development, maintenance, and the possible dissolution of marriages. Conceptual Distinctions Before I begin a review of the research literature, there are some central concepts that need to be defined and examined. 4 Gender is a socially determined status based on one's sex category and is constructed through psychological, cultural, and social means, resulting in the categories woman and man. Thus, gender is a social construction. West and Zimmerman (1987) explain gender as an emergent feature of social situations: \"doing gender\" is thus creating and recreating gender in everyday interactions with others. Gender can then best be described as relational or interactional, rather than as an individual characteristic. Gender roles are expectations and scripts of behaviours, attitudes, and emotions, which one learns through gender role socialization. Greenstein (1996b) defines gender role ideologies as expressions of fundamental value-systems based on a set of beliefs about gender, marriage, and family. In other words, what it means to be a woman or a man, a wife or a husband, and/or a mother or a father. Hochschild (1989a) describes the gender role ideologies of traditional and egalitarian. The traditional model upholds the status quo of the husband basing his activities at his paid work while the wife bases her activities at home, and there exists an unequal balance of power favouring the husband. The egalitarian arrangement shares roles so that both the wife and the husband identify equally with both their home and their paid work, and there is a balance of power between them. There are two types of gender role congruencies and incongruencies in marriage. The first is interpersonal, such as 5 spousal gender role ideology congruency versus incongruency. An example of congruency would be both the husband and the wife are egalitarian or both the husband and the wife are traditional. An example of incongruency would be when the wife is egalitarian but the husband is traditional or when the wife is traditional and the husband is egalitarian. Of particular interest here, is when incongruencies become incompatible, such as when a wife is more egalitarian than her husband. Clearly, within a marriage there exists two marriages: hers and his. \"The idea that two spouses may have different and sometimes competing interests and needs in their marriage is seen as a departure from the conventional view in which the family is seen as an integrated unit with shared goals and desires\" (McHale & Crouter, 1992, p. 545). It is incompatible incongruency that will be the main focus of my thesis. The second type of gender role congruency versus incongruency is intrapersonal. This involves the degree of congruency or incongruency between one's gender role ideology and actual behaviour. This type of (in)congruency has been extensively researched and will also be examined. 6 Chapter One Literature Review This literature review chapter includes three major subsections: the division of household labour, intrapersonal congruency, and interpersonal incompatibility. My research goal was to combine these three literature bases within a model that explained marital outcomes for wives. The Division of Household Labour Gender role ideology is transformed into behaviour within marriage. One such behaviour that is critical, pervasive, and everyday is the performance of family work (housework and child care). Family work is the unpaid work of maintaining both family members and the home, and it is a gendered activity. In a review of the literature on the division of household labour, Shelton and John (1996) concluded that \"housework produces both household goods and services and gender\" (p. 312). Bolak's (1997) study of Turkish spouses offers cross-cultural support for a gendered perspective in negotiating family work divisions. Hochschild (1989a) coined the term second shift to refer to women's \"double-day\" of paid and unpaid labour. Most employed women/mothers come home from their paid work and are expected solely to then take care of the house and child(ren), which is thus seen as their second shift of work in one day. The second shift not only results in more time and effort expended, but, similar to the discrepancy of wages in the workplace between men 7 and women, a leisure gap also exists between them in the home (Hochschild, 1989a). \"Obviously, if men contribute more to the performance of some of the relentless daily tasks of the household, women's leisure time would be comparable to men's\" (DeMaris & Longmore, 1996, p. 1045). As well as the concepts of the second shift and the leisure gap, Hochschild (1989a) describes the stalled revolution as the cultural lag where women are changing faster than men, industry, or institutions. As a result of this stalled revolution, daughters are more different from their mothers than sons are from 'their fathers (Hochschild, 1989a) . Women have entered the paid labour force of the outside work world, yet men have not entered the unpaid labour force of the home. The friction between faster-changing women and slower-changing men has resulted in tensions and arguments within the marital dyad (Hochschild, 1989a). Who Does What? \"Virtually every study investigating the division of household labor has come to two basic conclusions: women perform approximately twice as much labor as men; and women perform qualitatively different types of chores than men\" (Blair & Johnson, 1992, p. 570). Exclusive of child care, employed wives perform about 3 8 hours per week of housework, while husbands perform about 18 hours per week (Greenstein, 1996b). Hochschild's (1989a) study found that employed women doing the 8 second shift worked an extra month of twenty-four-hour-days each year more than their employed husbands. Unemployed wives spent even more time in household tasks than did employed wives (Perry-Jenkins, Seery, & Crouter, 1992). While employed women still do the majority of family work, they are doing less and their husbands more, than in the past (Shelton & John, 1996). \"The more hours a woman is employed, the smaller the discrepancy in the amount of time she and her husband spend in housework\" (Leslie & Anderson, 1988, p. 218). Perry-Jenkins and Crouter (1990) point out that this difference in proportion exists not so much because of husbands' increase in time spent, but instead, because of wives' decrease in time spent. Yet, husbands' time spent in child care does seem to have increased (Leslie & Anderson, 1988). Interestingly, in a recent article by Press and Townsley (1998), their analysis of NSFH direct-question reports of housework hours (child care hours not included) showed that both wives and husbands overreport their own housework contributions. Further, the reporting gap differs according to gender role ideology. Traditional wives overreport their housework contributions while egalitarian wives accurately report their housework contributions. Traditional husbands underreport their housework contributions while egalitarian husbands overreport their housework contributions. It would seem that \"social desirability in the face of gendered social expectations appears to structure reporting bias\" (Press & Townsley, 1998, p. 213). 9 A gendered reporting gap does not significantly alter previous substantive conclusions regarding wives' second shift, however, this reporting bias casts doubts on previous claims that today's modern husband does more housework than yesterday's husband (Press & Townsley, 1998). Household tasks are heavily segregated by gender. They are divided into \"feminine\" and \"masculine\" tasks, with feminine tasks involving regularity and repetitiveness, such as occurring daily and at specific times (e.g., meal preparation/cooking, child care, washing dishes, etc.). \"Male tasks tend to have the following qualities: a)a well-defined beginning and end, b)personal discretion as to when the task should be performed (lack of a solid time frame), and c)a leisure component within the task\" (such as mowing the lawn or washing the car) (Blair & Johnson, 1992, p. 571). Women perform about 74% of the traditionally female tasks while men perform about 2 0%, and women perform about 19% of the traditionally male tasks while men perform about 70% (Greenstein, 1996b). Findlay and Lawrence (1991) found that couples were less traditional in their distribution of household tasks than their parents, yet they were more traditional than their ideals of marriage. \"If ideals were being put into practice, many more tasks would be shared\" (Findlay & Lawrence, 1991, p. 10). Unfortunately, much of family work is invisible, even to the women who perform most of it (DeVault, 1991). Attentiveness (e.g., noticing that the milk is getting low), coordination 10 (e.g., writing up a grocery list while folding laundry), responsibility (e.g., picking up a child from school), and organization (e.g., confirming a dentist appointment for a family member) are examples of such invisible family work. Thus, invisible work constitutes all the thinking, planning, attentiveness, and responsibility involved in taking care of a home and its members (DeVault, 1991). Family work is not simply task performance, but also includes family management and responsibility (Mederer, 1993) . Erickson (1993) argues that another facet of (invisible) family work is the performance of emotion work. She explains that emotion work involves \"the enhancement of others' emotional well-being and the provision of emotional support\" (Erickson, 1993, p. 888). Her study found that a husband's emotion work was a more powerful predictor of a wife's marital satisfaction than his performance in either housework or child care. When husbands help or share in the second shift it is often through visible tasks like washing dishes, rather than the invisible tasks of family work. Further, it is such visible tasks that receive more credit than invisible ones (Thompson, 1991). Many women are reclaiming both visible and invisible family work as work (Thompson & Walker, 1989). Shaw (1988) noted a gender difference in the definition of family work. Women were more likely to define household labour as work, while men were more likely to define household labour as leisure. Further, most husbands who participate in family work do so to please their 11 wives, rather than because they see such work as necessary work (Thompson, 1991). As an example, Hochschild (1989a) writes: \"In truth, Michael shared the second shift because he loved Adrienne and knew how terribly important it was to her\" (italics added) (p. 176). Who Shares? Hochschild's (1989a) classic qualitative research found intrapersonal incongruencies existed in that while many couples believed in egalitarianism, few actually act out such ideology through sharing family work. Among the men who subscribed to an egalitarian ideology, only 70% shared equally, while fully 22% of the men subscribing to a traditional ideology shared equally (Hochschild, 1989a). As the figures proclaim, being egalitarian increases the probability of sharing, although such ideology does not guarantee such behaviour. As well, one out of five traditional men shared equally, reflecting their incongruency between ideology and behaviour. Blaisure and Allen's (1995) study also confirmed an incongruency between ideology and behaviour for 40% of their egalitarian couples. Hochschild (1989a) concluded, \"though many couples now believe in sharing, at this point in history few actually do share\" (p. 203). Traditional husbands do gender by contributing little to domestic labour and expecting it to be done by their wives, and traditional wives do gender by performing most of the household labour and by not allowing their husbands to share. Egalitarian 12 husbands do gender by making relatively larger contributions to household labour, and egalitarian wives do gender by allowing and encouraging their husbands to share in family work. \"Men holding more traditional attitudes about their duty to provide economically for the family perform fewer household tasks than men with more egalitarian attitudes\" (Perry-Jenkins & Crouter, 1990, p. 136). While husbands' gender role ideology is the best predictor of sharing family work (Pyke & Coltrane, 1996), it is important to keep in mind that total equality (50/50) is still hard to achieve, regardless of husbands' egalitarian ideology. Antill, Cotton, and Tindale (1983) also found that egalitarian men shared more family work and performed more feminine tasks than traditional men, as well as egalitarian women performing less feminine tasks and more masculine ones. Further, egalitarian women performed a smaller proportion of overall family work than traditional women (Greenstein, 1996a). Greenstein (1996b) pointed out that when investigating gender role ideology and the division of household labour, \"it is essential to consider the interaction between the ideologies of wives and their husbands in order to understand how a division of household labor emerges\" (p. 585). Indeed, the interplay of spousal gender role ideologies determines how they actually divide the second shift. Traditional men married to traditional women and traditional men married to egalitarian women, as well as egalitarian men married to traditional women all do about the same amount of housework, yet egalitarian men married to 13 egalitarian women perform the most housework (Greenstein, 1996b). Thus, husbands do relatively little housework unless both spouses are egalitarian. Interestingly, wives' ideology did not have influence over housework division when married to traditional men, and even more intriguing is that husbands' ideology did not have influence over housework division when married to traditional women. \"These findings remind us that the division of household labor by couples is an ongoing dynamic process that is the result of an interactive negotiation\" (Greenstein, 1996b, p. 594). Greenstein (1996b) concluded: The interaction between husbands' and wives' gender ideologies suggests that a major reason why increases in women's employment have not been accompanied by comparable changes in husband's contributions to domestic work is that husbands' gender ideologies have not kept pace with those of their wives in the shift from traditional \"separate spheres\" ideologies to more egalitarian beliefs, (p. 594) Indeed, such lagging ideologies are simply more signs of the stalled revolution. However, Zuo (1997) found that men's ideologies are becoming more egalitarian (especially among younger men) and that it is men's changing beliefs that will transform gender. Here we see how men's greater manifest, latent, and invisible power (Komter, 1989) at both the micro and macro levels operate: When women change their ideologies to egalitarianism, not much changes unless men also change their ideologies. It remains to be seen, however, if this trend towards egalitarianism is matched in practice. Hochschild (1989a) explains, \"in the era of a stalled revolution, one way to 14 reverse this devaluation [of family work] is for men to share in that devalued work, and thereby help to revalue it\" (p. 215). Nicola and Hawkes (1985) concluded that sharing family work increased marital happiness and satisfaction, while Hochschild (1989a) concurred, \"It's true, egalitarian men had more harmonious marriages\" (p. 218). She concluded: \"Sharing the second shift improved a marriage regardless of what ideas either had about men's and women's roles. Whether they were traditional or egalitarian, couples were happier when the men did more housework and childcare\" (Hochschild, 1989a, p. 211-212). Intrapersonal Congruency, Perceptions of Fairness, and Marital Outcomes Now that the background literature on the division of household labour has been presented, I can present the literature examining the two processes of intrapersonal congruency and interpersonal incompatibility that are within my comprehensive model. Let us first start with intrapersonal congruency. Intrapersonal Congruency and Perceptions of Fairness Perceptions of fairness are derived from the subjective balance between one's gains and losses, or the perception of a legitimate, just, or acceptable balance. If one feels underbenefited or that the balance of family work participation is unjust or unacceptable, then perceptions of unfairness arise. Conversely, if one feels that there is a just or acceptable 15 balance of family work participation, then perceptions of fairness result. Studies have examined and empirically linked the individual level of intrapersonal congruency and perceptions of fairness (Blair & Johnson, 1992; DeMaris & Longmore, 1996; Greenstein, 1996a; McHale & Crouter, 1992; Sanchez, 1994). For example, Greenstein (1996a) found that if a wife's relative participation in family work is congruent with her gender role ideology (whether that be egalitarian or traditional), she will perceive the actual division of household labour as fair. Similarly, if a wife's relative participation in family work is incongruent with her gender role ideology, she will perceive the actual division of household labour as unfair. The same hypotheses were found to be true with husbands too (McHale & Crouter, 1992). \"Women's absolute time in housework is not a factor in women's or men's fairness perceptions; rather, proportionate time seems key to fairness perceptions for both women and men\" (Sanchez & Kane, 1996, p. 374). The more time wives spent in traditionally feminine tasks, the higher their perceptions of unfairness. Although wives perform the second shift regardless of their employment status, only about one third of husbands and wives see this situation as unfair to wives (Lennon & Rosenfield, 1994). \"Most studies indicate that although both spouses recognize the inequality, they do not perceive it as unfair\" (Major, 1993, p. 146). Let us now examine a theoretical framework that helps to explain such paradoxical contentment. 16 The Distributive Justice Framework Pathways to individual perceptions of unfairness can best be explained by the distributive justice framework (Deutsch, 1985). As adapted by Thompson (1991), the distributive justice framework distinctively deals with the division of household labour in marriage and perceptions of fairness. This theory suggests that a sense of entitlement and fairness in marriage with regards to the division of household labour depends on three key elements: outcome values, comparison referents, and justifications. This framework shows that egalitarian women differ from traditional women in their outcome values, comparison referents, and justifications (Greenstein, 1996a). \"[Egalitarian] women sense an injustice if they lack some outcome they desire, have a high standard for comparison, and believe there is no acceptable justification for being deprived of desired outcomes\" (Thompson, 1991, p. 181). Outcome values are the outcomes that individuals desire from their efforts. These outcomes (wants) that spouses value are measured in time and tasks. Egalitarian spouses want equality in time and tasks, while traditional spouses want a gendered division of labour. Traditionally, only time and tasks were understood to be valued outcomes of family work, however, Thompson (1991) urges us to also include interpersonal outcomes such as care and support. Such outcome values will be examined in the interpersonal part of my model where I propose that a valued outcome is feeling appreciated. 17 Comparison referents are the standards by which partners judge their existing outcomes. They can be derived from social, normative, feasibility, or self comparisons. Comparison referents can also be either within-gender comparisons (a wife compares her situation with that of another wife) or between-gender comparisons (a wife compares her workload to that of her husband's). \"Women who compare themselves to their husbands ('I do more than you do') have a stronger sense of entitlement than do women who compare themselves to other women ('I am a superwoman') or compare their husbands to other men ('my husband does more than most')\" (Thompson, 1991, p. 193). Greenstein (1996a) found that gender role ideologies serve as comparison referents: When their own outcomes are consistent with their ideology, they see the division of household labour as fair, yet if their own outcome is inconsistent with their ideology, then they see this division as unfair. Justifications refer \"to the appropriateness of the processes or procedures that produce outcomes\" (Hawkins et al., 1995, p. 695). In other words, justifications can legitimize inequitable housework distributions, and they are often gendered. Such gendered justifications include: wives want a cleaner house, men are not brought up to do housework, he earns more than she does, he works longer hours in the paid labour force, she has more time, family work is \"women's work\", she is better at it, she has more patience, he deserves more leisure time, and she likes it more (Komter, 1989; Thompson, 1991). Traditional wives 18 made and accepted more justifications for their husbands' lesser participation in family work than did egalitarian wives (Pina & Bengtson, 1993) . Husbands' gender role ideology also plays a role in whether or not they make and accept gendered justifications. When married couples accept these gendered justifications they perpetuate the objective injustice of family work, but traditional spouses do not perceive such objective injustice as unjust. \"The unequal division of household labor will have consequences for marital quality only when that inequality is perceived to be unjust\" (Greenstein, 1996a, p. 1040-1041). Egalitarian spouses do not accept gendered justifications and their only justification for wanting equality in family work and paid work is that equality is only fair. Egalitarian wives sense injustice when they realize that the same justification that their husbands use would not work if they used that justification. For example, \"it is acceptable for fathers, but not for mothers, to say that their wage work keeps them from their children or that they are impatient or incompetent in child care\" (Thompson, 1991, p. 192). Research on distributive justice. Hawkins et al. (1995) successfully operationalized all three variables of outcome values, comparison referents, and justifications, and found substantial support for the distributive justice framework. Their results accounted for 66% of the variance in wives' perceptions of fairness. Using 1987-88 NSFH data, Greenstein 19 (1996a) found support for this theory in explaining why married women perceived inequalities in the division of household labour. While justifications could not be examined using NSFH variables, valued outcomes (time and tasks) and comparison referents (gender role ideologies) were investigated, which allowed Greenstein to find support for this theory. It appears that gender role ideology acts as a moderating variable that determines who will perceive objective inequality as unfair and who will see it as fair. Egalitarian wives were more likely to perceive an objectively unequal division of household labour as unfair, while traditional wives were more likely to perceive an objectively unequal division of household labour as fair (Greenstein, 1996a). The reason for such discrepant views is that the actual division of household labour is consistent with wives' respective gender role ideologies. Further, Greenstein (1996b) explained that spouses with incongruent gender role ideologies, such as an egalitarian wife paired with a traditional husband, feel more of a violation to their sense of entitlement and thus perceive their situations as unfair. Perceptions of Fairness and Marital Conflict and Satisfaction \"To understand how gender is played out, we need to measure not only what people say (e.g., gender attitudes), but how people feel (e.g., perception of unfairness), and also what they do about the feelings (e.g., conflict)\" (Mederer, 1993, p. 143). 20 Shelton and John (1996) reported that \"women's household labor time is positively associated with both women's and men's reports of disagreements\" (p. 315). However, Greenstein (1996a) stated that, \"wives' perceptions of the fairness of the division of household labor are better predictors of marital conflict than the actual extent of inequality\" (p. 1040). Suitor (1991) also found that satisfaction with the division of household labour is \"associated with greater marital happiness and with lower marital conflict and verbal aggression across the family life cycle among both women and men\" (p. 225-226) . Further, Mederer (1993) reported that wives were more likely to argue about the unfair family task allocation than about the unfair distribution of family management, which suggests that family management is the centre of domestic power. Not only has intrapersonal congruency been related to marital satisfaction (Perry-Jenkins & Crouter, 1990), but intrapersonal incongruency can also put husbands and wives at risk for negative marital evaluations. McHale and Crouter (1992) found that wives with egalitarian attitudes but traditional family work roles, and husbands with traditional attitudes but egalitarian family work roles were significantly more dissatisfied with their marriages. Egalitarian wives' reaction to perceived inequity \"would typically manifest itself as increases in conflict with their husbands, a decline in marital satisfaction and happiness, and a greater likelihood that their marriages would experience a separation or divorce\" (Greenstein, 21 1996a, p. 1039) . As well, perceived fairness affects marital satisfaction and stability more strongly for egalitarian wives than for traditional ones (Greenstein, 1996a). It is well known that women have the greater workload and responsibility for family work, and both husbands and wives agree that such division is only unfair to women, not men (DeMaris & Longmore, 1996). Further, wives' increased perceptions of fairness increased the level of marital satisfaction for the couple (Blair & Johnson, 1992). Sanchez (1994) expanded Blair and Johnson's (1992) analysis of wives' perceptions of fairness by showing that both wives' and husbands' marital satisfaction is affected by wives' perceptions of fairness. Dancer and Gilbert (1993) also found that marital satisfaction was higher among couples with comparable perceptions of fairness. While most studies examine the variable \"perceptions of fairness\", two studies (Benin & Agostinelli, 1988; Suitor, 1991) use the variable \"satisfaction with the division of household labour\". Findings from these studies can be used because it is reasonable to assume that one cannot be satisfied with the division of household labour unless one perceives such division as fair. For example, satisfaction with the division of household labour is determined by how family work is shared. Benin and Agostinelli (1988) found that for both wives and husbands to be satisfied, husbands want equality and a low number of hours spent in chores (lower standards), and wives want equality and a sharing of traditionally feminine chores. 