Predictors of marital satisfaction in North Cyprus: exploring the gender effects

Abstract

Using ecosystemic theory, we evaluated marital satisfaction among 501 married individuals living in Northern Cyprus by analyzing socio-economic, attitudinal, psychological, contextual, and relationship-specific factors. In addition, we tested whether the correlates of marital satisfaction vary between men and women. Using ordered logistic regression analysis, we found that relationship-specific indicators are the most important correlates of marital satisfaction. Specifically, higher levels of marital interaction and sexual satisfaction, no presence of physical and verbal aggression, higher satisfaction with the division of household labor, and better communication with one's spouse are significantly and positively correlated with higher marital satisfaction. In addition, respondents who were born in Northern Cyprus report higher marital satisfaction compared to immigrants, whereas those who have been married at least once before and those with poor mental health report significantly lower marital satisfaction. When we test differences in the correlates of marital satisfaction between males and females, the results suggest that among women only, native North Cypriots report higher marital satisfaction than immigrants do.

Keywords:

• marital satisfaction
• gender
• gender ideology
• marital interaction
• Northern Cyprus

Notes

1. The crude divorce rate is the number of divorces per 1,000 people in the population (US Census Bureau).

2. More often than not, modern couples shy away from the establishment of traditional relationships and are looking to create a more parallel or egalitarian marriage. Knudson-Martin and Mahoney (1998, p. 82) state the crux of the present dilemma very nicely: ‘[Couples] enter into relationships with egalitarian ideals and with expectations that both wives and husbands will work outside of the home. These factors propel couples toward equality. On the other hand, men and women continue to enter relationships with traditional gender expectations and with unequal resources and power, thus making actual achievement of equality difficult.’ Thus, there is a discrepancy between the ideal of equality that couples have when entering marriage and the reality of what actually occurs. Accordingly, ‘in the traditional order of things, money [brings] with it the authority – recognized by both partners – of he who has it to exercise power’ (Casamassima, 1995).

3. We thank KADEM director Muharrem Faiz and his team for their assistance with data collection.

4. Different interviewers conducted the face-to-face interviews. Although we do not have specific information about the characteristics of the interviewers (age, gender, race, etc.), inter-rater reliability (the level of agreement between interviewers on the same set of questions) is 0.85, which indicates high reliability.

5. Three of our variables are single-item measures: sexual satisfaction, satisfaction with the division of household labor, and our dependent variable, marital satisfaction. Despite being criticized, these same single-item measures have been frequently used in prior research (Addo & Sassler, 2010; Carlson, Miller, Sassler, & Hanson, 2014; Lichter & Carmalt, 2009; Sassler, Addo, & Lichter, 2012; Yucel & Gassanov, 2010).

6. ‘Having at least a college degree’ is used as a proxy for high socioeconomic status (SES). In addition, in preliminary analyses (not shown), we found a nonlinear marital satisfaction association, such that those individuals with at least a college degree were significantly more likely to report higher marital satisfaction than those without a college degree. Thus, to operationalize this nonlinear association, we created a dichotomous measure of education, coded 1 for those with at least a college degree and 0 otherwise.

7. The proportion of missing data on the independent variables we used in the analyses ranges from 1–7%.

8. 87% of the immigrants in the sample were from Turkey. The other 13% were from Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, Russia, Germany, or England.