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Not All in the Same Boat. Socioeconomic Differences in Marital Stress and Satisfaction During the Covid-19 Pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic is a global threat that affects a large part of the population, but the risks associated with it are higher for some people compared with others. Previous studies show that lower socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with more chronic stress and less marital satisfaction. Th...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2021
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8044790/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33868101 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.635148 |
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author | Turliuc, Maria Nicoleta Candel, Octav Sorin |
author_facet | Turliuc, Maria Nicoleta Candel, Octav Sorin |
author_sort | Turliuc, Maria Nicoleta |
collection | PubMed |
description | The Covid-19 pandemic is a global threat that affects a large part of the population, but the risks associated with it are higher for some people compared with others. Previous studies show that lower socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with more chronic stress and less marital satisfaction. Thus, the uncertainty caused by the pandemic might greatly affect those who were already vulnerable. This longitudinal study explores the extent to which stress originated outside (external) and inside (internal) the relationship is associated with marital satisfaction during the Covid-19 pandemic and whether the associations are different based on the socioeconomic status of the participants. The study was conducted at two points in time (first, immediately after the national lockdown was instituted; second, after the lockdown ended) with a sample of 144 married Romanian couples. We used the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model with Mediation and multi-group SEM analysis. Higher levels of external stress were associated with subsequent lower marital satisfaction for women with higher SES. For the couples with lower SES, men's level of internal stress during the first assessment mediated the relationship between their higher level of external stress at the first time point and their partner's lower marital satisfaction during the second assessment. Our results show that men and women respond differently during a crisis and that couples with lower SES are more prone to greater stress and lower levels of marital satisfaction. We finally suggest that the therapists, health professionals, policy makers, and researchers should take into account the existing vulnerabilities of a couple when offering psychological and health services during the Covid-19 pandemic. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8044790 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-80447902021-04-15 Not All in the Same Boat. Socioeconomic Differences in Marital Stress and Satisfaction During the Covid-19 Pandemic Turliuc, Maria Nicoleta Candel, Octav Sorin Front Psychol Psychology The Covid-19 pandemic is a global threat that affects a large part of the population, but the risks associated with it are higher for some people compared with others. Previous studies show that lower socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with more chronic stress and less marital satisfaction. Thus, the uncertainty caused by the pandemic might greatly affect those who were already vulnerable. This longitudinal study explores the extent to which stress originated outside (external) and inside (internal) the relationship is associated with marital satisfaction during the Covid-19 pandemic and whether the associations are different based on the socioeconomic status of the participants. The study was conducted at two points in time (first, immediately after the national lockdown was instituted; second, after the lockdown ended) with a sample of 144 married Romanian couples. We used the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model with Mediation and multi-group SEM analysis. Higher levels of external stress were associated with subsequent lower marital satisfaction for women with higher SES. For the couples with lower SES, men's level of internal stress during the first assessment mediated the relationship between their higher level of external stress at the first time point and their partner's lower marital satisfaction during the second assessment. Our results show that men and women respond differently during a crisis and that couples with lower SES are more prone to greater stress and lower levels of marital satisfaction. We finally suggest that the therapists, health professionals, policy makers, and researchers should take into account the existing vulnerabilities of a couple when offering psychological and health services during the Covid-19 pandemic. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-03-31 /pmc/articles/PMC8044790/ /pubmed/33868101 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.635148 Text en Copyright © 2021 Turliuc and Candel. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Turliuc, Maria Nicoleta Candel, Octav Sorin Not All in the Same Boat. Socioeconomic Differences in Marital Stress and Satisfaction During the Covid-19 Pandemic |
title | Not All in the Same Boat. Socioeconomic Differences in Marital Stress and Satisfaction During the Covid-19 Pandemic |
title_full | Not All in the Same Boat. Socioeconomic Differences in Marital Stress and Satisfaction During the Covid-19 Pandemic |
title_fullStr | Not All in the Same Boat. Socioeconomic Differences in Marital Stress and Satisfaction During the Covid-19 Pandemic |
title_full_unstemmed | Not All in the Same Boat. Socioeconomic Differences in Marital Stress and Satisfaction During the Covid-19 Pandemic |
title_short | Not All in the Same Boat. Socioeconomic Differences in Marital Stress and Satisfaction During the Covid-19 Pandemic |
title_sort | not all in the same boat. socioeconomic differences in marital stress and satisfaction during the covid-19 pandemic |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8044790/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33868101 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.635148 |
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