22 Further, wives and husbands want a fair division of household labour, regardless of how total work hours are distributed, how each feels about housework (like or dislike), and how many hours are spent in the paid labour force (Benin & Agostinelli, 1988). Wives' satisfaction with the division of household labour over the family career had a U-shaped pattern to it, while husbands' satisfaction (and participation levels) did not vary systematically with family stages, but rather they reported sustained satisfaction at each family stage (Suitor, 1991). Wives' family work contribution levels peaked in the early childrearing years, thus resulting in the lowest level of satisfaction with the division of household labour (Suitor, 1991). This longitudinal evidence found by Suitor of a U-shaped gendered pattern for satisfaction with the division of household labour mimics the previously found longitudinal evidence of a U-shaped gendered pattern for marital satisfaction (Olson & McCubbin, 1983). Both U-shaped pattern findings had a similar gender difference of wives having less marital satisfaction and less satisfaction with the division of household labour than husbands over the life course. However, Leslie and Anderson (1988) found that similar to wives, husbands who spent the most time in child care had the lowest levels of marital adjustment. Suitor (1991) also found a positive relationship between satisfaction with the division of household labour and marital satisfaction. Thus, if a spouse is dissatisfied with the division of family work, then they will also be dissatisfied with 23 their marriage. Again, marital satisfaction is dependent on perceptions of fairness rather than objective realities. Figure 1 schematically presents the intrapersonal causal connections of intrapersonal congruency, perceptions of fairness, marital, conflict, and marital satisfaction. Intrapersonal congruency is examined through the interaction effect of relative family work participation and gender role ideology on perceptions of fairness. Interpersonal Incompatibility, Perceptions of Appreciation and Fairness, and Marital Outcomes In order to understand this central part of my model, I first report what the research literature has found with regards to interpersonal congruency and the marital outcomes of conflict and satisfaction. This will enable readers to grasp the concept of ideological incompatibility, which is so pivotal to my hypotheses. Interpersonal Congruency and Marital Conflict and Satisfaction The homogamy hypothesis states that we are attracted to and maintain relationships with others who are similar to ourselves. \"Research has shown that individuals tend to marry those of similar education, socioeconomic status, race, religion, age, culture, attitudes, and even physique and physical attractiveness\" (Antill, 1983, p. 145). Societal values and norms promote homogamy while discouraging heterogamy based on the Intrapersonal Congruency Perceptions Marital of Fairness Satisfaction Marital Conflict Figure 1. Intrapersonal causal connections. (Intrapersonal congruency = relative family work participation X gender role ideology) 25 assumption that similar individuals will adjust more easily to one another in marriage. The heterogamy hypothesis states that spousal dissimilarity is linked to low marital quality and stability. The extent of difference between a husband and wife is crucial to their ability to negotiate or to see things from the other person's perspective. This in turn, directly affects marital quality and ultimately marital stability. There is more evidence supporting similarity (\"birds of a feather flock together\") than complementarity (\"opposites attract\") for both choosing a partner and resulting marital happiness and adjustment (Antill, 1983; Larson & Holman, 1994). Shared expectations concerning roles and responsibilities are considered important predictors of marital satisfaction. Ideological similarity, such as similarity of attitudes, values, and beliefs have been linked to greater marital satisfaction and stability (Karney & Bradbury, 1995; Larson & Holman, 1994). These researchers also found that couples' gender role ideologies were very similar. Husbands and wives tended to be either both traditional or both egalitarian. Cooper, Chassin, and Zeiss (1985) found that greater gender role ideology congruency resulted in greater marital satisfaction for husbands, for wives, and for the couple. \"This suggests that agreement between husbands and wives can serve to reduce tension and preserve harmony regardless of the types of beliefs and values that they hold\" (Cooper et al., 1985, p. 240). Thus, the actual pattern of marriage that a couple adopts is less important than whether or 26 not both members of that couple agree about the pattern of marriage. This is consistent with the general effects of homogamy. Effects of different types of congruency. While Bowen (1987) found no statistical differences between traditional husband/traditional wife marriages and egalitarian husband/egalitarian wife marriages, Lye and Biblarz (1993) reported that congruent egalitarian marriages were less satisfying than congruent traditional marriages. Even more inconsistently, Craddock (1983) concluded that congruent egalitarian couples were far more satisfied in their marriages than were congruent traditional couples. Craddock (1988) compared his earlier 1983 results of engaged couples and found a similar yet less pervasive effect: Congruent egalitarian couples were more satisfied in the areas of personality issues, communication, conflict resolution, leisure activities, and family and friends compared to congruent traditional couples. Craddock's (1988) reasons for this weakened effect included an increase in the egalitarian levels of engaged men, and an increase in the relative levels of men's and women's education, resulting in a more even distribution. \"Today, we might refer to individuals with egalitarian [gender] role attitudes as feminists\" (Peplau, Hill, & Rubin, 1993, p. 35). Feminism (gender equality) was identified by couples as a crucial component to their marital satisfaction (Blaisure & Allen, 1995). These couples felt benefited and 27 superior to traditional marriages stating that they were moving toward something better. \"Moving toward something better translated into women being able to have their own identities while in marriage, and men being able to have connection with family members\" (Blaisure & Allen, 1995, p. 11). Blaisure and Allen (1995) reported that these feminist couples practice vigilance (attending and monitoring equality within and outside of their marriage) through five processes: critique of gender injustices; public acts of equality; support of wives' activities; reflective assessment; and emotional involvement. Feminism/egalitarianism was found to be greater among younger women and men and among those who were more educated (Antill et al., 1983; DeMaris & Longmore, 1996; Zuo, 1997). Longitudinal studies support the trend of a shift towards egalitarianism (Amato & Booth, 1995; McBroom, 1987; Weeks & Botkin, 1987; Zuo, 1997). Further, this egalitarian change is significantly greater among women than among men, but both are changing (Amato & Booth, 1995; McBroom, 1987). Effects of different types of incongruency. While gender role ideology congruency (both egalitarian or both traditional) has been linked to lower levels of marital conflict and higher levels of marital satisfaction (Cooper et al., 1985; Craddock, 1983, 1988; Karney & Bradbury, 1995), researchers also found that the incongruency involving egalitarian husbands and traditional wives was not as detrimental as the reverse incongruency, because wives faced fewer demands and constraints from their husbands and 28 husbands received more benefits than expected from their wives (Bowen, 1987; Craddock, 1983; Li & Caldwell, 1987; Lye & Biblarz, 1993). They also discovered that egalitarian husbands paired with traditional wives appear to have similar levels of marital satisfaction when compared to congruent couples. Li and Caldwell (1987) explained this result as follows: As incongruence shifts in the direction of the wife being more traditional than her husband (e.g., June Cleaver and Cliff Huxtable), one would expect the wife to be less invested in gaining power and the husband to be less invested in retaining it, resulting in greater accommodation and better marital adjustment, (p. 108) However, the incongruency involving an egalitarian wife and a traditional husband was dissatisfying for both partners because neither had their expectations met (Bowen & Orthner, 1983). As compared to both congruent couples and incongruent egalitarian husband/traditional wife couples, incongruent egalitarian wife/traditional husband couples experienced the most marital dissatisfaction and disagreements (Bowen, 1987; Bowen & Orthner, 1983; Craddock, 1983; Lye & Biblarz, 1993). Craddock (1983) hypothesized that marital dissatisfaction was associated with both gender role incongruence and male authoritarianism. His findings supported this hypothesis. Among engaged couples, both egalitarian men/traditional women and traditional congruent couples were each only affected by one of these factors (gender role incongruence or male authoritarianism), and thus not as dissatisfied as were egalitarian women paired with traditional men who were the least satisfied. This type of incongruency was affected by both male authoritarianism and gender role 29 incongruence, thus resulting in being the least satisfied of all the couples (Craddock, 1983). When wives were more egalitarian than their husbands, overall disagreements increased, yet when husbands were more egalitarian than their wives, overall disagreements decreased (Lye & Biblarz, 1993). Li and Caldwell (1987) similarly reported that the greater the incongruence is in the direction of the wife being more egalitarian relative to her husband, the lower the marital adjustment levels. Conversely, the greater the incongruence is in the direction of the husband being more egalitarian relative to his wife, the higher the marital adjustment levels. It was found that the direction of incongruence was more important than a magnitude-only measure of incongruence when examining marital satisfaction. Amato and Booth (1995) similarly found that when wives became egalitarian, their perceived marital quality declined, yet when husbands became egalitarian, their perceived marital quality increased. It should be stated, however, that spousal gender role ideology constellations were not investigated. It is very possible that incongruency between spousal gender role ideologies (particularly the traditional husband/egalitarian wife constellation) accounts for these findings. Of most importance is the interaction between wives' and husbands' gender role ideologies and how these constellations play out in marriage. Ideological incompatibility. Based on the research findings, there are couples who are ideologically compatible, 30 such as egalitarian wife/egalitarian husband, traditional wife/traditional husband, and traditional wife/egalitarian husband, and one couple type, the egalitarian wife/traditional husband, who are ideologically incompatible. The explanations that most researchers offer as to why ideologically incompatible couples have more disagreements and are less maritally satisfied compared to ideologically compatible couples, tend to revolve around vague terms such as \"power\", \"expectations\", \"demands and constraints\", \"benefits\", and \"tensions\". I assert that an alternate and more concrete explanation for such differing marital outcomes is that symbolic interactions around the division of household labour (such as perceptions of appreciation and fairness) act as intervening variables between ideological incompatibility and marital conflict and satisfaction. I further hypothesize that ideological incompatibility affects each spouse's perceptions of appreciation and fairness, independent of family work participation. Expanding the Distributive Justice Framework While the distributive justice framework is an individual level theory, I believe that to understand emotions, perceptions, and behaviours in marriage, one needs to look beyond individual level analysis and into a dyadic level of analysis. The distributive justice framework does a sufficient job of explaining intrapersonal process. However, there has been a lack 31 of a full application of the distributive justice theory that is needed to explain interpersonal processes. For instance, the current intrapersonal process application of this framework does not deal explicitly with dyadic symbolic or perceptual processes, it simply analyzes the behaviours of spouses, not constellations of their beliefs and feelings. This is not to say that it cannot do so, only that it has not done so to date. A fuller application of the distributive justice theory includes examining the interpersonal processes of justifications and interpersonal value outcomes, both of which are dependent on ideological constellations within the couple. Further, researchers have touched only partially on what factors affect perceptions of fairness, and seem to have ignored investigating what factors affect appreciation. I aim to explore the possibility that ideological incompatibility affects both perceptions of appreciation and perceptions of fairness. Many researchers emphasize the importance of looking past behaviours to the meanings behind the behaviours, because it is the symbolic value and meaning of sharing family work, such as care, love, and support, that means the most to both wives and husbands (Blair & Johnson, 1992; DeMaris & Longmore, 1996; Perry-Jenkins & Folk, 1994; Pina & Bengtson, 1993). Hochschild (1989a) concluded that \"the tasks of the second shift either meant 'I am taken care of or 'I am taking care of someone'\" (p. 188). This expression of care and nurturance is outside of an obligatory duty perspective, instead, such expressiveness is symbolic of 32 love and is voluntary. Huston and Geis (1993) found that expressive husbands had more involvement in the second shift. Through their expressiveness, these husbands were expressing, \"I am caring about someone\". \"Many women seem to be saying that it is appreciation and responsiveness that matters in family work, not simply who does the tasks\" (Thompson, 1991, p. 186). Thus, the division of household labour is very emotionally charged. Ideological incompatibility is an important factor that hinders meaningful interactions among couples. Next, I focus on the interactive negotiation processes that create meanings of family work. These interactive processes within a couple involve the two processes of: 1)ideological incompatibility, interpersonal outcome values (i.e., appreciation), and perceptions of fairness, and 2)ideological incompatibility, justifications for inequality (i.e., family myth-making), and perceptions of fairness. Let us examine each of these. Ideological Incompatibility, Appreciation, and Perceptions of Fairness As shown in the literature, there are three gender role ideology constellations that are compatible (egalitarian wife/egalitarian husband, traditional wife/traditional husband, traditional wife/egalitarian husband), and one constellation that is incompatible (egalitarian wife/traditional husband). Based on ideological compatibility, I assert that certain marital gender role ideology constellations (compatible) will have a positive 33 effect on wife's perceptions of appreciation, while one constellation (incompatible) will have a negative effect. This part of the model is now examining interpersonal incompatibilities and is offered as an alternative explanation to intrapersonal congruencies for explaining variance in wives' perceptions of fairness. The interactive effects that arise out of the meshing of each spouse's gender role ideology predict how wives perceive appreciation from their spouses, which will in turn affect their perceived fairness. Interpersonal value outcome of appreciation. Appreciation is defined as a show of gratitude stemming from being fully aware of something's value and importance, such as family work. Feeling appreciated usually symbolizes feeling cared for and loved. Alternately, feeling unappreciated can be symbolized as feeling unloved and uncared for. Guided by the distributive justice framework concepts, I envision \"feeling appreciated\" as an interpersonal outcome value that wives want. Thus, egalitarian wives want equality in time, tasks, and responsibility, as well as to feel appreciated for both their paid and unpaid labour. Traditional wives want a gendered division of labour and also to feel appreciated for the work that they do. Researchers often implicitly assume that family work is aversive. As an activity, family work is neither inherently negative nor inherently positive. Its meaning is derived by society, as well as by those who perform it. I maintain that 34 while household tasks as an end in themselves may be aversive to some, as a means to a different end, such as valuing interpersonal outcomes like love and care, it is not. As a valued interpersonal outcome, appreciation is prioritized above the mundane performance of housework. Further, child care tasks are not usually seen as aversive, like household chores may be. After the intrapersonal congruency part of the model (gender role ideology x relative family work participation) has been controlled for, I am interested in seeing how much variance in perceptions of appreciation is explained by ideological incompatibility, and then how much variation in perceptions of fairness is accounted for by perceptions of appreciation. It is my assertion that symbolic processes at the dyadic level may not explain as much of the variance as the intrapersonal part of the model, but will certainly explain a large portion of the remaining variance in perceptions of fairness. I believe there are certain gender role ideology constellations that create different levels of appreciation and fairness, regardless of how much family work is actually shared. For example, although it is known that egalitarian husbands share the most, theoretically all egalitarian husbands do not share exactly 50/50. Further, while many egalitarian husbands do share family tasks, most do not share family management and responsibility (DeVault, 1991; Hochschild, 1989a; Mederer, 1993). However, egalitarian wives may not feel that this situation is necessarily unfair if husbands show a great deal of appreciation 35 for both their paid and unpaid labour, as well as sharing a belief system of egalitarianism. Therefore, egalitarians look for equality or perceived equality. Such perceived equality can be achieved through increased perceptions of appreciation. An egalitarian wife perceives an objectively unequal division of family work as fair if she feels appreciated for her work. If an egalitarian wife perceives her egalitarian husband as very appreciative of her work, yet for some reason unable to share the load, she will attribute his lack of participation to events beyond his control. Having a husband who believes in sharing, is willing to share, and is extremely appreciative (symbolic meaning of care and love) is more likely to be excused from family work through the creation of family myths than spouses with incompatible ideologies because neither will feel appreciated enough to make excuses for the other. Hochschild (1989a) defines family myths as \"versions of reality that obscure a core truth in order to manage a family tension\" (p. 19). More will be discussed on this area of family myth-making when I examine ideological incompatibility and perceptions of fairness. Psychology of entitlement. Thompson (1991) argues that what is more important than objective realities is that the spouses feel as though the other person is appreciative of what each is contributing, be that paid or unpaid labour. A mutual sense of appreciation creates intense dyadic feelings of closeness and warmth. The psychology of entitlement framework (which has been guided by the distributive justice theory) adds more of an 36 affective dimension to understanding perceptions of fairness. \"A sense of entitlement is experienced as a moral imperative or right\" (Major, 1993, p. 143). When this sense of entitlement is violated, the person perceives unfairness (Thompson, 1991). Traditional husbands feel entitled to be excused from the second shift and egalitarian wives feel entitled to demand and receive equality in family work divisions. \"If their sense of entitlement is violated, however, they will not only feel morally outraged, but also be more motivated to seek change\" (Major, 1993, p. 143). Such change can be an actual restructuring of the marital system or a perceived change, such as the invention of family myths. Cognitive restructuring is an attempt to resolve and/or manage the injustice and it works more often than actually changing the structure. Greenstein (1996b) describes the scenarios for both husbands' and wives' gender role ideologies within this psychology of entitlement framework. Traditional wives do not view unequal distributions of family work as a violation of their sense of entitlement because their situations match both their ideologies and normative comparisons. Society perpetuates the shared norm of housework as \"women's work\". Traditional husbands obviously feel the same way as traditional wives in that the status quo arrangement is fair and does not violate their sense of entitlement. They feel entitled to their wives' domestic labour services. On the other hand, an egalitarian husband sees his wife's \"fair share\" of family work as his entitlement, but 37 any contribution beyond that is viewed as a gift. Egalitarian wives feel entitled to their husbands' \"fair share\" of family work, and any contribution beyond that is seen as a gift. The marital economy of gratitude. The psychology of entitlement framework is similar to what Hochschild (1989a, 1989b) terms the marital economy of gratitude, which deals with what each spouse feels they should put into and get out of their marriage, as well as what is and what is not viewed as a gift. Hochschild (1989b) defines the marital economy of gratitude as the summary of all felt gifts. For a gift to be perceived as such, it must feel like one, which means that the gift must be seen as something extra or beyond our normal expectations. She also explains that a sense of gratitude is a form of appreciation. In Hochschild's (1989a) case study of Seth and Jessica Stein, both felt short-changed in their marital economy of gratitude. Their notions of sacrifice and gift-giving clashed. Seth felt Jessica should be grateful for his longer work hours (his gift), while Jessica felt Seth should be grateful for her sacrifices made in her own career in order to pick up the second shift (her gift). Their gifts were mis-received in that \"each spouse failed to give what the other wanted, or to appreciate what the other was trying to give\" (Hochschild, 1989b, p. 107). This is the most common form of \"mis-giving\" - when a husband offers a traditional gift like more work at the office (more money), while his wife hopes to receive a \"modern\" gift like 38 sharing family work. A reverse example would be when a wife offers a \"modern\" gift like being a coprovider, while her husband hopes for a traditional gift like a home-cooked meal. Hochschild (1989b) explains that what is \"crucial to a healthy economy of gratitude is a common interpretation of reality, such that what feels like a gift to one, feels like a gift to the other\" (p. 96) . Perceptions of appreciation and fairness. Hawkins et al. (1995) found feelings of appreciation to be the strongest predictor of perceptions of fairness among wives. Blair and Johnson's (1992) study indicated \"that husbands' contributions to 'female1 tasks and appreciation of women's household labor are the most important determinants of wives' perceptions of fairness\" (p. 570). Comparing women's and men's perceptions of fairness, Sanchez and Kane (1996) found that the perceived social interactive qualities of housework, which included perceptions of appreciation embedded with other qualities, was a better determinant of women's perceptions of fairness than of men's perceptions of fairness. They also found that symbolic meanings of family work were just as important as pragmatic approaches (e.g., resources, power, time availability) were in predicting perceptions of fairness. Perceptions of appreciation can be entwined within other symbolic meanings of shared family work. Pina and Bengtson (1993) operationalized the symbolic meaning of sharing family work as perceptions of support. Among full-time employed 39 egalitarian wives, shared family work was linked to greater feelings of support from their husbands (Pina & Bengtson, 1993). If their household arrangements are perceived to be unfair, then the wives perceived less support from their husbands. Further, while less perceived support was associated with lower marital and personal happiness, greater feelings of support were associated with higher marital and personal happiness (Pina & Bengtson, 1993). As stated earlier, Erickson (1993) found that a husband's emotion work (such as making his wife feel appreciated) was the most powerful predictor of a wife's marital satisfaction. Symbolic meanings of family work are extremely important, yet still an understudied area of research. Using NSFH 1987-88 data, I will operationalize the symbolic meaning of housework as perceptions of appreciation. Feeling appreciated usually symbolizes feeling cared for and loved. Alternately, feeling unappreciated can be symbolized as feeling unloved and uncared for. Ideological Incompatibility, Justifications, and Perceptions of Fairness When a couple is ideologically compatible (especially if they are also ideologically congruent), yet one or both of the spouses displays an intrapersonal incongruency (mismatched ideology and behaviour), this can sometimes be the indirect result of the other spouse. As an example, in one of Hochschild's (1989a) case studies, both spouses identified with a 40 traditional ideology, yet the husband Frank Delacourt, actually shared in many of the household tasks due to his wife Carmen's gender strategy of calculated incompetence. Hochschild (1989a) defines gender strategy as \"a plan of action through which a person tries to solve problems at hand, given the cultural notions of gender at play\" (p. 15). Gender strategies are actually a complex of thought, feeling, and action together. Carmen thought she was traditional and wanted to maintain that ideology, yet she felt that she needed help with the family work. She also felt that she enjoyed her paid work (which actually contradicts what her traditional \"feeling rules\" dictate), and her action was thus to lure Frank into sharing through acting helpless and sick, all the while being able to uphold a traditional ideology. Justifications. However intrapersonal incongruencies came to be, if the spouses are ideologically