Negotiating family challenges by transforming traditional gender roles in new identities: Patterns of resilience and parenthood in a sample of italian couples ^☆

Preliminary findings were presented as a poster “Resilience and its shielding effect on relationship quality and life satisfaction” at the 69th Annual ICP Conference (International Council of Psychologists), July 29 to August 1–2, 2011, Washington, DC.

Abstract

In this chapter, I investigated how challenges (life events) are negotiated within families according to gender roles and their effect on marriage quality, life satisfaction, and psychological resilience in a nonclinical sample of heterosexual couples (N=159), age 23–78 (M=45.4, SD=11.2), with children (n=127) or childfree (n=32). Specifically, I accounted for the individual’s ability to share “hurt feelings” and foster intimacy within the couple, thus strengthening resilience and improving life satisfaction and hypothesized that the impact of negative life events on both relationship quality and life satisfaction could depend on the resilience levels of each partner and their ratio according to gender roles. Results confirmed the hypothesis and showed significant gender differences in the impact of negative life events on relationship quality, life satisfaction, ability to share hurt feelings, fear of intimacy, and resilience levels. Moreover, the ratio of the partner’s individual resilience affected the dependent variables differently by gender, its level interacted with the age of the couple’s first child (range: 2–54, mean: 21.4, SD: 10.4) and strongly depended on the occupation of the parents.

Citation

Gianesini, G. (2013), "Negotiating family challenges by transforming traditional gender roles in new identities: Patterns of resilience and parenthood in a sample of italian couples ^☆

Preliminary findings were presented as a poster “Resilience and its shielding effect on relationship quality and life satisfaction” at the 69th Annual ICP Conference (International Council of Psychologists), July 29 to August 1–2, 2011, Washington, DC.

", Visions of the 21st Century Family: Transforming Structures and Identities (Contemporary Perspectives in Family Research, Vol. 7), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 277-316. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1530-3535(2013)0000007013