Sex roles, demographic variables, and marital satisfaction along an institutional-companionship marriage continuum

Abstract

The purposes of the study were threefold: 1) to determine whether type of sex role (masculine, feminine, androgynous, or undifferentiated) permitted the prediction of marital role expectations along an institutional/traditional-companionship/egalitarian continuum of marriage, 2) to determine the relationship of selected demographic variables to institutional vs. companionship models of marriage, and 3) to determine whether spouses with divergent marital role expectations were likely to be dissatisfied with their marriages. A total of 394 individuals (197 couples) completed the following instruments: Personal Data Inventory (PDI), Marital Adjustment Test (MAT), Marriage Role Expectation Inventory (MREI) and Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI. Participation in the study was completely voluntary. Subjects represented various ages (under 20 to over 60 years), occupations (unskilled to professional), and educational levels (completion of elementary school to graduate degrees), though a large percentage of the participants came from the higher educational and income levels. The subjects' MREI scores ranged from moderately to very egalitarian; no subjects endorsed a traditional stance. With respect to the first objective of this research, therefore, it proved impossible to determine whether type of sex predicted position on a traditional-egalitarian marriage continuum since only the companionship/egalitarian model emerged in the sample. It should be noted that in contrast to MREI scores (which reflect expectations), the single role enactment item included in the inventories did permit a significant discrimination between sex-typed (masculine or feminine) and non-sex typed (androgynous or undifferentiated) in individuals in terms of their perceptions of their actual behavior..