congruent (both egalitarian or both traditional), such intrapersonal incongruencies are often justified at a dyadic level by creating family myths. As stated earlier, Hochschild (1989a) defines family myths as \"versions of reality that obscure a core truth in order to manage a family tension\" (p. 19). In essence, family myths are really part of a justification process where one rationalizes away the difference between gender role ideologies and actual behaviour. Knudson-Martin and Mahoney (1998) describe rationalization as \"the process of labeling a situation which could also be described as inequality as something else more 41 positive or which could be justified\" (p. 86). These constructions of reality allow objective inconsistencies to be perceptually reconstructed as consistent. In other words, couples construct their relationships contrary to reality. As an example, Carmen and Frank Delacourt created and maintained their family myth of traditionalism. They believed that Frank did little around the house (even though he did almost as much as some egalitarian husbands), as well as Carmen was \"at home\" (but this is where she ran her paid business of daycare). Thus, they were able to reconstruct their egalitarian reality to correspond to their traditional gender role ideology through their family myth-making. As a contrasting example, an egalitarian wife will justify (create a family myth) her egalitarian husband's lesser participation in family work as being out of his control. Paid work may be keeping him too busy to share in family work, but he believes in sharing. Hochschild's (1989a) case study of Seth and Jessica Stein illustrates this type of family myth. Their family myth of egalitarianism was upheld by the justification that Seth was a helpless captive in his profession as a lawyer who had to work long hours. Jessica tried to justify Seth's behaviour as being out of his control. Since he shared her egalitarian ideology, she felt at least that he would not mind sharing family work, if he had the time. By externalizing his reasons for not sharing, the husband's internal motivations are kept intact. In both of these ideologically congruent couple examples, 42 a family myth was interpersonally supported and maintained. While family myths may have later negative consequences, they still lead to perceptions of fairness and therefore marital satisfaction. Even if marital satisfaction is based on a family myth, it is still marital satisfaction. Further evidence for family myth-making (justifications) is offered by Knudson-Martin and Mahoney (1998) who found that none of the egalitarian couples fully met their criteria for what constitutes egalitarianism, yet all talked in a \"language of equality\". \"Language was a medium through which they created meaning, symbolically represented their relationships, and temporarily established some form of shared, intersubjective reality\" (Knudson-Martin & Mahoney, 1998, p. 85). Through language, these couples created a \"myth of equality\" in order to avoid issues of gender and equality, and to mediate these contradictions in their marriage. In summary, if there is a mismatch between ideology and behaviour among ideologically compatible (especially congruent) couples, this inconsistency can be managed through the invention of family myths. Although there is no empirical evidence, I assume that the third ideologically compatible couple type of traditional wife/egalitarian husband should also perceive fairness in their relationship. Since these egalitarian husbands do not expect their wives to perform as much family work as these traditional wives actually do, they show more appreciation for this extra work, thereby creating more perceptions of fairness 43 for the wives. However, if ideologically incompatible, it is much harder to create and/or maintain a family myth, and thus the marriage would be more distressing for the spouses involved. It would seem that ideological compatibility is a prerequisite to the construction of successful family myths. Figure 2 schematically presents the interpersonal causal connections of ideological incompatibility, perceptions of appreciation, and perceptions of fairness. Summary and Hypotheses Since perceptions of fairness are altered by the symbolic messages (appreciation and justifications) exchanged between the couple, researchers need to consider the interactive effects of wives' and husbands' gender role ideologies as important predictors of these symbolic messages. Spouses with incompatible gender role ideologies, such as an egalitarian wife paired with a traditional husband, feel more of a violation to their sense of entitlement, and thus perceive their situations as unfair. I further hypothesize that this constellation will also have a shortage of appreciation for one another because they have differing marital economies of gratitude. I argue that ideological incompatibility negatively affects the two interpersonal processes of appreciation and fairness. Using an ideal-type framework, let us examine these differing constellations in terms of perceptions of appreciation and fairness: Perceptions of Appreciation Perceptions of Fairness Ideological Incompatibility Figure 2. Interpersonal causal connections 45 1)Egalitarian wife/egalitarian husband = both are appreciative of each other's family work; both perceive the division of household labour as fair because both are sharing the load (actual or perceived); neither are perceived to be demanding. 2)Traditional wife/traditional husband = both are appreciative of each other's gendered work roles; both perceive their division of household labour as fair,- neither are perceived to be demanding. 3)Traditional wife/egalitarian husband - both are appreciative of each other's family work; both perceive the division of household labour as fair; neither are perceived to be demanding. 4)Egalitarian wife/traditional husband = neither feel appreciated or appreciated enough for the family work they do because their marital gifts are mis-received; neither feel that the other spouse does their fair share and thus both perceive the division of household labour as unfair; both perceive the other spouse as demanding. My Comprehensive Path Model There are many noted literature gaps that this comprehensive path model fills. To begin with, research on couple constellations, division of household labour, and perceptions of fairness is scant. Almost all researchers exclusively study individual married people (not married to each other), rather than studying married couples. \"Although data from married individuals are acceptable for examining intrapersonal perceptions of marriage, data from both spouses are necessary for 46 investigating interpersonal aspects of marriage\" (Karney & Bradbury, 1995, p. 9). In truth, the varying combinations of spousal gender role ideologies are more important within a marriage than each spouse's individual ideology. Only a handful of researchers have thoughtfully examined the interactive effects of married husbands' and wives' gender role ideologies. Constellations are studied, as shown in my literature review, for predicting marital conflict and satisfaction directly, rather than understanding the intervening variable of family work and its consequences. In fact, Greenstein (1996b) is the only researcher to explicitly lay out all the different types of gender role ideology constellations and their respective family work divisions. For some reason, perceptions of fairness and appreciation within marital constellations are neglected, even though perceptions as opposed to behaviours have been shown to impact marital outcomes more (Blair & Johnson, 1992; Greenstein, 1996a; Suitor, 1991). The study of the variable of appreciation (symbolic meaning of family work) is extremely rare. In fact, I could only find three studies that examined perceptions of appreciation (Blair & Johnson, 1992; Hawkins et al., 1995; Sanchez & Kane, 1996). Two of these studies used the NSFH 1987-88 data set, which I will also use, except that one (Blair & Johnson, 1992) only investigated wives, not married couples, and the other (Sanchez & Kane, 1996) focused on manageability of family work and clumped perceptions of appreciation among other perceived qualities of 47 housework. I, on the other hand, wish to study married couples with regards to gender role ideologies, and to single out perceptions of appreciation as the only examined perceived quality of housework for wives. While using a data set other than NSFH, Hawkins et al. (1995) also studied perceptions of appreciation, but again only among wives. Therefore, no research studies have been done using married couples that link spousal ideological incompatibility and wife's perceptions of appreciation. Lastly, my study is unique because no one has compared, as I will do, the two operating processes of intrapersonal congruency and interpersonal incompatibility as competing theories for wife's perceptions of fairness variance, and by extension, wife's marital satisfaction. Marital outcomes are affected by both perceptions of fairness and perceptions of appreciation. Thus, frameworks of distributive justice, psychology of entitlement, and marital economy of gratitude are all involved in my comprehensive model. Taken as a whole, my model explores many underexamined and innovative angles in explaining marital satisfaction for wives. Figure 3 schematically presents my comprehensive causal model, which includes the two processes of intrapersonal causal connections (intrapersonal congruency, perceptions of fairness, marital conflict, and marital satisfaction), and interpersonal causal connections (ideological incompatibility, perceptions of appreciation and fairness, and marital outcomes). Intrapersonal Congruency Perceptions of Appreciation Perceptions of Fairness Marital Satisfaction Ideological Incompatibility Marital Conflict Comprehensive causal model incorporating both intrapersonal and interpersonal causal connections (Intrapersonal congruency = relative family work participation X gender role ideology) 00 49 Hypotheses My comprehensive path model retests Greenstein's (1996a) intrapersonal congruency model, as well as uniquely explores the interpersonal incompatibility model. In my statistical analyses, only wives will be analyzed (except for the needed information on their husbands' gender role ideology and relative family work participation). According to my comprehensive path model, there are eight central hypotheses: HI: Gender role ideological incompatibility will decrease perceptions of appreciation. H2: Increased perceptions of appreciation will increase perceptions of fairness. H3: Gender role ideological incompatibility will decrease perceptions of fairness. H4: Intrapersonal congruency will increase perceptions of fairness. H5: Increased perceptions of fairness will increase marital satisfaction. H6: Increased perceptions of fairness will decrease marital conflict. H7: Decreased marital conflict will increase marital satisfaction. H8: My comprehensive path model is examining all the interconnections as a whole and will therefore fit the correlation matrix. 50 Chapter Two Method The Data The data used in this study is from the first wave of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), which is an American survey designed to provide data on the family experience. The primary investigators were Larry L. Bumpass and James A. Sweet, however many other researchers were on the research team. As a whole, each researcher brought a unique perspective, and thus areas such as family sociology, social demography, social psychology, and family economics were covered in the questionnaire. As well, a number of research consultants gave critiques and suggestions to further strengthen this survey as it was being developed. NSFH was both requested by and funded by the Center for Population Research of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in the United States. The first wave of this survey was conducted from March 1987 through May 1988 by the Center for Demography and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A second wave of data was collected in 1992-1994. This study analyzed the first wave of NSFH data. The primary reason for choosing NSFH wave 1 data over wave 2 data, was that wave 2 data had excluded the critical question regarding perceptions of appreciation. Further, this second data set had fewer cases, and because of sample attrition, it may be less representative. There are no existing comparable Canadian data sets. 51 The NSFH sample is a national, stratified, multistage area probability sample, and thus allows for a representative cross-section of the noninstitutionalized American population aged 19 and older or married. The total number of respondents was 13,007, which included the main sample of 9,637 adults as well as an oversample of 3,370 respondents. The oversample included minority and underresearched groups such as Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, single-parent families, families with stepchildren, cohabiting couples, and recently married persons. Excluded from being sampled were those in institutions, dormitories, and military barracks. The data sources were personal interviews and self-enumerated questionnaires. One adult, the primary respondent, from each household was randomly selected for a personal interview (which also included self-administered questionnaires). Secondary respondents were the primary respondents' spouses/partners, who were asked to complete a shorter version of the main questionnaire. Two percent of the personal interviews were conducted in Spanish. Questions covered topics such as family composition, family background, marital and cohabitation experience, separation and divorce, adoption, child custody arrangements, stepfamily relations, quality of relationships with parents, children, and in-laws, fertility, employment history, economic and psychological well-being, and demographics. For a more detailed description of NSFH's design and content, see Sweet, Bumpass, and Call (1988) . 52 The NSFH data set was chosen for my study because of its strength in numbers, its representativeness, and its proven methodological validity and reliability. After all, this survey was initially designed to provide the research community with a large, valid, and reliable data resource. The data set was also strengthened by its use of both personal face-to-face interviews and self-administered questionnaires, which increased the response rate while decreased response bias. The Sample My sample was drawn from the full NSFH data set (main and oversample), and was limited to all first-time married couples, remarried couples, and cohabiting couples. The couple had to be living together at the time of the survey, and both needed to have answered the relevant questions on the self-administered questionnaire. The total weighted sample number was 3162 married or cohabiting wives. I decided to include such a wide range of couple types in order to maximize the variability in my sample. Further, a large representative sample increases the generalizeability of results. Each couple type appears to have distinct ramifications for my variables under study, particularly gender role ideology variations. First-time married couples can have a variety of gender role ideology constellations, whereas remarrieds and cohabitors tend to be more egalitarian. Therefore, I controlled for these factors (cohabitation and previous marriage) in the 53 analyses rather than exclude them from the sample. Remarrieds. While the birth of a child seems to have a traditionalizing effect on a marriage (Thompson & Walker, 1989), divorce seems to have a liberalizing effect on the individual. Divorced men and women are significantly more egalitarian than married women and men, with divorced women being the most egalitarian (Maxwell & Andress, 1982). In order from most egalitarian to most traditional, the sequence goes as follows: divorced women, married women, divorced men, and married men. Pyke and Coltrane (1996) found that, similar to first-married men, remarried men's gender role ideology was the single best predictor of sharing family work. Ishii-Kuntz and Coltrane (1992) reported that remarried men (especially those with biological children in the home) are more egalitarian in ideology and practice than their first-married counterparts. Further, remarried women spend less hours per week on family work than first-married women (Demo & Acock, 1993). Cross-cultural support for these gender findings is offered by Sullivan (1997), who, using nationally representative survey data from Britain, found that while remarried women do proportionally less housework than first-married women, remarried men contribute more to family work than first-married men. It has been suggested that \"the 'incomplete institutionalization' of remarriage may contribute to a weakening of the gender-based segregation of household labor\" (Ishii-Kuntz & Coltrane, 1992, p. 215). It is hoped that by including remarried couples, more ideologically incompatible 54 couples may surface, especially if only the wife is remarried. Cohabitors. Cohabiting couples also differ from first-married couples. Not only do cohabitors exhibit more egalitarian ideologies than married couples, but this ideology translates into more sharing of the second shift (Shelton & John, 1993). Compared to cohabitors, the division of household labour is more traditional among spouses, with regards to both time spent and gender segregation of tasks (Shelton & John, 1996). Indeed, Shelton and John (1993) describe cohabiting women as more like single women than married women with regard to the division of household labour, and concluded that since married women do far more housework than cohabiting women, it is not the presence of a man in the house per se, but the presence of a husband. Employment. My sample also included employed wives (any hours in paid labour force applicable), and unemployed wives (no hours in paid labour force). Similar to the variables of cohabitation and previous marriage being included as controls, as well as being couple types in my sample, I also controlled for wife's employment. Much research has been devoted to understanding employment as a factor influencing marriage. Whether employed in the paid work force or not, women still do the majority of family work, specifically those tasks deemed \"women's work\", such as cooking, cleaning, and child care (Blair & Johnson, 1992). The difference in the family work contribution level of husbands of employed wives versus husbands of unemployed wives tends to be small 55 (Greenstein, 1996b) . Blair (1993) explained, \"husbands may-maintain traditional role expectations for themselves and their wives, despite the dual-earner status of their marriage\" (p. 189). This traditional division of household labour appears to be fairly resilient. Employed wives still perform the bulk of the second shift even when they earn more than their husbands, and even when their husbands are unemployed (Hochschild, 1989a). In one of Hochschild's case studies, the husband could not deal with the fact that his wife earned more than him, so he did not contribute to the second shift, for that would be two assaults against his \"manhood\". Hochschild (1989a) further points out that the logic of the pocketbook only works in favour of the husband: \"Of the men who earned more than their wives, 21% shared housework. Of the men who earned about the same, 30% shared. But among men who earned less than their wives, none shared\" (p. 221). Such a curvilinear effect was also supported by Brines (1994) who similarly found that when wives' earnings exceeded their husbands' earnings, these husbands did less housework. Perry-Jenkins and Crouter (1990) also found an association between men's provider role attitudes and their involvement in family work. Thus, even when husbands are unemployed, if their provider role attitudes are strong, they will not contribute to the second shift. \"In most families, both women and men are enacting the provider role and contributing earnings to their families, but 56 men retain responsibility and recognition for provision\" (Thompson & Walker, 1989, p. 851). Thompson (1991) concurred, and added that the resistance to seeing wives as coproviders is done by both husbands and wives. Maxwell and Andress (1982) similarly found that although divorced men were more egalitarian than married men, the subscale of \"finances and employment\" was the only area in which they were the least egalitarian. Zammichieli, Gilroy, and Sherman (1988) found that employed wives reported greater marital satisfaction than unemployed wives. However, Yogev (1987) found that among husbands, \"traditional expectations regarding the spouse are still positively related to marital satisfaction\" (p. 35), even when the wife was employed, and even if she was employed in a male-dominated occupation. For both spouses, a wife's high career commitment level decreased their marital satisfaction, whereas a husband's career commitment level showed no significance (Nicola & Hawkes, 1985). These researchers also reported that while wives' marital dissatisfaction stems from sheer work overload or family/career conflict, few husbands felt such a conflict between their careers and their family roles. Further, when wives work part-time, their marital satisfaction is low while their husbands' marital satisfaction is high (Leslie & Anderson, 1988). Employed wives who worked more than 40 hours per week were more likely to become separated or divorced as compared to employed wives who worked 20-35 hours per week (Greenstein, 57 1995). Further, the more hours of paid employment per week an egalitarian wife works, the more unstable her marriage, yet this link was not found for traditional wives. Greenstein (1995) postulated that it is because of conflicts over the second shift that egalitarian wives become dissatisfied, yet the additional work load is consistent with a traditional wife's gender role ideology (even though wives' employment itself is not). Couples with and without children. Lastly, my sample included couples with and without children. If they did have children, they had to be living in the household at the time of the survey. Again, I also controlled for this factor (child present in the household) in my analyses. The birth of a child creates a traditionalizing effect on the division of household labour among traditional and egalitarian couples (Hochschild, 1989a; Sanchez & Thomson, 1997; Thompson & Walker, 1989). \"Parenthood crystallizes a gendered division of labor, largely by reshaping wives', not husbands' routine\" (Sanchez & Thomson, 1997, p. 747). It is the mothers who typically reduce their employment hours and increase their housework hours. Meanwhile, this traditionalizing effect decreases fathers' participation in family work. Ruble, Hackel, Fleming, and Stangor (1988) found that mothers were more dissatisfied with their marriages, mainly because their expectations for sharing family work were violated. Further, these authors state that it is not clear if there is a decrease in marital satisfaction after a birth, or if there is simply an 58 increase in marital satisfaction during pregnancy, and thus \"postpartum levels reflect a return to baseline rather than an actual decline\" (Ruble et al., 1988, p. 79). Thus, couples with children increase both variability in gender role ideologies and marital satisfaction, as well as the actual family work load. By including all types of couples (first-marrieds, remarrieds, cohabitors, employed wives, unemployed wives, as well as couples with and without children), I tried to ensure variability within my participation in family work and gender role ideology variables, and especially my dependent variable of marital satisfaction. Such variation creates more potential for explanation. As noted throughout, I also included these differing couple types as controls in my analyses. All of the variables included in my research study were assessed by self-administered questionnaires. Concepts and Measures Preliminary Measures Gender role ideology. Gender role ideologies are expressions of fundamental value-systems based on a set of beliefs about gender, marriage, and family (Greenstein, 1996b). These ideologies are acted out in marital behaviours. As described earlier, traditional couples believe in a gendered division of labour, with the husband basing his activities at his paid work while the wife bases her activities at home, and they have an unequal balance of power favouring the husband. 59 Egalitarian couples believe in sharing marital roles so that both the wife and the husband identify equally with both their home and paid work, and they have a balance of power between them. The NSFH contains several variables that could be used to measure gender role ideology. Initially, four gender role ideology items were selected: l)\"It is much better for everyone if the man earns the main living and the woman takes care of the home and family\"; 2)\"Preschool children are likely to suffer if their mother is employed\"; 3)\"Parents should encourage just as much independence in their daughters as in their sons\"; and 4)\"If a husband and a wife both work full-time, they should share household tasks equally\". I thought that these four items together had good face validity as items measuring gender role ideology. However, after running reliability analyses, these four items yielded poor alpha levels: .47 for wives and .37 for husbands. Low levels of reliability can affect later results, and so I had to reevaluate my gender role ideology scale preference. I reexamined the 33 NSFH general attitude items and ran an exploratory factor analysis to try and identify a valid and more reliable scale. This analysis included items that could be measuring gender role ideology, as well as items that could be measuring religiosity, personal happiness, parent/child relationships, sexuality, etc., in the hopes of finding a factor that was not only internally consistent but also discriminant. This exploratory factor analysis with equamax rotation extracted 60 eight distinct factors when all 33 of the NSFH general attitude items were entered. Preliminary support for a gender role ideology measure was found in one factor that had the highest loadings for five items. This factor analysis procedure is comparable to that used by Sanchez (1994) and Lye and Biblarz (1993), whose results were similar. Based on factor analysis, as well as statistical and theoretical reasoning, gender role ideology was measured by five items chosen from general attitude questions. Each respondent answered questions that measured their ideology regarding gender roles and family. Respondents were asked how much they approved of the following three items: 1)\"Mothers who work full-time when their youngest child is under 5\"; 2)\"Children under three years old being cared for all day in a day care center\"; and 3)\"Mothers who work part-time when their youngest child is under 5\". Responses for these three items ranged from (1) \"strongly approve\" to (7) \"strongly disapprove\". Respondents were also asked how much they agreed on a 5-point scale ((1) \"strongly agree\" to (5) \"strongly disagree\") with the following two statements: 4) \"It is much better for everyone if the man earns the main living and the woman takes care of the home and family\"; and 5)\"Preschool children are likely to suffer if their mother is employed\". Since these two sets of gender role ideology items had differing scale measurements (7-point and 5-point scales) , I recalibrated all the responses to be on a 5-point scale. Such recalibration was calculated by dividing the 7-point scales by 7 61 and then multiplying by 5, so that all items were consistently measured on a 5-point scale. Further, responses to items 1, 2, and 3 were reverse-coded as to scale scores on these items in accordance with the other items. Thus, a low score signified a traditional ideology, while a high score signified an egalitarian ideology. Two gender role ideology variables were constructed, one for wives and one for husbands, each consisting of the five above chosen ideology items. Within my sample, these five gender role ideology items yielded a Cronbach's reliability alpha of .83 for both wives and husbands, respectively. Previous researchers (Ishii-Kuntz & Coltrane, 1992; Lye & Biblarz, 1993) have used this NSFH 5-item gender role ideology scale and reported the same alpha levels for both wives and husbands. Factor analysis also showed that the two attitude items of: \"Parents should encourage just as much independence in their daughters as in their sons\"; and \"If a husband and a wife both work full-time, they should share household tasks equally\" loaded together (by themselves) on a distinctively different factor. This could mean that this factor with the two face validity items was measuring another concept, such as general fairness or even response bias. Further, the reliability alpha of these two items was low, being .41 for wives and .33 for husbands. Thus, while these two ideology items have face validity, the chosen one factor-loading five-item gender role ideology measure has better methodological and theoretical grounds for inclusion. 62 Its methodological leverage is its reliability (high alpha) and construct validity (single unique factor solution), making these five items a more valid and reliable indicator of gender role ideology. Theoretically, these five items tap into one's beliefs regarding gender roles and family, especially items 1, 2, 3, and 5, which examine the issue of women's employment and preschoolers. These items are capturing the societal level of gender conflict in families (equal access to resources), and are thus at the crux of gender role ideology. For example, egalitarians may see daycare as a great option, while traditionals may see daycare as damaging to the child. Further, these items do not tap into the respondent's opinion about the quality of available daycare, simply whether or not they approve or disapprove of its use. The total number of valid cases for the gender role ideology variables were similar: 2950 (missing=212) for wives, and 2945 (missing=217) for husbands. These variables also had fairly normal distributions, with means of 13.27 for wives and 12.03 for husbands, skewness of .11 for wives and .16 for husbands, and kurtosis of -.47 for wives and -.60 for husbands. Husband's relative family work participation. NSFH respondents were asked to estimate the number of hours per week that they normally spent doing nine different household tasks: 1)preparing meals, 2)washing dishes and cleaning up after meals, 3)cleaning house, 4)outdoor and other household maintenance tasks, 5)shopping for groceries and other household goods, 63 6)washing, ironing, mending, 7)paying bills and keeping financial records, 8)automobile maintenance and repair, and 9)driving other household members to work, school, or other activities. While child care tasks are embedded within these nine household tasks, an explicit question asking how much time each spouse spent in child care tasks was not included in the survey. The gender-typed chores of outdoor and other household maintenance tasks, and automobile maintenance and repair are stereotyped as \"men's work\". Since these tasks do not need to be performed on a regular schedule, they allow for a high level of control over when and how to do them (Barnett & Shen, 1997) . Paying bills and keeping financial records, and driving other household members to work, school, or other activities are gender-neutral tasks. Everything else on the list is stereotyped as \"women's work\". Since these tasks need to be performed on a regular schedule, they do not allow for much schedule control (Barnett & Shen, 1997). High schedule control has been linked to lower levels of psychological distress, while low schedule control has been linked to higher levels of psychological distress (Barnett & Shen, 1997) . Even though low control tasks are really the core tasks to running a household efficiently (as well as creating more marital tensions if they are not shared), the variable of perceptions of fairness in NSFH does not allow for me to single out only the five tasks deemed \"women's work\". Thus, all nine household tasks are included in this variable. Using wives' and husbands' own family work reports, the 64 husband's relative family work participation variable was created from the formula of subtracting the wife's score from the husband's score for each of the nine household tasks (i.e., husband's hours per task/per week - wife's hours per task/per week). Then, each of these task hours were summed to create an overall score that reflected the husband's relative family work participation. A positive score indicated the husband doing more family work than his wife, a score of zero indicated equal sharing, and a negative score indicated the wife doing more family work than her husband. The more negative the score, the more family work the wife performed relative to her husband. This formula was chosen over the alternative of a proportionate measure of family work (being one spouse's score divided by the total score of husband and wife added together) because as an absolute measure it is more sensitive to the total amount of household labour that a wife or husband performs. By knowing who is doing more, as well as how much more they are doing, the perceptions of appreciation and fairness results will be more easily interpretable. Further, this measure is purer than alternate methods of calculation because it only examines each spouse's contributions, whereas other researchers have included the contributions of children and adult coresidents present in the household (Greenstein, 1996a; Lennon & Rosenfield, 1994). In addition, other researchers (Blair & Johnson, 1992; Greenstein, 1996a) have included the spouse's reports of the other spouse's contribution levels, whereas I use each spouse's 65 self-reported contribution levels. Using each spouse's own contribution report is likely to be more accurate that using the wife's report of the husband's contributions or vice versa. In my sample, this variable had an abnormally high number of missing cases (N=1320/missing=1842). After examining the pattern of missing values, I noticed that the number of missing values went up when wives reported their own hours of \"masculine\" tasks (i.e., outdoor and other household maintenance tasks, and automobile maintenance and repair), while this was not so for reports of \"feminine\" or neutral tasks. For example, the number of missing values for wives' reports of automobile maintenance and repair was 902, whereas the number of missing values for wives' reports of preparing meals was 246. Further, the number of missing values went up when husbands reported their own hours of \"feminine\" tasks (i.e., preparing meals, washing dishes and cleaning up after meals, cleaning house, shopping for groceries and other household goods, and washing, ironing, and mending), while this was not so for reports of \"masculine\" or neutral tasks. For example, the number of missing values for husbands' reports of washing, ironing, and mending was 1018, whereas the number of missing values for husbands' reports of automobile maintenance and repair was 602. I have therefore concluded that instead of following the NSFH survey directions of entering a zero if no family work hours were done in that particular task that week, the respondents chose to leave the question item response blank. The NSFH 66 researchers coded all \"no responses\" as missing, whereas I argue that if other family work items were answered but the gendered items were left blank (and thereby coded as missing), the correct answer should be zero. This explanation can account for the surprisingly high number of missing cases. Based on this assumption, I chose to substitute zeros for those items that were left blank, but only if the respondent had answered at least two of the nine family work items. This would signify that the respondent was at least paying attention to the questionnaire, which increases the reasonableness of assuming that among the other seven or fewer items, no hours were spent in those tasks. I chose seven out of nine tasks (or fewer) as my cut off for reported missing values because out of the total nine household tasks, five were \"feminine\", two were \"masculine\", and two were neutral (paying bills and keeping financial records, and driving other household members to work, school, or other activities). Therefore, regardless of one's gender, at least two task items would be reported on if the respondent was accurately attending to the questionnaire. Other researchers (Glass & Fujimoto, 1994; Greenstein, 1996b) have dealt with the problem of the high number of missing cases on this variable in the same manner. By replacing the seven or less remaining blanks with zeros, I increased the total number of accurate cases for this variable (N=2539), and thus reduced the missing cases number from 1842 to 623. As well as recoding the missing cases count, I altered the 67 range of hours per week that respondents claimed to have spent doing family work to a more reasonable and humanly-possible range. Initially, husband's relative family work participation hours ranged from -408 hours per week (meaning the wife reported doing 408 hours more per week relative to her husband) to +322 hours per week (meaning that the husband reported doing 322 hours more per week relative to his wife). Explanations as to why this range was so large (as well as out of human capacity - there are only 168 hours in a week!) could be that the respondents were reporting overlap in the chores involved (i.e., performing tasks simultaneously), or that they perceived the division of family work as unfair and thus inflated their recorded family work hours to reflect their perceptions of injustice. The last explanation could simply be that NSFH respondents were not good estimators of their family work time divisions. To calculate a reasonable range of relative family work hours, I estimated 119 hours per week as the maximum allowable reported number out of the maximum possibility of 168 hours that , are in a week. This was based on the fact that on average people need at least 7 hours sleep (really eight but I reduced it) per night (49 hours total). Thus, if someone sleeps 7 hours a day and every other waking moment is spent doing family work, the maximum allowable reported time is 119 hours per week. Further, the number of paid working hours (if applicable) was subtracted from the total 119 hours per week. Other researchers (Blair & Johnson, 1992; Lennon & Rosenfield, 1994) have noted concern over 68 excess time reported, and have similarly truncated the maximum allowable reported time. The percentage of cases that were actually reduced to the maximum allowable reported time of 119 hours per week was 3.0% (95 cases) for wives and 0.3% (11 cases) for husbands. After reducing the maximum possible hours reported to 119, as well as changing the missing cases count, the husband's relative family work variable now had a range of -119 to +115. The initial husband's relative family work variable (with unchanged missing cases count and excess values) had a mean of -21.48, a somewhat normal skewness of -.76, but an abnormal kurtosis of 21.88, making this distribution leptokurtic. To alleviate the problems associated with this variable, the above mentioned alterations were made. The improved husband's relative family work variable had a better distribution than the original, with a mean of -20.81, a skewness of -.18, and a kurtosis of 2.42 (still slightly leptokurtic). Exogenous Variables Gender role ideological incompatibility. Based on the research literature, a distinction can be made between ideological congruency (identical ideologies) and ideological compatibility (harmonious ideologies). There are three gender role ideology constellations that are compatible (egalitarian wife/egalitarian husband, traditional wife/traditional husband, and traditional wife/egalitarian husband), and one constellation 69 that is incompatible (egalitarian wife/traditional husband). There were two possibilities for constructing this variable. The first option was to create distinct gender role ideology-categories (through trichotomization of the gender role ideology measure) and then match up the four constellation types into the two groups of ideologically compatible and ideologically incompatible. The other option was to use the difference in spousal scores on the continuous measure of gender role ideology. I chose the latter option because the original continuous measure is more sensitive to the degree of difference within couples. Thus, I created the gender role ideological incompatibility variable as simply a difference in scores on the original continuous gender role ideology measure. This allowed me to uncover not only a difference in scores, but also the degree of difference in scores amongst couples. Further, due to the nature of the construction of this variable (wives' scores minus husbands' scores), I was able to examine the direction of the difference as well. This was achieved by setting any scores that were below zero (negative scores would signify the husband being more egalitarian than his wife) to equal zero. This direction difference was chosen because the discrepancy of the wife being more egalitarian than her husband is the couple constellation that was theoretically predicted to cause the most marital harm. Further, there are more couples with this direction discrepancy than there are in the opposite direction. A score of 0 signified gender role ideology congruency (or a 70 difference in the opposite direction), a score of 1 signified a small difference in spousal ideologies, and as the numbers went up the scale to a maximum of 20.86, the wife was more egalitarian than her husband by degree. The greater the degree of difference, the greater the gender role ideological incompatibility. Only three research articles examined both the husband's and the wife's gender role ideology together among married couples. Using NSFH data, two articles (Greenstein, 1996b; Lye & Biblarz, 1993) studied the interaction between wives' and husbands' gender role ideologies. These studies examined differences between spousal ideologies, but not the direction of this difference. Only Li and Caldwell (1987) (who did not use NSFH data) studied direction effects, as well as the degree of difference between wives' and husbands' gender role ideologies. Using two separate measures, they first subtracted the wife's gender role ideology score from the husband's score, as well as compared this direction measure to the measure of the absolute value of the difference. The absolute value measure examined only the magnitude of the difference, not the direction of the difference. Their study found that direction effects of gender role incongruence were more important for marital adjustment than the magnitude-only measure. Thus, when the wife was more egalitarian than her husband, the marital adjustment for both spouses was poorer, and vice versa. Using NSFH data, I am the only researcher to examine both degree and direction of difference in 71 a single combined measure of spousal gender role ideology difference. The gender role ideological incompatibility variable had 2788 valid cases, 374 missing cases, a mean of 2.50, and a somewhat normal distribution, with a skewness of 1.41, and a kurtosis of 1.72. Wife's intrapersonal congruency. Intrapersonal congruency is indicated by a match between ideology and behaviour, such as an egalitarian wife who does about 50% of family work, or a traditional wife who does all the family work. Intrapersonal incongruency is indicated by a mismatch between ideology and behaviour, such as an egalitarian wife who does all the family work, or a traditional wife who shares family work. This variable was measured by examining both wife's gender role ideology (see above) and husband's relative family work participation (see above). To compute the interaction term of wife's intrapersonal congruency, wife's gender role ideology was multiplied by husband's relative family work participation. This variable had 2414 valid cases, 748 missing cases, a mean of -258.45, a normal skewness of -.43, but a slightly high kurtosis of 3.25, making this distribution slightly leptokurtic. Endogenous Variables Wife's perceptions of appreciation. Appreciation is defined as a show of gratitude stemming from being fully aware of something's value and importance, such as family work. Feeling 72 appreciated usually symbolizes feeling cared for and loved. Alternately, feeling unappreciated can be symbolized as feeling unloved and uncared for. The extent to which wives felt appreciated for their family work contributions was tapped into by the question used to measure qualities of household labour. While six such qualities were assessed, I was only interested in the dimension of appreciated-unappreciated. This item measured whether the respondent perceived their own housework as appreciated or unappreciated by asking, \"How would you describe the work you do around the house? Would you say it is: appreciated-unappreciated?\". Responses were rated on a 7-point scale, with \"appreciated\" having a value of 1 and \"unappreciated\" having a value of 7. I reverse-coded this item's response choices to accurately reflect my scale of perceptions of appreciation, not perceptions of unappreciation. Thus, the 7-point scale had a range of (1) \"unappreciated\" to (7) \"appreciated\". This variable had 2998 valid cases, 164 missing cases, a mean of 4.91, and had a normal distribution, with a skewness of -.51, and a kurtosis of -.79. Wife's perceptions of fairness. Perceptions of fairness are derived from the subjective balance between one's gains and losses, or the perception of a legitimate, just, or acceptable balance. If one feels underbenefited or that the balance of family work participation is unjust or unacceptable, then perceptions of unfairness arise. Conversely, if one feels that 73 there is a just or acceptable balance of family work participation, then perceptions of fairness result. Wives' perceptions of fairness with the division of family work was measured by the following item: \"How do you feel about the fairness in your relationship in each of the following areas [household chores]?\". Response choices included: (1) \"very unfair to me\", (2) \"somewhat unfair to me\", (3) \"fair to both\", (4) \"somewhat unfair to her/him\", and (5) \"very unfair to her/him\". (Notice there is an omission of the category \"unfair to both\".) I trichotomized the response choices into: (1) \"very unfair to me\", (2) \"somewhat unfair to me\", and (3) \"fair to both\", \"somewhat unfair to her/him\", and \"very unfair to her/him\". This variable was trichotomized because the response choices of (4) \"somewhat unfair to her/him\" and (5) \"very unfair to her/him\" are theoretically irrelevant. Distributive justice is only concerned with \"perceptions of unfairness to me\", not \"perceptions of unfairness to my spouse\". Further, if one feels unappreciated, then one would only feel (1) \"very unfair to me\" or (2) \"somewhat unfair to me\", not the other three choices. A high score indicated a greater perception of fairness with the division of family work. This variable had 3054 valid cases, 108 missing cases, a mean of 2.66, and a somewhat normal distribution, with a skewness of -1.52, and a kurtosis of 1.27. Wife's marital conflict. Marital conflict is the condition of differences existing between spouses, which create 74 disagreements between them, over beliefs, events, situations, behaviours, family work participation, use of resources, decision-making, etc. (Noller & Fitzpatrick, 1993). Wives answered questions that assessed their frequency of conflict. Noller and Fitzpatrick (1993) noted that the difference between happy and unhappy couples is not the areas over which couples argue, but rather, the frequency with which couples argue within a particular area. NSFH wives were asked, \"How often, if at all, in the last year have you had open disagreements about each of the following: a)household tasks, b)money, c)spending time together, d)sex, e)having a(nother) child, f)in-laws, g)the children\". Response choices included: (1) \"never\", (2) \"less than once a month\", (3) \"several times a month\", (4) \"about once a week\", (5) \"several times a week\", and (6) \"almost every day\". All conflict areas were examined (rather than simply conflict over household tasks) because tensions resulting from perceptions of unappreciation and unfairness can spill over into other areas of family life, such as a couple's sex life. Often, what happens in the bedroom (or what does not happen!) is the result of what is happening outside the bedroom. According to Noller and Fitzpatrick (1993), marital conflict is divided into conflict over content issues (like family work participation, money, etc.) and conflict over the nature of the relationship (i.e., \"Do you love me?\"). \"In actual arguments, this distinction is not clear-cut since family members may seem to be arguing about a content issue when the argument is really 75 about such issues as love (whether a particular behaviour by a family member is an indication of lack of love)\" (Noller & Fitzpatrick, 1993, p. 102). I argue that feelings of appreciation (symbolic meaning of love) decrease marital conflict over content issues (through the intervening variable of perceptions of fairness), while feelings of unappreciation will result in more disagreements over content issues. In actuality, these arguments are most likely clouded by conflict surfacing from issues over the nature of the relationship (i.e., \"Do you love me?\"). The full 7-item marital conflict scale had an alpha of .77. If the couple had no children, the conflict over children item was not applicable, and thus deleted from their marital conflict scale. This 6-item marital conflict scale had an alpha of .73. The initial marital conflict variable had 2701 valid cases, 461 missing cases, a mean of 1.67, and a poor distribution, with a skewness of 1.53, and a kurtosis of 3.34, making this distribution positively skewed and leptokurtic. To improve its distribution, this variable was transformed by its natural logarithm. The transformed variable had a mean of .45, a skewness of .54, and a kurtosis of -.21. Wife's marital satisfaction. Marital satisfaction is defined as the subjective description and evaluation of one's marriage (Fincham & Bradbury, 1987; Karney & Bradbury, 1995; Larson & Holman, 1994; Noller & Fitzpatrick, 1993) . The Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) is the most frequently used scale to 76 assess marital satisfaction, however, the NSFH data set only assessed some DAS measurements, and thus I could not construct the complete 32-item Dyadic Adjustment Scale. Instead, a single global measure of marital satisfaction was used, rather than a multi-item measure. Fincham and Bradbury (1987) argued that using multi-item measures of marital satisfaction resulted in considerable item content overlap and tautological reasoning. They further argued that a superior measure of marital satisfaction is simply a one-item global evaluation of one's marriage. \"The major advantage of an index based on global judgements is that it can be interpreted clearly because items are semantically similar and do not overlap with descriptive or domain-specific assessments of the marriage\" (Fincham & Bradbury, 1987, p. 799). Goodwin (1992) found additional empirical support for this single global measure as a successful diagnostic tool of marital satisfaction. NSFH used a single global measure of marital satisfaction. Wives were asked, \"Taking things all together, how would you describe your marriage?\". Cohabiting women were asked, \"Taking things all together, how would you describe your relationship?\". Response choices ranged from (1) \"very unhappy\" to (7) \"very happy\". The initial marital satisfaction variable had 3005 valid cases, 157 missing cases, a mean of 5.98, and a poor distribution, with a skewness of -1.64, and a kurtosis of 2.77, making this distribution negatively skewed and leptokurtic. To improve its distribution, this variable was transformed by 77 obtaining its square. The transformed variable had a mean of 37.53, a skewness of -.94, and a kurtosis of -.02. Path analyses were rerun with the original marital satisfaction variable to determine if the transformation had any adverse effects on results, yet results were similar. Control Variables Control variables are added to statistical analyses because they represent exogenous factors that pose a threat to causal models. This allows for a reduction in chance that the association between the independent and dependent variables is spurious. A number of control variables were included because of their (possible) link to both an independent variable and the dependent variable. Lye and Biblarz (1993) reported that previous research has significantly linked many variables to marital satisfaction, such as: age, education level, race, previous marriage, and children present in the household. In a review article examining the premarital predictors of marital quality, these variables as well as income level, occupation, and cohabitation affect marital quality (Larson & Holman, 1994). I have therefore included all of these variables as controls in my causal model. Wife's race and ethnicity. Inconsistencies exist in the literature regarding Black versus White households and the division of household labour. Some researchers say Blacks are more egalitarian and share family work, while others find White 78 households are more egalitarian (Shelton & John, 1996). Less is known about Hispanics, except that perhaps in marriages where women have more education and are employed, family work participation may be more equal (Shelton & John, 1996). John, Shelton, and Luschen (1995) examined race in the NSFH data set and found that White men were more likely to report that housework is divided unfairly (for their wives) than Black and Hispanic men, yet no differences existed among women and perceptions of fairness. Orbuch and Eyster (1997) found that husbands' participation in family work, particularly the low schedule control tasks, was positively correlated with marital satisfaction, but only for Black wives. Further, Tucker, James, and Turner's (1985) analysis indicated \"that at all age levels Whites consistently reflected higher marital adjustment than Blacks\" (p. 58). NSFH asked each respondent, \"Which of the groups on this card best describes you? Just tell me the number.\". Response categories included: \"Black 01; White - not of Hispanic origin 02; Mexican American, Chicano, Mexicano 03; Puerto Rican 04; Cuban 05; Other Hispanic 06; American Indian 07; Asian 08; Other (specify) 09\". This variable was dichotomized into 0=White and l=Nonwhite, due to the small number of respondents being in the 03-09 groups. This dichotomized race control variable had 3160 valid cases, 2 missing cases, and a mean of .13, indicating that 13% of my sample were Nonwhite. 79 Wife's age and marital duration. Older couples are different from younger ones, primarily because of cohort/period effects and resultant socialization differences. For example, those married prior to 1960 would most likely have a widely different perspective on the division of labour in marriage, sharing family work, cohabitation, etc. As a result, age is a potential factor in predicting perceptions of fairness. As noted in the literature, younger couples are more egalitarian in ideology and practice (Amato & Booth, 1995). Age differences among couples would most likely affect marital satisfaction as an outcome. The NSFH household roster provided the age of all respondents, through asking the question, \"What is your date of birth?\". The response category included the month, day, and year. This age control variable had 3160 valid cases, 2 missing cases, a mean of 43.12, and a normal distribution, with a skewness of .49, and a kurtosis of -.69. In addition to age, marital duration was also considered. In NSFH, marital duration was measured by the number of years the couple had been married. Each respondent was asked, \"What was the date of your current marriage?\". The response category included the month and year. For cohabiting couples, each respondent was asked, \"When did you and your (current) partner begin living together?\". The response category included the month and year. The marital duration variable was constructed by subtracting the date of the current marriage/cohabitation from the date of the NSFH interview. This control variable had 3156 80 valid cases, 6 missing cases, a mean of 231.79 (19.32 years), and a normal distribution, with a skewness of .64, and a kurtosis of -.64. Cohabitation. The research literature has shown that cohabitors are more egalitarian in ideology and practice (Shelton & John, 1993). Since sharing family work increased marital satisfaction, cohabitors may be more satisfied with their relationships. Further, patterns that develop at the beginning of relationships show consistency over time, and thus cohabitation may help to facilitate egalitarian patterns. NSFH determined cohabitation classification status based on information from the household roster. If the respondent was not currently married and there was a member of the household identified by the respondent to be their \"lover/partner (opposite sex)\", they were classified as cohabitors. This variable was dichotomized into 0=marrieds and l=cohabitors. The dichotomized cohabitation control variable had 3162 valid cases (0 missing), and a mean of .06, indicating that 6% of wives were cohabiting. Wife's previous marriage. As shown in the literature, divorced spouses (both the husband and the wife) tend to be more egalitarian in their next marriage (Maxwell & Andress, 1982). Thus, a wife's previous marriage can influence both her perceptions of fairness and marital satisfaction. NSFH asked respondents, \"How did this marriage end? Was it by: divorce, separation, or the death of your partner?\". From this question, I was able to determine who had experienced a 81 previous marriage. This previous marriage variable was then dichotomized. If the respondent answered any of the inapplicable codes to this question, they were coded as 0=no previous marriage (either in their first marriage or cohabiting without ever having been married). However, if they answered any of the response choices, they were coded as l=had a previous marriage. The dichotomized previous marriage control variable had 3162 valid cases (0 missing), and a mean of .19, indicating that 19% of wives had previous marriages. Presence of children in the household. The presence of children in a household has advantages and disadvantages. Especially if the children are young, the family work load is significantly increased when children are present (with women typically taking on these additional tasks) (Shelton & John, 1996). Yet, especially if the children are older, they can be an asset to the family by helping with the family work load. However, the mere presence of a child or children in the household can affect the marital relationship. Tucker et al. (1985) found a significant linear inverse relationship between number of children in the household and marital adjustment. I was more concerned theoretically with whether the couple had a child (or children) versus childless couples, rather than also investigating the age of the child(ren). Further, in bivariate analyses, the control variable of child present at home was significantly related to wives' marital satisfaction (B=-.10***), while the control variable of dichotomized child age 82 (6-17, 0-5) was unrelated to wives' marital satisfaction (B=-.03, p=.06). In addition, from the bivariate analyses, the other dependent variables in my path model (conflict, fairness, and appreciation) also either showed the same nonsignificance or substantially smaller beta sizes with the age of child control variable versus the child present at home control variable. Thus, only the dichotomized control variable of child present in the home was utilized in my analyses. NSFH asked each respondent the age of the youngest child (biological, step, adopted, foster, or child of lover/partner) living in the home at the time of the survey. The respondents who answered any of the inapplicable codes on this item had no children present in the home at the time of the survey, while any age given indicated a child being present in the home. From this item, I was able to dichotomize the variable into whether or not there were any children present in the home (0=no child, l=child present). This dichotomized child present control variable had 3162 valid cases (0 missing), and a mean of .50, indicating that 50% of wives had at least one child present at home. Wife's employment. The more hours spent in the paid labour force, the less time is available to perform family work. The spouse who therefore has to do more family work is more likely to perceive unfairness in the division of household labour, with marital conflict and dissatisfaction as possible results. NSFH asked each respondent, \"How many hours a week do you usually work?\". Responses varied according to answers given. 83 The control variable \"workhrs\" was constructed, and from this frequency distribution, a dichotomized control variable of O=unemployed wives (no hours in paid labour force) versus l=employed wives (any hours of paid labour applicable) was created. This dichotomized control variable was thought to be more theoretically significant and meaningful as compared to a dichotomy of part-time versus full-time employed wives. Further, the dichotomy of unemployed wives versus employed wives has been more prevalent in previous research studies. This dichotomized employment control variable had 3140 valid cases, 22 missing cases, and a mean of .55, indicating that 55% of wives were employed. Socioeconomic status. Middle-class couples tend toward the egalitarian ideal while working-class couples tend toward the traditional ideal (Hochschild, 1989a). Thompson (1991) noted that among working-class couples, husbands may participate more in the second shift than middle-class husbands because they recognize that their wives' income is essential to their family. Women with less economic resources, more dependence on the relationship, and fewer alternatives to marriage were more likely to see their inequitable situation as fair (Lennon & Rosenfield, 1994). \"Particularly among those with little power, it is easier to change one's ideas or ideology about an arrangement than to change the structure of the arrangement itself\" (Lennon & Rosenfield, 1994, p. 527). Further, a high family income allows for both spouses to opt out of performing housework by hiring a 84 third party to do it for them. This could obviously affect perceptions of fairness and marital satisfaction. There are three dimensions to socioeconomic status: 1)Income, 2)Occupational prestige, and 3)Education. 1)Couple income = In NSFH, couple income level is a constructed variable. This constructed variable consisted of: \"couple's total income, including income of respondent and spouse from interest, dividends, and other investments\". Responses were given in dollars, which NSFH then constructed into dollar ranges. Reported couple income was chosen over the wife's reported income because for the 45% of wives who are unemployed their income would be zero, thus making wife's reported income redundant with wife's employment. The couple income control variable had 2669 valid cases, 493 missing cases, a mean of 44167.95, and a very abnormal distribution, with a skewness of 7.21, and a kurtosis of 80.81, making this distribution positively skewed and highly leptokurtic. 2)Wife's occupational prestige = This is a constructed variable called \"occupational socioeconomic status\", which recodes reported occupations (from 1980 Census data) into a SES score. The potential range of the total-based scores was 13.98 to 90.45. A low SES score indicated low occupational prestige, while a high SES score indicated high occupational prestige. This variable had 3118 valid cases, 44 missing cases, a mean of 33.73, and a normal distribution, with a skewness of .61, and a kurtosis of .01. 85 3)Wife's education level = Among both wives and husbands, the higher the education, the more egalitarian the attitudes (DeMaris & Longmore, 1996) . In addition, husbands with more education were more likely to see the second shift as unfair to their wives (DeMaris & Longmore, 1996) . Here, education is not a resource that gets husbands out of participating in family work, but rather these educated husbands do not like to think of their wives as \"servants\", therefore they share the second shift more. Increased education usually means a higher income, and as stated in the paragraph above on income level, a higher family income can buy both spouses out of performing many family work tasks, especially the ones with low schedule control. In NSFH, education level is a constructed variable where each respondent indicated their highest level of schooling completed. This variable accounted for those respondents who enrolled in a college, university, or professional school, yet did not complete their degree requirements, as well as those respondents who began postgraduate work, but did not complete their degree. A GED diploma represents high school completion. This education control variable had 3153 valid cases, 9 missing cases, a mean of 12.67, and a fairly normal distribution, with a skewness of -.20, and a kurtosis of 1.77 (slightly leptokurtic). 86 Chapter Three Results Data Analysis Strategy Path analysis was used to test my eight central hypotheses, while including control variables as exogenous variables in the model. Path analysis was considered to be the most appropriate statistical analysis technique due to my hypothesized causal sequencing of relationships. However, before using path analysis, I also examined the bivariate effects of all my variables (including controls), as well as running several hierarchical multiple regression analyses. In my statistical analyses, only wives were analyzed (except for the needed information on their husbands' gender role ideology and family work participation). The descriptive statistics, preliminary analyses, and multiple regression analyses were all done with weighted data (sample number=3162). However, Amos cannot weight data, and thus the path analyses could only be run with the main sample data (N=2 663). After selecting all the model variables (including controls) that had only valid cases (no missing cases), the sample number was reduced to 1536. A likely reason why Amos can only run unweighted data is that Amos uses maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) procedures rather than least squares estimates (used in multiple regression analyses), and these MLE procedures may have problems with weighted data. 87 I retested Greenstein's (1996a) work on wife's intrapersonal congruency (interaction of wife's gender role ideology and husband's relative family work participation) and perceptions of fairness, with my controls. As well, I analyzed the unique interpersonal part of my model, again with my controls. Descriptive Statistics Table 1 presents the weighted descriptive statistics for all the variables of interest (including controls) in my sample of 3162 wives. This table indicates that my sample consists of wives who are slightly more egalitarian than their husbands (13.27 vs. 12.03), yet as a whole neither wives nor husbands are very egalitarian. The mean for gender role ideological incompatibility was 2.50, reflecting the above difference. On average, wives perform about 21 hours of family work more than their husbands per week. Wives also tended to experience intrapersonal incongruency, signifying that their relative family work contributions are incongruent with their ideology. The most common example being an egalitarian wife who performs the bulk of family work. Most wives feel somewhat appreciated (mean=4.91) and feel that the family work division is basically fair to both (mean=2.66). Most wives also report conflict as occurring less than once a month (mean=.45; range=0-l.79) , and feel mostly satisfied with their marriage (mean=37.53; range=l-49). 88 Table 1. Descriptive Statistics for all Variables in Analyses Wife's Gender Role Ideology Husband's Gender Role Ideology Husband's Relative Family Work Ideological Incompatibility Wife's Intrapersonal Congruency Wife's Perceptions of Appreciation Wife's Perceptions of Fairness Wife's Marital Conflict (L) Wife's Marital Satisfaction (S) Control Variables: Race (D) Age Marital Duration Cohabitation CD) Previous Marriage (D) Child Present (D) Employment (D) Couple Income Occupational Prestige Education Mean 1 3 . 2 7 1 2 . 0 3 - 2 0 . 8 1 2 . 5 0 - 2 5 8 . 4 5 4 . 9 1 2 . 6 6 . 4 5 3 7 . 5 3 . 1 3 4 3 . 1 2 2 3 1 . 7 9 . 0 6 . 1 9 . 5 0 . 5 5 4 4 1 6 7 . 9 5 3 3 . 7 3 1 2 . 6 7 Standard Deviation 4 . 7 7 4 . 7 1 2 6 . 1 2 3 . 1 7 3 5 1 . 0 2 1 . 7 9 . 5 8 .34 1 3 . 1 7 .34 1 5 . 4 6 1 8 5 . 2 6 . 2 3 . 4 0 . 5 0 . 5 0 5 1 0 6 3 . 7 1 1 9 . 1 4 2 . 7 6 Valid Number 2 9 5 0 2 9 4 5 2 5 3 9 2 7 8 8 2 4 1 4 2 9 9 8 3054 2 7 0 1 3 0 0 5 3 1 6 0 3 1 6 0 3156 3162 3162 3162 3 1 4 0 2 6 6 9 3 1 1 8 3 1 5 3 Missing 212 2 1 7 623 374 748 164 108 4 6 1 157 2 2 6 0 0 0 22 4 9 3 44 9 Note. (L) = Variable has been transformed by its natural log; (S) = Variable has been squared; (D) = Dichotomized variable 89 With regards to the descriptive statistics of the control variables, as a whole my sample of wives were: White, older (mean age=43 years old), in their first marriages (duration being about 19 years), high school graduates, employed with a couple total income of about $44,168, low on the occupational prestige scale (mean=33.73; range=0-89.57), and half of them had at least one child present in the home. Preliminary Analyses Bivariate effects of controls and endogenous variables. Before assessing the validity of the two competing models of intrapersonal congruency and interpersonal incompatibility, I first examined the bivariate relationships between control, exogenous, and endogenous variables in my model. These analyses enabled me to check for multicollinearity, to choose which control variables needed to be included in testing my causal models, and to get an initial assessment of what the total relationships amongst the exogenous and endogenous variables were. Table 2 presents the correlation matrix of significant controls and endogenous variables. Among the control variables, there was only one correlation that was high enough to be evidence for multicollinearity. The relationship between the two control variables of age and marital duration had a high correlation of r=.88***. While this can produce potential multicollinearity problems with regards to multiple regression, Table 2. Correlation Matrix of Significant Controls and Endogenous Variables Race (D) Age Marital Duration Cohabitation CD) Previous Marriage (D) Child Present (D) Employment (D) Couple Income Occupational Prestige (D) Education Race (D) 1.00 - . 10*** - . 1 1 * * * . 07*** - .04* . i o * * * -- . 1 0 * * * - . 1 4 * * * - . 1 8 * * * Age 1.00 . 8 8 * * * - . 2 4 * * * -- . 5 9 * * * - . 3 2 * * * -- . 0 5 * * - . 1 8 * * * Marital Duration 1.00 - .26*** - . 2 6 * * * - . 50*** - 3 l * * * -_ i i * * * - . 2 2 * * * Cohabit-ation (D) 1.00 .14*** - . 0 6 * * 07*** - . 0 5 * - . 0 5 * * -Previous Marriage CD) 1.00 -.04* --- . 0 4 * Child Present (D) 1.00 13*** .05** .04* .12*** Employ-ment (D) 1.00 . 08*** . 2 5 * * * .22*** Couple Income 1.00 .24*** .29*** Occupat-ional Prestige 1.00 .56*** Education 1.00 O Wife's Perceptions of Appreciation Wife's Perceptions of Fairness Wife's Marital Conflict (L) Wife's Marital Satisfaction (S) Race (D) . 0 4 * --- . 0 5 * * Age . 1 0 * * * . 1 5 * * * _ 4 4 * * * . 0 8 * * * Marital Duration . 0 7 * * * ]^2*** - . 3 8 * * * _ 0 7 * * * Cohabit-ation (D) --. 0 6 * * - . 0 4 * Previous Marriage (D) -. 0 5 * * --Child Present (D) - . 1 8 * * * - . 1 5 * * * _ 3 4 * * * _ i o* * * Employ-ment (D) - . 0 6 * * * - . 1 2 * * * . 1 5 * * * - . 0 7 * * * Couple Income ----Occupat-ional Prestige - . 0 5 * * - . 0 4 * . 0 7 * * * -Education - . 0 7 * * * - . 0 5 * * . 1 4 * * * - . 0 4 * Note. (L) = Variable has been transformed by its natural log; (S) = Variable has been squared; (D) = Dichotomized variable *p<0.05; **p<0.01; ***p<0.001 92 there were no indicators of multicollinearity in subsequent analyses, and marital duration was not significant in preliminary multivariate analyses of control variables. Therefore, it was also not included in any of the path analyses. From the results of the bivariate effects shown in Table 2, I selected all control variables that were significantly related to the endogenous variables (based on a significance level of p<.05) for inclusion in the multiple regression analyses. For each endogenous variable, all the relevant significant control variables were entered simultaneously into a multiple regression analysis to determine which control variables needed to be included in later path analyses. Based on these results, control variables were selected for future analyses if their multiple regression weight was significant at the .10 level or below. For example, from the correlation matrix in Table 2, the endogenous variable of wife's marital conflict had 7 control variables that had a significant effect. These were: age, marital duration, cohabitation, child present in the home, employment status, occupational prestige, and education level. When these 7 control variables were entered simultaneously into a multiple regression analysis with wife's marital conflict as the dependent variable, only 3 controls remained significant. These were: age (B=-.37***), child present in the home (B=.13***); and education level (B=.05*). The same procedure was carried out on each of the endogenous variables and their significant controls. 93 The control variables that were found to be most significant for wife's perceptions of appreciation were race (B=.04*), child present (B=-.19***)# and employment (B=-.03, p=.09). Thus, Nonwhite wives feel more appreciated for their family work, while wives who have at least one child at home, and/or who are employed feel less appreciated by their husbands. The most significant controls for wife's perceptions of fairness were age (B=.10*), previous marriage (B=.04, p=.10), child present (B=-.10***); and employment (B=-.09***). These results signify that older wives and wives with previous marriages perceive more fairness in their divisions of family work, while wives who have at least one child at home, and/or are employed perceive less fairness with family work divisions. The control variables that were found to be most significant for wife's marital conflict were age (B=-.37***), child present (B=.13***), and education (B=.05*). Thus, older wives report less marital conflict, while wives with at least one child at home, and/or are more educated report more marital conflict. The last endogenous regression was with the main dependent variable of wife's marital satisfaction. Its most significant controls were race (B=-.04*), cohabitation (B=-.04*); child present (B=-.10***), employment (B=-.06**), and education (B=-.03, p=.10). These results signify that wives who are Nonwhite, are cohabiting, have at least one child at home, are employed, and/or are more educated report less marital satisfaction. 94 If a control variable had a relationship with any of the endogenous variables, it was chosen as a significant exogenous variable that needed to be included in the path analysis. There were a total of 7 significant control variables (some overlapping) that were chosen from the multiple regression analyses. These were: race, age, cohabitation, previous marriage, child present in the home, employment status, and education level. These 7 controls were always included for each endogenous variable in my path model, regardless of their significance level. Bivariate effects of model variables (excluding controls). Table 3 presents the correlation matrix for the significant bivariate effects of my model variables (both exogenous and endogenous), excluding control variables. Overall, the preliminary variables of wife's gender role ideology and husband's gender role ideology had significant independent effects on all the exogenous and endogenous variables in my analysis. The intrapersonal and interpersonal exogenous variables also had several significant relationships with endogenous variables. Further, these results revealed some unpredicted significant bivariate effects, such as wife's perceptions of appreciation with both the marital outcome variables. Results from Table 3 show that the preliminary variables of wife's gender role ideology (WGRI) and husband's gender role ideology (HGRI) were significantly related (r=.50***). This Table 3. Correlation Matrix of Model Variables (Excluding Controls) Wife's Gender Role Ideology Husband's Gender Role Ideology Husband's Relative Family Work Gender Role Ideological Incompatibility Wife's Intra-personal Congruency Wife's Perceptions of Appreciation Wife's Perceptions of Fairness Wife's Marital Conflict (L) Wife's Marital Satisfaction (S) Wife's Gender Role Ideology 1 . 0 0 . 5 0 * * * . 1 5 * * * . 4 8 * * * - . 1 1 * * * - . 0 6 * * - . 0 6 * * * _ 0 9 * * * - . 0 5 * * Husband's Gender Role Ideology 1 . 0 0 . 2 0 * * * - 4 1 * * * . 0 7 * * * - . 0 6 * * - . 0 6 * * * . 1 0 * * * - . 0 4 * Husband's Relative Family Work 1 . 0 0 -_ 9 0 * * * -_ 0 7 * * * --Gender Role Ideological Incompatibility 1 .00 - . 1 7 * * * ---- . 0 4 * Wife's Intra-personal Congruency 1 . 0 0 . 0 5 * _ 0 9 * * * --Wife's Perceptions of Appreciation 1 . 0 0 . 3 0 * * * - . 3 0 * * * _ 3]_*** Wife's Perceptions of Fairness 1 .00 - . 3 0 * * * . 3 2 * * * Wife's Marital Conflict (L) 1 . 0 0 - . 3 7 * * * Wife's Marital Satisfaction (S) 1 .00 Note, (L) = Variable has been transformed by its natural log; (S) = Variable has been squared *p<0.05; **p<0.01; ***p<0.001 96 signifies that as one spouse's ideology becomes more egalitarian, the other spouse's ideology is also likely to increase in egalitarianism. Conversely, if one spouse is traditional, the other is also likely to be traditional. These results support homogamy theory within marriage,- spouses tend to have similar gender role ideologies. There were also significant relationships between WGRI and husband's relative family work (HRELFW) (r=.15***), and HGRI and HRELFW (r=.20***). These relationships signify that as egalitarianism increases (whether in husbands or wives), husband's relative family work participation increases, and the division of family work more closely resembles sharing. If it is the husband's egalitarianism that increases, this most likely causes him to share more. However, if it is the wife's egalitarianism that increases, this most likely causes her to participate less (irrespective of her husband's participation level), which thus increases the husband's relative family work score. This interpretation is supported by Hochschild (1989a). In addition, both WGRI and HGRI were strongly related to the interpersonal exogenous variable of gender role ideological incompatibility (GRIINC) (r=.48***/r=-.41***), although in opposing directions. Among wives, as they became more egalitarian, spousal ideological incompatibility increased. Among husbands, as they became more egalitarian, spousal ideological incompatibility decreased. Decreased ideological incompatibility results in spousal ideological similarity or 97 compatibility. These results probably reflect the fact that wives are more egalitarian than their husbands. Thus, when husbands also become egalitarian, their gender role ideology difference is reduced, making these couples more compatible. For the exogenous variable of wife's intrapersonal congruency (WINTRA), there were significant relationships with all the exogenous variables of WGRI, HGRI, HRELFW, and GRIINC. First, both WGRI and HGRI were significantly related to WINTRA (r=-.ll***/r=.07***) , but only WGRI had a strong effect. This means that as a wife becomes more egalitarian, she also experiences more intrapersonal incongruency. Thus, an egalitarian wife performs more family work than her gender role ideology prescribes. Conversely, the more traditional the wife, the more likely she is to experience intrapersonal congruency. Thus, her relative family work participation accurately reflects her gender role ideology. Although not as strong a relationship, HGRI affected WINTRA. As a husband's egalitarianism increases, so does his wife's intrapersonal congruency. This could be because more wives than husbands are egalitarian and so when husbands become more egalitarian, their relative family work participation increases, which decreases their wives' larger share of family work. Concurrently, this increases her intrapersonal congruency because now her behaviour more closely matches her ideology. HRELFW was very strongly related to the interaction term of WINTRA (r=.90***). Such a relationship indicates that as 98 husband's relative family work increases to resemble sharing, wife's level of intrapersonal congruency also increases. These are the only two model variables that showed a possible multicollinearity problem because of their high correlation. Evidence of multicollinearity can pose a threat to the stability of path analysis. However, as later path analyses' results showed, this potential methodological problem of violating an assumption required for statistical path analysis was an unnecessary concern. Amos supported the decision to have WINTRA taken out as a relevant path variable in my model. The relationship between GRIINC and WINTRA (r=-.17***) indicates that as ideological incompatibility increases by degree (with the wife being more egalitarian than the husband), the wife's level of intrapersonal congruency decreases. In other words, when spousal ideologies differ, it is more likely that the wife will experience intrapersonal incongruency. For example, when a wife is more egalitarian than her husband, she will probably be doing more family work than her egalitarian ideology prescribes. Examining the effects of exogenous variables on endogenous variables showed that the two perceptual endogenous variables of wife's perceptions of appreciation (WPOA) and wife's perceptions of fairness (WPOF) had several significant predictors. First, both WGRI and HGRI were significantly related to WPOA (r=-.06**/r=-.06**) , and WPOF (r=-.06***/r=-.06***) . As wives* egalitarianism increases, their perceptions of appreciation and 99 fairness with family work decrease. Similarly, as husbands' egalitarianism increases, their wives' perceptions of appreciation and fairness with family work decrease. However, for all of these significant results, the effect strength is not great. The preliminary variable of HRELFW (one of the component variables that make up the interaction term of WINTRA) had its own main effect on WPOF (r=.07***). This effect signifies that the more family work a husband does, the more the wife perceives the division of family work as fair. In other words, the more the actual division of household labour resembles sharing, the greater the wife's perceptions of fairness. The interaction term of WINTRA was significantly related to both wife's perceptions of appreciation and wife's perceptions of fairness. WINTRA's effect on WPOA (r=.05*)# while not strong, does indicate that as wives' level of intrapersonal congruency increases, so does their perceptions of appreciation. The significant relationship of WINTRA and WPOF (r=.09***) indicates that as wives' level of intrapersonal congruency increases, their perceptions of fairness with the division of family work also increase. However, caution is required in interpreting bivariate effects of interaction terms. It is difficult to assess if the interaction is significant on its own, or if it is due to its component variables. Later multiple regression analyses help clarify these effects. 100 Last, WPOA had a strong effect on WPOF (r=.30***), signifying that as wives' perceptions of appreciation increase, so do their perceptions of fairness. When they feel appreciated for the family work they do, they also feel that the division of family work is fair. The two endogenous marital outcome variables of wife's marital conflict (WMC) and wife's marital satisfaction (WMS) had several significant predictors. First, both WGRI and HGRI were significantly related to WMC (r=.09***/r=.10***). Thus, as egalitarianism increases (whether among wives or husbands), marital conflict also increases. In other words, among egalitarian couples, wives report high levels of marital conflict. Another strong effect was found between WPOA and WMC (r=-.30***). This effect indicates that as wives' perceptions of appreciation increase, their reported levels of marital conflict decrease. The more appreciated a wife feels, the less likely she is to argue. Last, WPOF also had a significant effect on WMC (r=-.30***), indicating that as wives' perceptions of fairness with the division of family work increase, their levels of marital conflict decrease. The last endogenous marital outcome variable of WMS also had many significant predictors. First, both WGRI and HGRI were significantly related to WMS (r=-.05**/r=-.04*). Thus, as egalitarianism increases (whether among wives or husbands), marital satisfaction decreases. Further, GRIINC was also 101 related, although not strongly, to WMS (r=-.04*). This means that as spousal ideological incompatibility increases, wives' marital satisfaction decreases. As was true with its effect on marital conflict, WPOA was strongly related to WMS (r=.31***). This effect indicates that as wives' perceptions of appreciation increase, so does their satisfaction with their marriages. The happiest wives were those who felt the most appreciated for their family work participation. WPOF also had a significant effect on WMS (r=.32***). This relationship signifies that as wives' perceptions of fairness with the division of family work increase, their levels of marital satisfaction also increase. Last, WMC was significantly related to WMS (r=-.37***). This strong effect indicates that as wives' marital conflict increases, their marital satisfaction deceases. The more arguments in a marriage, the more dissatisfied the wives are. Alternately, as levels of marital conflict decrease, levels of marital satisfaction increase. Analyses of Causal Models The first step in causal model analysis was to reexamine the intrapersonal congruency model discussed by Greenstein (1996a). Recall from the literature review that this model was the initial starting point for my model-building process. The same intrapersonal interaction variable of WINTRA (WGRI*HRELFW) was examined with regards to its effect on WPOF, although I used the 102 WGRI, HRELFW, and WPOF variables differently than Greenstein did (see Discussion for full comparison and critique). Further, I extended Greenstein's analysis by also including the endogenous marital outcome variables of WMC and WMS as dependent variables (see Figure 1). Next, I tested the potential validity of my unique alternate interpersonal incompatibility model (see Figure 2). The interpersonal variable of GRIINC was examined with regards to its effects on WPOA and WPOF. This model was similarly extended to also include the endogenous marital outcome variables of WMC and WMS as dependent variables. Thus, the two competing models of intrapersonal congruency and interpersonal incompatibility were initially examined separately using multiple regressions. Later, I used path analysis to examine both competing models simultaneously. The final significant control variables (chosen from previous preliminary analyses) were entered first into the hierarchical multiple regression analyses for examining both the intrapersonal (WINTRA) and interpersonal (GRIINC) models. For both types of model testing, I entered the significant controls into block 1, the component variables (WGRI/HRELFW for intrapersonal model and WGRI/HGRI for interpersonal model) into block 2, and the appropriate composite variable (WINTRA or GRIINC) into block 3. Further, the component variables entered into block 2 were entered both separately and together to examine any independent main effects. These procedures were carried out 103 for each relevant endogenous variable in both the intrapersonal and interpersonal models. Estimating the intrapersonal congruency model. Table 4 presents the significant results of the hierarchical regression analyses for the intrapersonal congruency model test. These results showed that when WPOF was the dependent variable, the main effect of HRELFW was the only significant effect (B=.09***). This effect indicates that when husbands do more family work, their wives perceive the division of family work to be fair. The interaction term of WINTRA did not have a significant effect on WPOF. However, when WMC was the dependent variable, the interaction term of WINTRA was significant (B=-.17**). Thus, as wives' level of intrapersonal congruency increases, their reported level of marital conflict decreases. Lastly, when WMS was the dependent variable, there were no significant main or interaction effects. These results do not support Greenstein's intrapersonal congruency model, yet do suggest the importance of the component variable of HRELFW. Estimating the interpersonal incompatibility model. Table 5 presents the significant results of the hierarchical regression analyses for the interpersonal incompatibility model test. These results showed that when WPOA was the dependent variable, the interpersonal variable of GRIINC (as well as the component variables of WGRI and HGRI) had no significant effect. When WPOF was the dependent variable, GRIINC had a significant effect (B=-.09*). This- effect indicates that when spousal gender role 104 Table 4. Standardized Regression Coefficients for the Intrapersonal Congruency Model Constant Controls: Race(D) Age Cohabitation (D) Previous Marriage (D) Child Present (D) Employment (D) Education Main Effects: Wife's Gender Role Ideology Husband's Relative Family Work Interaction Effect: Wife's Intrapersonal Congruency R2 R2 Change Wife's Perceptions of Fairness Step 1 2 . 6 6 9 -. 0 6 * * -. 0 5 * * - . 1 2 * * * - . 0 9 * * * -. 0 4 3 Step 2 2 . 7 1 3 -. 0 7 * * -. 0 5 * - . 1 0 * * * - . 1 1 * * * --0 9 * * * . 0 4 9 . 0 0 7 * * * Wife's Marital Conflict (L) Step 1 . 6 4 9 -- . 3 4 * * * --. 1 6 * * * -. 0 5 * * . 2 0 6 Step 2 . 6 8 4 -- . 3 4 * * * --. 1 6 * * * -. 0 5 * * - . 0 3 . 0 3 . 2 0 7 . 0 0 1 Step 3 . 7 2 5 -- . 3 5 * * * --_ l g * * * -. 0 6 * * - . 0 7 * * _ ] _ 9 * * * - . 1 7 * * . 2 1 0 . 0 0 3 * * Note. (L) = Variable has been transformed by its natural log; (D) = Dichotomized variable *p<0.05; **p<0.01; ***p<0.001 Table 5. Standardized Regression Coefficients for the Interpersonal Incompatibility Model Constant Controls: Race(D) Age Cohabitation (D) Previous Marriage (D) Child Present (D) Employment (D) Education Main Effects: Wife's Gender Role Ideology Husband's Gender Role Ideology Composite Effect: Ideological Incompatibility R2 R2 Change Wife's Perceptions of Fairness Step 1 2 . 6 8 3 -. 0 5 * -. 0 5 * _ ] _ ] _ * * * - . 0 8 * * * -. 0 3 5 Step 2 2 . 7 0 9 -. 0 5 * -. 0 5 * - . 1 1 * * * - . 0 8 * * * -- . 0 1 - . 0 1 . 0 3 5 . 0 0 0 Step 3 2 . 7 2 6 -. 0 5 * -. 0 5 * * _ ] _ ] _ * * * - . 0 8 * * * -. 0 7 - . 0 8 - . 0 9 * . 0 3 6 . 0 0 2 * Wife's Marital Conflict (L) Stepl . 6 6 0 -- . 3 5 * * * --_ ^ 3 * * * -. 0 6 * * * . 1 9 9 Step 2 . 6 9 4 -- . 3 6 * * * --. 1 2 * * * -. 0 6 * * * - . 0 2 - . 0 2 . 2 0 0 . 0 0 1 Step 3 . 6 6 7 -- . 3 6 * * * --. 1 3 * * * -_ 0 7 * * * - . 1 6 * * * . 1 1 * * . 1 5 * * * . 2 0 5 . 0 0 5 * * * Wife's Marital Satisfaction (S) Stepl 4 0 . 6 3 9 - . 0 3 -- . 0 4 * -- . 0 8 * * * - . 0 5 * - . 0 2 . 0 1 5 Step 2 4 0 . 9 2 6 - . 0 3 -- . 0 4 * -- . 0 8 * * * - . 0 4 * - . 0 2 - . 0 2 . 0 0 . 0 1 5 . 0 0 0 Step 3 4 2 . 2 8 9 - . 0 3 -- . 0 4 * -- . 0 9 * * * - . 0 4 * - . 0 2 . 1 3 * * - . 1 3 * * - . 1 6 * * * . 0 2 0 . 0 0 5 * * * Note. (L) = Variable has been transformed by its natural log; (S) = Variable has been squared; (D) = Dichotomized variable *p<0.05; **p<0.01; ***p<0.001 O 106 ideologies are incompatible, wives perceive less fairness in the division of family work. Similarly, when WMC was the dependent variable, GRIINC had a significant effect (B=.15***). Thus, when gender role ideological incompatibility increases, so does wives' marital conflict. Lastly, when WMS was the dependent variable, GRIINC again had a significant effect (B=-.16***). This effect signifies that as gender role ideological incompatibility increases, wives' marital satisfaction decreases. These results offer limited support for my interpersonal incompatibility model (only WPOA link was not supported). Estimating the Comprehensive Path Model In the previous section, I separately examined the validity of the two competing intrapersonal and interpersonal models. The next step was to test if these two models could be combined. Both intrapersonal and interpersonal composite variables (WINTRA and GRIINC) and their respective component variables, as well as the 7 significant controls were entered into the path model as exogenous variables. Paths to endogenous variables were then replicated according to my hypothesized comprehensive path model (see Figure 3), as well as control paths added (see Figure 4). My research goal was to test my theoretical model that diagrams all the paths of relationships thought to explain variance in wives' marital satisfaction. I used the Amos statistical software program (Arbuckle, 1997) to estimate this comprehensive path model. Amos tests for the significance of 107 Qi O (0 QL \"w c LL 108 paths presented in a path model, as well as the goodness of fit. In order to clarify the effects of the intrapersonal (WINTRA) and interpersonal (GRIINC) variables, their respective component variables were also included in the model. Thus, WGRI and HRELFW (WINTRA), as well as WGRI and HGRI (GRIINC), all had paths wherever WINTRA and GRIINC had paths. The resulting path model was recursive and overidentified with 14 degrees of freedom. Thus, the goodness of fit for this model would provide a meaningful test of the theory. The first step in path analysis is to test the goodness of fit of the hypothesized recursive path model. Using chi-square as a measure of fit, it was discovered that this model did not fit the correlation matrix (chi-square=180.394; df=14; p=0.000). The logic of path analysis is to statistically estimate the relationships between the variables based on limited information (i.e., due to missing paths). If this estimated correlation matrix is not significantly different from the actual correlation matrix, then this provides a justification for arguing that the missing paths were unnecessary. However, for these data, my original path model was not plausible because the actual sample matrix was significantly different from the implied matrix. Based on these findings, this path model was rejected. Since the hypothesized path model was rejected, I began an exploratory analysis to see how the path model could be improved. Through an examination of the modification indices, I could determine which paths needed to be included to improve the fit of 109 the model. I entered the added paths one at a time to document the progress of each reestimated model. The first added path was WPOA to WMC, which improved the model fit by about 50%. The path from WPOA to WMS was added next, which again improved the model fit. The last added paths were for the interpersonal variable of GRIINC and its component variables of WGRI and HGRI to WMC. Once these five significant paths were added to the model, the model did fit the data (chi-square=10.171, df=9, p=0.337). However, this model still needed to be trimmed because the standardized regression weights showed that there were some insignificant paths that needed to be removed. Again, the model was reestimated after each change to mark its progress. First, the paths from the interpersonal variable of GRIINC and its component variables of WGRI and HGRI to WPOA were removed. This improved the chi-square but there were still two insignificant paths left. The last trim included the removal of the intrapersonal variable and its component variable of HRELFW. (The other component variable of WGRI remained in the model because it is also a component variable of the significant interpersonal variable of GRIINC.) As a further check, I re-added the three insignificant paths from WGRI, HGRI, and GRIINC to WPOA to determine if the order in which the paths were removed mattered. The results were identical, signifying that the order of trimming these paths did not matter; all still remained insignificant. Once these five insignificant paths were trimmed from the 110 model, this final reestimated path model did fit the data (chi-square=4.714; df=3; p=0.194). Thus, for my NSFH data sample, this reestimated recursive path model was a plausible model because the actual sample matrix was not significantly different from the implied matrix. Table 6 presents the results of my reestimated path model analysis, and Figure 5 presents the reestimated path diagram. As stated earlier, all of the seven control variables and their paths to each endogenous variable were kept in the model. My reestimated path model's findings supported most of my eight original hypotheses, as well as finding new and unpredicted significant results. Hypothesis 1: Gender role ideological incompatibility will decrease perceptions of appreciation. This hypothesis was not supported. GRIINC (or its component variables of WGRI/HGRI) was not significantly related to WPOA. Since there were no other paths that linked to WPOA, WPOA became an exogenous variable, and therefore no longer a dependent variable in the path model. Hypothesis 2: Increased perceptions of appreciation will increase perceptions of fairness. Although WPOA became an exogenous (independent) variable, this hypothesis was still supported. Indeed, as wives' perceptions of appreciation increased, their perceptions of fairness regarding the division of family work also increased (B=.30*). Hypothesis 3: Gender role ideological incompatibility will decrease perceptions of fairness. My analyses supported this hypothesis. As GRIINC increased, WPOF decreased (B=-.12*). I l l Table 6. Standardized Regression Weights for the Reestimated Path Model Controls: Race (D) Cohabitation (D) Child Present (D) Age Employment (D) Previous Marriage (D) Education Exogenous Variables: Wife's Gender Role Ideology Husband's Gender Role Ideology Gender Role Ideological Incompatibility Wife's Perceptions of Appreciation Endogenous Variables: Wife's Perceptions of Fairness Wife's Marital Conflict (L) Wife's Marital Satisfaction (S) Wife's Perceptions of Fairness ---. 0 8 * - . 0 6 * . 0 8 * ~ . 1 2 * - . 1 4 * - . 1 2 * . 3 0 * Wife's Marital Conflict (L) ~\" ~ . 0 8 * - . 3 6 * ~ ~ . 0 7 * - . 1 8 * . 1 2 * . 1 5 * - . 2 2 * - . 1 7 * Wife's Marital Satisfaction (S) - . 0 5 * - . 0 5 * \"~ - . 1 5 * ~ ~ ~ . 2 0 * . 1 5 * - . 3 3 * Note. (L) = Variable has been transformed by its natural log; (S) = Variable has been squared; (D) = Dichotomized variable *p<0.05 112 T3 O ro D. i (/> c d) s> Q. E o O \"O O) u_ 113 Further, GRIINC's component variables of WGRI and HGRI also had their own main effects. Recall that in terms of estimating my path model, I included paths from the component variables wherever the intrapersonal and interpersonal variables had paths. WGRI was significantly related to WPOF (B=.12*), indicating that as wives become more egalitarian their perceptions of fairness increase. Meanwhile, the path between HGRI and WPOF was negatively significant (B=-.14*), indicating that as husbands become more egalitarian, their wives' perceptions of fairness decrease. Thus, as a husband becomes more egalitarian, his wife perceives the division of family work to be less fair to herself, yet if she herself is egalitarian, she perceives the division as fair. These main effect results are anomalous. They may have something to do with the symbolic meanings of family work, or they may be spurious. The main focus, however, is on the interpersonal variable of GRIINC and its effect on WPOF, not the main effects of GRIINC's component variables. Hypothesis 4: Intrapersonal congruency will increase perceptions of fairness. This hypothesis was not supported by the data. The path between WINTRA (and its component variable of HRELFW) and WPOF was not significant, thus removing this intrapersonal composite variable from the final path model. Hypothesis 5: Increased perceptions of fairness will increase marital satisfaction. My analyses supported this hypothesis. The path between WPOF and WMS was significant (B=.15*)- This indicates that as wives' perceptions of fairness 114 about family work divisions increased, their levels of marital satisfaction also increased. Hypothesis 6: Increased perceptions of fairness will decrease marital conflict. This hypothesis was supported. There was a significant path between WPOF and WMC (B=-.17*). Thus, as wives' perceptions of fairness around the division of family work increased, their levels of marital conflict decreased. Alternately, when wives felt the division to be unfair to them, their levels of marital conflict increased. Hypothesis 7: Decreased marital conflict will increase marital satisfaction. My analyses supported this hypothesis. The path between WMC and WMS was significant (B=-.33*), indicating that as wives' marital conflict increases, their marital satisfaction decreases. Conversely, as wives' marital conflict decreases, their marital satisfaction increases. Hypothesis 8: My comprehensive path model is examining all the interconnections as a whole and will therefore fit the correlation matrix. This last hypothesis was not supported. However, the final reestimated path model did fit the implied correlation matrix (chi-square=4.714; df=3; p=0.194). The probability that my sample matrix and the implied matrix were significantly different by chance was not significant. There were additional unpredicted findings from this path analysis. The interpersonal variable of GRIINC had a significant link to WMC (B=.15*), indicating that as gender role ideological incompatibility increased, so did wife's marital conflict. 115 As spousal ideologies differ in the direction of the wife being more egalitarian than her husband, the wife will report more arguing. These arguments include any of the nine marital conflict items and thus do not specifically single out conflict over family work divisions. This significant relationship simply states that the greater the incompatibility of spousal ideologies, the greater the number of conflicts in marriage. Further, the interpersonal component variables of WGRI and HGRI also had their own significant main effects on WMC. The path between WGRI and WMC (B=-.18*) signifies that as wives become more egalitarian, their levels of marital conflict decrease. This main effect result is anomalous. A possible interpretation could be that these egalitarian wives have brought about change in their relationships and thus have less to fight about now. The path between HGRI and WMC (B=.12*) indicates that as husbands become more egalitarian, their wives' levels of marital conflict increase. The main focus, however, is on the interpersonal variable of GRIINC and its effect on WMC, not the main effects of GRIINCs component variables. In the reestimated path model, the two added paths between WPOA and WMC (B=-.22*), and WPOA and WMS (B=.20*) were both significant. Thus, as wives' perceptions of appreciation for their family work participation increases, their level of marital conflict decreases, and their level of marital satisfaction increases. It appears that the variable of wife's perceptions of appreciation is a better predictor variable for marital outcomes 116 than it is an endogenous path variable. Based on the cumulative direct paths, variance in wife's marital satisfaction was calculated. To calculate this variance, all the standardized path coefficients for the direct paths (including controls) leading to WMS were squared and summed. The R2 for the 7 controls was 0.030195, indicating that 3% of variance in WMS is explained by controls with direct paths. The remaining exogenous and endogenous direct paths had an R2 of 0.174334, indicating an R2 increase of about 17%. When all these direct paths were summed, the R2 total was 0.204529, indicating that about 2 0% of variance in WMS is explained by all its direct paths. 117 Chapter Four Discussion My main purpose of this study was to explore how spousal gender role ideologies affect the marital outcomes of conflict and satisfaction, with perceptions of appreciation and fairness as intervening variables. Using distributive justice theory, I developed a comprehensive causal model, which incorporated the two competing models of intrapersonal congruency and interpersonal incompatibility. The intrapersonal congruency model had been previously identified in the research literature. Greenstein's (1996a) intrapersonal model specified that wives who experienced intrapersonal congruency (a match between ideology and behaviour) reported perceiving the division of family work as more fair. For example, an egalitarian wife who performs about 50% of family work would perceive this division as fair. Conversely, wives who experienced intrapersonal incongruency (a mismatch between ideology and behaviour) reported perceiving the division of family work as unfair. For example, an egalitarian wife who performs all the family work would perceive this division as unfair. Thus, wife's gender role ideology acts as a moderating variable between her relative family work participation and her perceptions of fairness with its division. I extended this model to include the marital outcome variables of conflict and satisfaction. The alternate explanatory model, which competed for wife's 118 perceptions of fairness variance (and by extension wife's marital satisfaction), was my unique interpersonal incompatibility model. It was hypothesized that the interpersonal, symbolic, and emotional processes exchanged between spouses were more important to wives' marital outcomes than simply intrapersonal congruency. This interpersonal incompatibility model specified that when spousal ideologies differed in the direction of the wife being more egalitarian than her husband, wives perceived less appreciation and fairness with regards to family work. Conversely, spousal ideological compatibility resulted in wives feeling more appreciated for their family work participation and also feeling that the division of family work was fair. I also extended this model to include the marital outcome variables of conflict and satisfaction (common to the intrapersonal model). To test my comprehensive path model, I first did preliminary analyses. A review of the bivariate analyses indicated that ideological incompatibility was significantly related to wife's marital satisfaction, whereas intrapersonal congruency was not a significant predictor of either wife's marital conflict or satisfaction. However, intrapersonal congruency was significantly related to both perceptions of appreciation and fairness, whereas ideological incompatibility was not. In addition, the endogenous variables of wife's perceptions of appreciation, wife's perceptions of fairness, wife's marital conflict, and wife's marital satisfaction were all significantly linked with each other. As a whole, these preliminary bivariate 119 analyses suggested only limited support for my comprehensive path model. In general, the bivariate analyses supported the intrapersonal congruency model over the interpersonal incompatibility model, yet the more sophisticated analyses of multiple regression contradicted these preliminary findings. Results of the multiple regression analyses did not support the intrapersonal congruency model, yet did suggest the importance of the component variable of husband's relative family work on wife's perceptions of fairness. However, the multiple regression results did offer limited support for my interpersonal incompatibility model (only wife's perceptions of appreciation link was not supported). When these models were separately examined as a complex whole (not simply as bivariate relationships), it appeared that interpersonal incompatibility had more validity than intrapersonal congruency. My comprehensive path model, which included the combined intrapersonal congruency and interpersonal incompatibility models, was estimated with path analysis. Results indicated that the hypothesized recursive path model did not fit the data, and was therefore rejected. Thus, hypothesis 8, which predicted a goodness of fit of my entire path model, was not supported. A reestimated path model that fit the data was constructed during the exploratory phase of path analysis. Some modifications to my original path model were made. The paths of gender role ideological incompatibility (and its component variables) to 120 wife's marital conflict, wife's perceptions of appreciation to wife's marital conflict, and wife's perceptions of appreciation to wife's marital satisfaction were added. The interpersonal model path of ideological incompatibility (and its component variables) to wife's perceptions of appreciation was removed, thereby making the endogenous variable of wife's perceptions of appreciation an exogenous variable. Last, the intrapersonal model path of wife's intrapersonal congruency (and its component variable of husband's relative family work) to wife's perceptions of fairness was removed from the final path model. The final reestimated path model fit the implied correlation matrix, thereby supporting the inclusion and flow of this path model. This reestimated path model will be explained in the discussion to follow by separating out the two components of intrapersonal congruency and interpersonal incompatibility. Intrapersonal Congruency Model The intrapersonal congruency model was captured in hypothesis 4, which predicted that intrapersonal congruency would increase perceptions of fairness. This hypothesis was not supported by the data. The path between wife's intrapersonal congruency (and its component variable of husband's relative family work) and wife's perceptions of fairness was not significant, and further, was removed from the final path model. Although the bivariate analyses showed a significant relationship, the multivariate and path analyses ruled out this 121 relationship as significant. When the complex whole is investigated, rather than simply a bivariate relationship, it seems that the intrapersonal model does not influence wife's perceptions of fairness. This finding of nonsignificance actually contradicts Greenstein's (1996a) NSFH conclusions that this intrapersonal interaction term is significantly related to wives' perceptions of fairness. As an example, he found egalitarian wives who performed the bulk of the second shift reported more perceptions of unfairness (intrapersonal incongruency). In theory, this sounds plausible, but my empirical path model did not support the same findings. While my intrapersonal analyses replicated his work, I argue that the contradiction between our findings is due to methodological differences. Greenstein (1996a) uses the same NSFH variables of wife's gender role ideology, husband's relative family work, and wife's perceptions of fairness, only he uses them differently than I. For instance, I trichotomized the perceptions of fairness variable because theoretically I was only concerned with \"perceptions of unfairness to me\", not \"perceptions of unfairness to my spouse\". Greenstein included all five original response choices. The problem in using the five original response choices is that the theoretical rationale says little about perceptions of unfairness to one's spouse. Greenstein and I used different wife's gender role ideology scales. Greenstein used a 6-item gender role ideology scale, 122 which included the two previously mentioned items of: \"Parents should encourage just as much independence in their daughters as in their sons\", and \"If a husband and a wife both work full-time, they should share household tasks equally\". Again, as per my factor analysis, these two items did not factor onto my gender role ideology scale. (Greenstein does not mention any preliminary factor analysis work.) He reported an alpha of .68 for his 6-item scale, while my 5-item scale had an alpha of .83. Based on the alpha levels, as well as the factor analysis results, my wife's gender role ideology scale is more reliable and valid. With regards to the relative family work variable, I argue that my measure was purer on the grounds that it included only the contributions of the marital partners, as well as each spouse reported on their own contribution levels. Greenstein used the contribution responses of wives, husbands, children, and others in the household. From this total, a proportion of wife's total family work was created. His measure also allowed for the wife to report on the husband's contributions (which may be inaccurate), and vice versa, rather than using each spouse's own contribution reports. The measure used in this analysis is stronger because it assumes that husbands and wives would be the most knowledgeable informants of their own behaviours. Further, in Greenstein's study, there was no mention of missing cases on this measure, and he only changed the reported excess hours to 100 hours per activity per week (rather than my 123 119 hours total per week), which still allows for the total reported hours to exceed the realistic capacity of 168 hours per week. Based on all of these critiques, I can only explain Greenstein's findings as spurious or due to our measurement differences. Interpersonal Incompatibility Model The interpersonal incompatibility model was captured in a series of hypotheses. Hypotheses 1, 2, and 3 predicted that gender role ideological incompatibility would have both a direct effect on wife's perceptions of fairness as well as an indirect effect through wife's perceptions of appreciation. This model was then extended by hypotheses 5, 6, and 7, which predicted that wife's perceptions of fairness would have both a direct effect on wife's marital satisfaction as well as an indirect effect through wife's marital conflict. Each of these hypotheses will be discussed. In addition, while my original comprehensive path model implied that gender role ideological incompatibility and wife's perceptions of appreciation only affected marital conflict and satisfaction indirectly through wife's perceptions of fairness, the reestimated path model found that some of these direct paths were needed. Each of these new paths will also be discussed. Hypothesis 1, which predicted that gender role ideological incompatibility would decrease perceptions of appreciation, was not supported. Gender role ideological incompatibility was not 124 significantly related to wife's perceptions of appreciation. Further, since there were no other paths linked to this variable, wife's perceptions of appreciation became an exogenous variable in my path model. However, in my opinion, this finding of nonsignificance is quite significant. It is telling us that spousal ideologies do not play a part in explaining when/if wives feel appreciated. It was supposed that one's feelings of appreciation stemmed from one's beliefs (and one's partner's beliefs) about family roles. Hochschild's (1989b) marital economy of gratitude explained that each marital economy (whether it be traditional or egalitarian) accounted for the giving and receiving of gratitude (appreciation). For one to feel appreciated, the couple had to share a common reality and interpretation of marital gifts. This makes it easier to both give and receive appreciation. Thus, it was surprising to learn that perceptions of appreciation among wives was not determined by their marital economies of gratitude (spousal gender role ideologies). The next step would be to investigate what does determine wives' perceptions of appreciation (as well as husbands' perceptions of appreciation!). First, we may need to understand more of what exactly appreciation is. Earlier, I defined appreciation as a show of gratitude stemming from being fully aware of something's value and importance, such as family work. Feeling appreciated usually symbolizes feeling cared for and loved. Alternately, feeling unappreciated can be symbolized as 125 feeling unloved and uncared for. Thus, appreciation is symbolic for care and love in a relationship. Initially, appreciation seems to be more affective in dimension, than cognitive. One first feels an emotion resulting from feeling appreciated/unappreciated, and then those feelings are analyzed and cognitively realized to be stemming from feeling appreciated/unappreciated. What needs to be examined now is what produces these emotions (feeling \"all warm\" inside vs. feeling resentment), since they are not determined by spousal gender role ideologies. Further, as well as seeking determinants, other questions include: what are the ways in which we express appreciation (how do we give this marital gift) , and how do we receive it (how to interpret it)? When we feel appreciated, we feel an intense emotion of warmth and intimacy. Where do these feelings come from? I suggest two possibilities: time and positive verbal communication. Regardless of gender role ideology, if a couple spends a lot of time together simply enjoying each other, the nonverbal message to each spouse is, \"I am special/appreciated/ loved because my spouse wants to spend time alone with me\". Making the time for someone special (especially in today's modern hectic life!) shows how much they care. And when a spouse feels cared for and loved, they therefore feel appreciated. Conversely, the less time spouses spend alone together, the less they feel appreciated. Another possible determinant of appreciation could be 126 positive verbal communication. When a spouse verbally gives thanks for family work participation on a daily basis (or at least very often), the spouse receiving the gift of gratitude feels appreciated. (Similar to saying, \"I love you\" on a daily basis as being more beneficial to one's marriage than not verbalizing this, but instead assuming the other partner knows it and does not need to hear it.) Further, saying thank you also gives the spouse credit for the visible and invisible family work that they do. Lastly, giving compliments on a job well done (or at least attempted) also creates feelings of appreciation. Combined, all these positive verbal communication examples (giving thanks, credit, and compliments) help to strengthen the marital bond through the creation of mutual appreciation. Such thoughtfulness and love are part of emotion work (Erickson, 1993), which is so essential to a marriage's vitality. All this discussion is purely exploratory because no research to date has examined appreciation as a dependent variable. Further, only three research articles (Blair & Johnson, 1992; Hawkins et al., 1995; Sanchez & Kane, 1996) have even studied this variable (as an independent variable), which highlights the need to know more about the role appreciation plays in marriage and what produces it. While hypothesis 1 was not supported by my analyses, the remaining five hypotheses from my path model were supported. Hypothesis 2, which predicted that increased perceptions of appreciation would increase perceptions of fairness, was 127 supported. As wives' perceptions of appreciation increased, so did their perceptions of fairness around family work divisions. The giving of appreciation from the husbands could be genuinely truthful. However, Hochschild (1989a) also noted that by appreciating the wife's greater contributions, the husband is able to keep her doing them. Conversely, when wives felt unappreciated for their family work contributions, they also felt the division of family work to be unfair to them. If wives never hear a thank you or never nonverbally feel appreciated for all they do around the house, they will begin to resent their husbands and consequently feel the division of family work to be unfair, argue more, and feel dissatisfied in their marriages. Previous literature has also found the relationship between wives' perceptions of appreciation and wives' perceptions of fairness to be significant (Blair & Johnson, 1992; Sanchez & Kane, 1996) , as well as the variable of perceptions of appreciation to be the strongest predictor of perceptions of fairness (Hawkins et al., 1995) . I too found perceptions of appreciation to be the strongest predictor of perceptions of fairness, when compared to the other predictor variable of gender role ideological incompatibility. Hypothesis 3, which predicted that gender role ideological incompatibility would decrease perceptions of fairness, was supported. Keep in mind the direction of effect: the direction of difference is towards wives being more egalitarian than their husbands. As gender role ideological incompatibility increased, 128 wives' perceptions of fairness with the division of family work decreased. The greater the degree of incompatibility between spousal ideologies, the greater the wife's perceptions of unfairness with the division of family work. Thus, the more egalitarian the wife is compared to her husband, the more unfair she sees the actual division of family work (which is usually with the wife doing more than the husband). This increase in perceptions of unfairness is felt because egalitarian wives' sense of entitlement has been violated (Thompson, 1991). However, the more similar the spousal ideologies (compatibility), the more likely that wives will feel that the division is fair. Although NSFH did not have items measuring whether or not family myths were constructed, I can still argue theoretically (and empirically from other research) that the creation of family myths exist and consequently alter wives' perceptions of fairness. When there is no gender role ideology difference between spouses, couples often construct family myths to compensate for an actual division of family work which is inconsistent with these ideologies (Deutsch & Saxon, 1998; Hochschild, 1989a; Knudson-Martin & Mahoney, 1998). Understanding how couples form intersubjective realities through language-constructed family myths is extremely recent research (1998), yet was first suggested as a strategy for conflict avoidance by Hochschild in 1989. Evidence of family myth-making (\"justifications\" according to distributive justice theory) among traditional couples is 129 found by Deutsch and Saxon (1998). They studied traditional blue-collar couples who lived nontraditional lives (similar to Hochschild's (1989a) earlier mentioned case study of Carmen and Frank Delacourt). In fact, the husbands/fathers in this study were more egalitarian in behaviour than most ideologically egalitarian husbands/fathers. The couples worked alternating paid work shifts and thus each parent had a comparable share in the housework and child care responsibilities. Yet, these couples claimed to be traditional. They reconciled their traditional gender role ideologies with their egalitarian lives through the creation and maintenance of three family myths: \"l)the father was still the breadwinner,-2)the mother only worked in the paid labor force because of financial pressures; and 3)the mother was still the central parent\" (Deutsch & Saxon, 1998, p. 331). The underlining truths were that the spouses were coproviders, the mothers actually enjoyed their paid work (and most would not choose to go back to being full-time housewives), and the spouses were coparenting. \"As the division of labor changes at home, 'doing gender', in these blue-collar families is shifting from the enactment of different male and female behaviors to the construction of gendered meanings for what are often the same behaviors\" (Deutsch & Saxon, 1998, p. 358). Ironically, these alternating shift traditional families will most likely be at the head the third wave of feminism, even though they themselves are not feminists. While justifications (family myths) enable couples to avoid 130 conflict over the second shift, the fact that it is avoided can be evidence of husbands' latent power (Komter, 1989). Yet, even in egalitarian families, husbands' latent power can be observed because they too construct family myths. Knudson-Martin and Mahoney (1998) found that none of their self-acclaimed egalitarian couples fully met their criteria for what constitutes egalitarianism, yet all talked in the language of equality. The purpose of these constructed \"myths of equality\" is to obscure any issues of gender and marital equality that contradict their ideals. However, these myths may not be myths at all: they could simply reflect a difference in these couples' definition of marital equality. Equality may not be defined by objective family work time/task delineations, but instead by expressions of care and support. It may be possible too that another way to resolve any underlying conflict over ideology versus behaviour, is to change the ideology to match the behaviour, rather than constructing family myths to give new meaning to those behaviours. Thus, the division of family work could influence gender role ideologies, just as gender role ideologies influence the division of family work. Hypothesis 5, which predicted that increased perceptions of fairness would increase marital satisfaction, was supported. As wives' perceptions of fairness about family work divisions increased, their levels of marital satisfaction also increased. Conversely, if a wife saw the division as unfair, she was 131 dissatisfied in her marriage. This finding is consistent with previous studies (Blair & Johnson, 1992; Greenstein, 1996a; Sanchez, 1994; Suitor, 1991). Further, Sanchez' (1994) findings expanded to also include husbands' levels of marital satisfaction. Thus, wives' perceptions of fairness affect their own marital satisfaction, as well as their husbands' marital satisfaction. Of course it is best if both spouses perceive similar levels of fairness, for then they have comparable high levels of marital satisfaction (Dancer & Gilbert, 1993). As many researchers argue, it is perceptions in marriage that are more important than objective realities. Hypothesis 6, which predicted that increased perceptions of fairness would decrease marital conflict, was supported. As wives' perceptions of fairness around the division of family work increased, their levels of marital conflict decreased. Suitor (1991) found a similar result; satisfaction with the division of family work was associated with less marital conflict and verbal aggression throughout the family career among both wives and husbands. However, through arguing about unfair family work divisions, wives can sometimes change the actual division to be more fair, resulting in less marital conflict. Subjectively unfair family work divisions inherently produce a myriad of dynamic marital negotiation processes. Benin and Agostinelli (1988) also found that wives argued more if they perceived the current division of family work as unfair. Further, wives perceived marital conflict as more 132 frequent when particular chores were shared. Benin and Agostinelli (1988) reflected that a dissatisfied wife's perceived increase in arguments may include \"reminders\" to her husband that laundry needs doing or that it is his turn to make dinner, and \"she may perceive that such discussions are arguments because reminding her husband to do his chores is unpleasant to her\" (p. 360). Indeed, part of the stalled revolution includes men not taking active responsibility and management for their share of family work. While the NSFH marital conflict measure had an item measuring the amount of conflict specifically over household tasks, it did not have an item measuring conflict over family management distribution. Thus, I was not able to distinguish which area had more conflict, as Mederer (1993) did. Mederer (1993) found wives were more likely to argue about unfair task allocation than about unfair family management distribution. This would be a fruitful path for future research to pursue because true marital equality occurs only when each spouse shares equally in the previously gendered responsibilities. Hypothesis 7, which predicted that decreased marital conflict would increase marital satisfaction, was supported. As wives' marital conflict decreased, their marital satisfaction increased. This finding is fairly straight forward and consistent with previous research (Karney & Bradbury, 1995; Larson & Holman, 1994). The less fighting in a marriage, the more satisfaction with it. However, conflict in marriage can be 133 beneficial if the couple engages in \"fair fighting\" and conflict is resolved with a \"win-win\" compromise solution (Noller & Fitzpatrick, 1993). In summary, most of my initial eight central hypotheses were supported. Three failed to be supported, and the paths from two of these hypotheses were actually taken out of my final path model. In addition, several unpredicted findings emerged that helped to shed further light on the complex topic of marital satisfaction. During the exploratory phase of path analysis, the modification indices revealed that several significant paths needed to be added to my original path model. These were the paths of gender role ideological incompatibility (and its component variables) to wife's marital conflict, wife's perceptions of appreciation to wife's marital conflict, and wife's perceptions of appreciation to wife's marital satisfaction. Each will be discussed in turn. The interpersonal variable of gender role ideological incompatibility was positively linked to wife's marital conflict. The more egalitarian the wife was compared to her husband, the more marital conflict she reported. These arguments include any of the nine marital conflict items and so do not specifically single out conflict over family work divisions. Thus, the greater the difference in spousal ideologies (in the direction of wife being relatively more egalitarian), the greater the frequency of conflict in marriage. However, congruent with homogamy theory, when spousal ideologies are similar or 134 compatible, there is less marital conflict. The finding of egalitarian wife/traditional husband couples (extreme gender role ideological incompatibility) having the most marital conflict is consistent with previous empirical research (Bowen, 1987; Bowen & Orthner, 1983; Craddock, 1983, 1988; Li & Caldwell, 1987; Lye & Biblarz, 1993). While most of this research was conducted in the early 1980s, my study supports the continuation of such a finding. As mentioned earlier in my literature review, my aim was to bridge this research literature base with the more recent literature on family work and feelings around it. Thus, even though I had not intended to place a path between these two variables, my path analyses' results suggested that this path be included. Another significant path was added between wife's perceptions of appreciation and wife's marital conflict. As wives' perceptions of appreciation for their family work participation increased, their level of marital conflict decreased. When wives felt appreciated in this important everyday domain (family work), they argued less about everything. Feeling appreciated and loved simply reduces conflict. Alternately, when wives felt unappreciated for their family work contributions, their reported levels of marital conflict increased. In other words, if wives felt their family work participation was taken for granted (regardless of their own gender role ideology), they began to harbour resentment towards their husbands. Eventually, the brewing of such feelings of 135 resentment and anger would boil over and marital conflict would result. Feeling unappreciated and unloved simply increases conflict. Husbands and wives may also differ in both the weight and meaning assigned to household tasks. Since much of family work is invisible (DeVault, 1991), such as family management and responsibility, husbands may not show appreciation because they do not see this orchestration. It is far easier to show appreciation for work that is visibly done (e.g., grocery shopping), rather than the invisible work (e.g., coupon cutting). Further, Shaw (1988) found that men were more likely to define household labour as leisure, while women defined it as work. Thus, if husbands do not define family work as work, they are less likely to give appreciation for what they see as leisure. Once husbands define family work as work, as well as recognizing invisible work, they will be more likely to appreciate the family work their wives do. Until then, wives will argue with their husbands because of the lack of felt appreciation stemming from their differing definitions and knowledge about family work. The last added path was between wife's perceptions of appreciation and wife's marital satisfaction. Wives' perceptions of appreciation with family work was positively linked to their levels of marital satisfaction. The more appreciated a wife felt, the more satisfied she was in her marriage. Again, this finding is significant regardless of either spouses' gender role ideology. Simply put, feeling appreciated makes wives happy, 136 which translates into less marital conflict and more marital satisfaction. The reason for this may be since society defines a woman's identity as nurturer (e.g., takes care of the family), appreciation shown by the husband amounts to positive self-appraisals for the wife. While no previous research has documented this significant relationship, its exclusion from the literature base should spur future research. The three known articles (Blair & Johnson, 1992; Hawkins et al., 1995; Sanchez & Kane, 1996) that specifically examined perceptions of appreciation, did not include marital satisfaction as a dependent variable. However, Erickson (1993) studied \"emotion work\" (which is comparable to appreciation) and wife's marital satisfaction. The variable of appreciation is derived from an interpersonal process, and thus the significant other makes one feel appreciated through their emotion work. As defined earlier, emotion work involves \"the enhancement of others' emotional well-being and the provision of emotional support\" (Erickson, 1993, p. 888). Her study found that a husband's participation in emotion work was a more powerful predictor of a wife's marital satisfaction than his performance in either housework or child care. This finding lends support to my finding; the more appreciated a wife felt, the more satisfied she was in her marriage. In this case, emotions speak louder than actions. In summary, these three significant added paths improved the fit of my reestimated comprehensive path model. They especially 137 highlight the need for future research, particularly the unexamined area of perceptions of appreciation and its direct impact on marital outcomes. Reestimated Comprehensive Path Model A comprehensive path model such as mine has never before been used to explain the complex interconnections affecting marital satisfaction. Most researchers look at multivariate analyses and do not attempt to put all the relationships together in a complex model as I do. Further, this goodness of fit finding is also unique because no one has compared the two processes of intrapersonal congruency and interpersonal incompatibility as competing theories for perceptions of fairness variance, and by extension, marital satisfaction. Overall, my reestimated path model was significant and increases knowledge in underexamined areas, such as perceptions of fairness in marriage, as well as highlighting the need for future research into the unexamined variable of perceptions of appreciation. My path model supported the importance of interpersonal and symbolic processes among couples over and above any intrapersonal process. When the intrapersonal model and the interpersonal model were entered together in my comprehensive path model, the intrapersonal model drops out of the equation as the interpersonal model takes precedence. Therefore, the interpersonal variable of gender role ideological incompatibility is the more powerful predictor of wife's perceptions of fairness. 138 It would seem that ideologies speak louder than actions. Congruent with previous literature, my hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that gender role ideological incompatibility (in the direction of the wife being more egalitarian than the husband) was significantly related to marital satisfaction. However, in my path model, I hypothesized that the intervening variables of perceptions of fairness with family work and marital conflict explained the significant link to marital satisfaction. Indeed, my path model supported this hypothesis. When perceptions of fairness and marital conflict were entered as intervening variables between gender role ideological incompatibility and marital satisfaction, the effect on marital satisfaction is fully explained through these two variables. The interpersonal model is most explanatory (compared to the intrapersonal model), however, the variable of perceptions of appreciation also had its own significant findings. While now exogenous, appreciation is also an interpersonal variable, for in order to feel appreciated, we need another person. Wife's perceptions of appreciation was significantly related to wife's marital satisfaction. While sharing family work helps to increase marital satisfaction (Hochschild, 1989a), feeling loved (symbolic meaning of appreciation) is more important for marital outcomes. Thus, the reason Greenstein (1996a) found that egalitarian wives had less marital satisfaction when husbands did not share in household tasks was probably more related to 139 symbolic reasons, rather than simply behavioural. A recent article examining marital equality found that sharing family work and decision-making were the criteria respondents used to evaluate equality in marriages other than their own (Rosenbluth, Steil, & Whitcomb, 1998) . These are the same objective behavioural criteria used by social researchers. However, within their own marriages, these respondents cited subjective marital equality criteria, such as relationship characteristics and attitudes. Respondents defined marital equality \"in terms of respectful attitudes, the ideal of reciprocity, and mutually supportive relationships in which emotional work is shared and both partners feel equally cared for\" (Rosenbluth et al., 1998, p. 242). This finding corresponds with the results from the variable of appreciation used in my study. Further, Rosenbluth et al. (1998) suggested that future researchers \"operationalize relationship equality as a multidimensional construct, using behavioral outcome measures in conjunction with measures of attitudes, affect, and interpersonal processes\" (p. 242). My original holistic path model used to explain wife's marital satisfaction included all of these multidimensional aspects: husband's relative family work participation was the behavioural measure, gender role ideological incompatibility was the attitude measure, and wives' perceptions of appreciation and fairness were the affect and interpersonal processes measures. Such multidimensionality 140 highlights the psychological and behavioural complexities of a happy/unhappy marriage. All of my reestimated comprehensive path model's direct paths explained about 20% of variance in wife's marital satisfaction. Since this variable is quite complex and is influenced by a myriad of factors, this path model helps to shed light on its direct determinants quite significantly. Further, the direct path of wife's perceptions of appreciation for family work participation explained about 4% of wife's marital satisfaction variance. While small, this significant result cannot be overlooked. It signifies that feelings about the division of family work are more meaningful than behaviours. It appears that perceptions of appreciation (as an exogenous variable) affects every single one of the endogenous variables in my path model (fairness, conflict, and satisfaction). These findings further highlight the importance of emotion work as pivotal to consequent perceptions and outcomes in marriage. If one feels loved then all is right in the marriage. Whatever the marriage appears to be objectively, if each spouse subjectively feels appreciated/loved, then they are happy in their marriage. An interesting outcome of my path model is that this model supports the two (often competing components in the moral development literature) perspectives of justice (fairness) and care (appreciation). Family work is not just about justice, it is also about care, love, and morality. Ahlander and Bahr (1995) recommended taking this moral perspective of family work, stating 141 that, \"moral discourse on family life and family work encourages attention to the cultural and personal meanings of activity, interaction, and sentiment\" (p. 65). My study may help to answer that call because it found that both dimensions of justice and care are important predictors of wives' marital outcomes. Distributive justice theory. The results from my reestimated comprehensive path model are not consistent with the distributive justice framework. The main reason for not finding support for this theory's validity is because wife's intrapersonal congruency (wife's gender role ideology and husband's relative family work) was rejected as a valid model for explaining wife's perceptions of fairness. The competing interpersonal incompatibility model is a far better predictor of wife's perceptions of fairness with family work divisions. Thus, within the distributive justice theory, husband's relative family work as a valued outcome does not seem to be a significant outcome wives want. Consistent with Thompson (1991), other valued outcomes such as symbolic, or emotional outcomes appear to be more significant than the traditional valued outcomes of time and tasks. While now an exogenous variable, wife's perceptions of appreciation can still be a valued outcome, but it is not dependent on gender role ideology. There are a few reasons why the distributive justice theory was not supported. One explanation could be methodological. I used gender role ideologies as comparison referents, and relative family work and appreciation as valued outcomes, yet the 142 third component of justifications was not measured in the NSFH data set. However, while distributive justice was not supported by my research, Hawkins et al. (1995), who successfully operationalized all three variables of outcome values, comparison referents, and justifications, did find substantial support for this framework. Another explanation could be that wives evaluate their contributions according to comparison referents outside their relationships. Rather than ideological comparison referents, more significant referents may be derived from normative comparisons (social norms), feasibility comparisons (the \"going rate\" in relationships), or self-comparisons (past relationships). Interestingly, there is overlap in the two components of comparison referents and justifications. For example, by using feasibility comparisons, egalitarian wives may justify inequity in family work divisions by comparing the small contribution from her husband to the nonexisting help from husbands in other relationships. The most plausible explanation for the invalidity of the distributive justice theory is that alternate frameworks, such as symbolic interactionism and gender theory better explain my results. The interpersonal incompatibility model is more important in explaining wife's perceptions of fairness than the intrapersonal congruency model. Further, both perceptions of appreciation and perceptions of fairness are significant determinants of marital outcomes, more important than ideology, 143 relative family work, or their interaction. These results signify interpersonal, symbolic, and emotional processes being exchanged between spouses. Therefore, perhaps symbolic interactionism is a better framework to examine this path model from. In addition, applying gender theory can be helpful in understanding the meanings behind gender, ideologies, and family work. West and Zimmerman (1987) explain gender as a relational concept, not as an individual characteristic. \"Doing gender\" is creating and recreating gender in everyday interactions with others. We need to better understand how wives and husbands do gender in everyday life. For wives, performing family work (regardless of ideology) is doing gender in the form of caring for others, while for husbands, doing gender is being a good provider for the family. Each wants to feel appreciated for doing gender \"appropriately\". (However, this author hopes that one day we can transcend gender. \"Doing person\" or \"doing parent\" may seem ideal, but realistically can be achieved, if as a culture, we simply take care of what needs to be taken care of, regardless of gender.) Related to gender theory is the contradiction Hochschild (1989a) discusses between one's conscious gender ideology (beliefs) and one's semi-conscious gender identity (feelings). Such a contradiction between what a spouse says (\"on top\") versus what they truly feel (\"underneath\") can create tensions, which can have ramifications for the symbolic processes involved in 144 marriage, such as showing appreciation. For example, in revisiting Hochschild's case study of the Steins, Seth is egalitarian \"on top\" (ideology) but really traditional \"underneath\" (identity), and thus he was unable to show his appreciation because of this contradiction. The only way to create cohesion between an egalitarian ideology and identity is through childhood socialization. In addition to understanding meanings of gender, meanings of family work also need to be explored. There is an assumption that family work is a cost or something to be avoided and devalued. However, as an activity, family work is neither inherently negative nor inherently positive. Its meaning is derived by society, as well as by those who perform it. There may be a different meaning of family work, one of expressing care and love. In summary, my reestimated comprehensive path model's results do not support the application of the distributive justice theory, mainly because the intrapersonal congruency model was not valid. I suggest that the two frameworks of symbolic interactionism and gender theory may better explain my path model. Limitations and Strencrths Limitations. There are several limitations of my study that need to be mentioned. One of the limitations was that my study used a secondary data set with pre-existing measures, and thus I 145 had to work within the variable boundaries already in place. Since I could not redesign the variables, I instead had to fit them into my study. As well, NSFH investigated many broad topics at the expense of providing in-depth coverage of certain variables of interest. For example, I would have liked more questions asked relating to the symbolic meanings of family work, or a direct variable that measured justifications/family myth-making. Although many researchers still use NSFH, this data set is slightly dated (being a decade old). Also, this data set is drawn from the American population (since no comparable Canadian data set exists), and therefore results cannot necessarily be generalized to Canadians, only Americans. Further, there is the possibility of social desirability bias and reporting bias in participants' responses. Another limitation of my study is that the path analyses could only be run with the unweighted main sample data. Thus, the results may not be as generalizeable (especially with respect to minority and underresearched groups) as the results from the weighted data used in the preliminary and multiple regression analyses. Last, I cannot be certain that my path model is exhaustive. That is, I can theoretically argue which variables I perceive should be included, but there may be neglected variables. The strength of path analysis lies in its sound theoretical reasoning, not completely by its significant statistical results. 146 Strengths. There are also several strengths of my study. First, my research examines and expands upon the underresearched areas of interpersonal processes and symbolic/emotional meanings of family work participation. In essence, my study values spousal perceptions and not simply objective realities. Further, my study examines both the husbands' and the wives' perspectives within marital couples (not married individuals). Both spouses' responses were necessary to obtain the needed information on gender role ideological incompatibility and husband's relative family work participation variables. Another strength is that my data is from a large nationally representative random secondary data set, which increases the generalizeability of my results. Further, my path model is comprehensive and thus increases the percentage of variance explained in wives' marital satisfaction. My study also introduces implications for marital and family counselling (i.e., not just about who does tasks but how each feels about the division). Concurrent with practical applications, my study also expands current theoretical knowledge to include interpersonal aspects, not just intrapersonal aspects. As such, it includes theoretical concepts of the symbolic meanings of family work such as care, love, and appreciation, in addition to the concept of fairness. Indeed, that is another strength of my study; it combines the two moral perspectives of justice and care. Last, the current research literature base is also expanded 147 upon and on the cutting edge since symbolic meanings of family work is now in the forefront of marriage and the division of household labour research. Holistically, the goal of my study was to increase the knowledge base of factors affecting wives' marital satisfaction. Implications One of the theoretical implications of my study is that distributive justice is called into question as a valid framework for understanding the division of family work and its impact on wife's marital outcomes. Other theoretical avenues should be explored, particularly symbolic interactionism and gender theory. In actuality, my research as a whole implicitly incorporates many theoretical perspectives (e.g., feminist theory, gender theory, distributive justice theory, symbolic interactionism, family systems theory, social exchange theory, conflict theory, etc.). Perhaps another future theoretical implication is the need for a holistic theoretical view of family interaction. Implications for family research include the need for further and expanded examination of the interpersonal marital dynamics involved in everyday life family work divisions. Further, researching the variable of appreciation in multiple areas of family life for both spouses, can have serious implications for the well-being of all family members. Feminist scholars should continue researching this vein of family work and the emotions surrounding it. 148 Family life educators should also incorporate these interpersonal and symbolic variables of appreciation and fairness when (for example) educating premarital couples, or teaching classes on parent-child relationships. As family scientists know, the family is like a mobile, and thus what happens within one dyad (e.g., marital) can have a ripple effect on another relationship dyad (e.g., parent-child). Couples need to be taught the importance of understanding and appreciating each other's paid and unpaid work. Family therapists need to realize that perceptions of appreciation and fairness with the division of family work are crucial interpersonal processes, which, if understood by both the couple and the therapist, can help clarify the individual and marital experience. Further, the family therapist can help couples interpret the symbolic exchanges in their marital economies of gratitude. \"Just as a meaning in one language is not understood in the other, so gifts in the language of gratitude are not interchangeable\" (Hochschild, 1989b, p. 101). Indeed, one way to strengthen families is by understanding marital gifts and learning how to give and receive them in a meaningful manner. Future Research Family work as a valued topic of sociological research has been historically ignored. Its neglect mostly due to its devaluation in society, which stems largely from its being 149 defined as \"women's work\". It is also an unpaid role and thus further devalued. Reducing (and ultimately eliminating) gender stereotypes, and revaluing both women and family work, will help to produce change, for as long as the second shift is considered secondary, it will remain undervalued. Conceptual issues such as the interpretation and meaning assigned to family work needs to be understood. Future research should continue its recent exploration into the complex depths of family work and its ties to the individual, families, and society. My research findings of wives' perceptions of appreciation being directly linked to marital conflict and satisfaction, have never been documented in the empirical literature. While surprising that these links have not been previously distinguished, their discovery places more emphasis on the underdevelopment of the variable of appreciation within family research. This variable of appreciation need not be anchored in family work, as I chose to study it, but could also include other family realms, such as perceptions of appreciation for being a spouse, an employee, a parent, etc. NSFH does also examine the variable of appreciation with being a spouse, a parent, and an employee. However, the NSFH items do not specify who the interpersonal other is in the question. For example, does appreciation for being an employee come from one's boss or one's spouse, or does appreciation for being a parent come from one's child(ren) or one's spouse? Which reference source is more meaningful? 150 Further, researchers could extend the examination of appreciation out of the family circle, to gage its influence in the wider world (e.g., appreciation from employer, from friends, etc.). Feeling appreciated makes one feel good. By extension, feeling good about oneself and one's relationships, one's paid and unpaid work, is extremely important to feeling satisfied, happy, and healthy. Future research on this variable can affect many different disciplines, such as psychology, sociology, health sciences, and even economics. In fact, understanding how we are appreciated and how we show appreciation, can impact us as a society through helping to strengthen families and relationships. Thus, future research should also look into the determinants of perceptions of appreciation. As mentioned earlier, two suggestions for research direction would include positive marital communication (i.e., emotion work), and spending time together as a couple. I also recommend that more research is carried out on husbands' perceptions in marriage, especially with the symbolic emotional variable of appreciation. Lastly, future research on appreciation should also incorporate cross-cultural studies. Emotions are culturally bound and thus may have different expressions and meanings among different cultures. Appreciation is not a base emotion, like anger or sadness, and therefore may not have universal expression. However, love is universal and appreciation is simply a symbolic expression of love. Cross-cultural studies could also investigate what should be appreciated, and how to 151 show appreciation (how to give and receive this marital gift). Conclusions The perpetuation of women performing the bulk of family work (regardless of gender role ideology) in today's dual-earner society, strains all types of marriages. Unfortunately, rather than redefining gender roles, most egalitarian women are simply expanding their gender roles: Nontraditional women, especially those with strong career orientations, remain in circumstances of conflict and ambiguity regarding the integration of occupational, parental, and marital role components that are exacerbated by the continuing resistance of males to eliminate specialization in homemaking and the failure of new family patterns to emerge. (Lueptow, Guss, & Hyden, 1989, p. 384) The result has been many women/mothers striving to become \"superwomen\" and \"supermoms\", yet there has not been a corresponding movement or pressure for \"supermen\" and \"superdads\". As individual couples and as a society, we have still not achieved role interchangeability. Family work is still divided by \"feminine\" and \"masculine\" roles, rather than by personal aptitude, preference, and compromise. What happens in individual marriages is a combination of individual ideologies and societal influences and constraints. Patriarchy in society inflates wives' sense of gratitude and debt towards husbands who help or share the work at home, while at the same time encourages husbands to retain their gratitude from their wives for helping or sharing the work of provision. \"Partners tend to view men's minimal help with raising children 152 as substantial, and women's substantial help with provision as minimal\" (Thompson & Walker, 1989, p. 864). The symbolic meaning of shared family work and coprovision needs to be acknowledged and understood before substantial changes in either sphere will take place. Further, responsibility and management for both roles will need to be shared if couples want a truly egalitarian marriage. However, without societal support and guidance, egalitarian couples are struggling pioneers. Not only does patriarchy invoke wives to give their husbands extra thanks for sharing in the devalued work of the home, but these wives feel \"lucky\". Wives speak of being \"lucky\" for having husbands who are unusually supportive of their paid work, and/or who aire unusually willing to share in family work. Yet as Hochschild (1989b) wrote: In many ways, men were objectively luckier than women. For roughly the same hours of work, women earned a third of the male wage. In addition to their full time jobs, these working mothers did nearly all the housework and childcare. Were they to divorce, these women were poised - as their husbands were not - for a great class fall. Ironically though, women talked about luck and men did not. (p. 109) Although today the wage gap has lessened, it is still not nonexistent. Further, society continues to determine why women should consider themselves lucky, as well as defining the value of exchanged marital gifts. I see two possible ways of changing today's cultural status quo. First, the stalled revolution has to become unstuck, for it is institutional change, as well as ideological change, which will help bring about changes in domestic arrangements. Further, 153 socializing the next generation of citizens to be egalitarian, will help prevent another stalled revolution. Intergenerational continuity is noted among parents and their children regarding both the patterns of family work and gender role ideologies. Presently, the allocation of chores to children are usually gender-typed, with the girls performing significantly more housework than boys as well as performing more feminine tasks, thus mimicking the allocation among adults (Shelton & John, 1996). If egalitarianism was the norm, children would be raised accordingly, and such perpetual intergenerational continuity would presumably shift the entire culture over time. Ahlander and Bahr (1995) noted that among children, performing (ungendered) family work fosters responsibility, family commitment, and moral development. Second, many feminists argue for a genderless world. Sharing family work has the power to transform the meaning of gender, and ultimately question its necessity. Recently, researchers have explored the existence of postgender marriages, and discovered that these couples \"generally have rejected gender as an ideological justification for inequality or even difference in the negotiation of their marital relationships\" (Risman & Johnson-Sumerford, 1998, p. 38). If the world were gender-free, our authentic selves could surface. The specific results of my research support my reestimated comprehensive path model and furthers empirical knowledge of wives' marital satisfaction. Among wives, gender role 154 ideological incompatibility decreases the probability of seeing the division of family work as fair, resulting in having more marital conflict, and being less satisfied in their marriages. Results of my path analyses also indicated that interpersonal processes, such as gender role ideological incompatibility, and perceptions of appreciation and fairness, are more important than intrapersonal processes, such as intrapersonal congruency. Further, the symbolic variable of appreciation for family work participation has significant direct effects on wives' marital conflict and satisfaction. These last findings are pivotal in urging other researchers to examine the hidden, yet pervasive, symbolic meanings of family work for the marital and cohabiting couple. 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The effect of men's breadwinner status on their changing gender beliefs. Sex Roles, 37, 799-816. "@en ; edm:hasType "Thesis/Dissertation"@en ; vivo:dateIssued "1999-05"@en ; edm:isShownAt "10.14288/1.0089308"@en ; dcterms:language "eng"@en ; ns0:degreeDiscipline "Family and Nutritional Sciences"@en ; edm:provider "Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library"@en ; dcterms:publisher "University of British Columbia"@en ; dcterms:rights "For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use."@en ; ns0:scholarLevel "Graduate"@en ; dcterms:title "Predicting wives’ marital satisfaction : examining the interpersonal variables of ideological incompatibility and perceptions of appreciation and fairness"@en ; dcterms:type "Text"@en ; ns0:identifierURI "http://hdl.handle.net/2429/10025"@en .