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Marriage at the Summit: Response to the Commentaries

2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 25; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1047840x.2014.890512

1532-7965

Eli J. Finkel, Grace Larson, Kathleen L. Carswell, Chin Ming Hui,

Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving

Abstract This article serves as a response to the 13 commentaries on the target article, which introduced the suffocation model of marriage in America. This reply has four main sections. First, it presents an elaborated version of the suffocation model that was inspired by the commentaries. Second, it addresses three areas of significant disagreement that emerged as we digested the commentaries. Third, it examines the circumstances under which being instrumental for one's spouse's needs benefits the self. And fourth, it takes strides toward the development of a mathematically formal version of the suffocation model. It concludes with a discussion of the ways in which policymakers, clinicians, and individual Americans can capitalize upon the suffocation model to strengthen marriage and, in doing so, bolster personal well-being. Notes The changes in inequality are stark. According to the U.S. Congressional Budget Office (Citation2011), which provides nonpartisan analysis for the U.S. Congress, the share of overall income of the top 1% of earners in America approximately doubled between 1979 and 2007, and this increase came at the expense of the bottom 80% of earners. Income was unchanged for the remaining Americans in the top quintile, but it dropped 2 to 3 percentage points for Americans in each of the bottom four quintiles. As a proportion of income, this 2- to 3-point drop was especially severe for Americans in the lower quintiles. For example, the incomes of the lower middle-class Americans in the second quintile (the 21st–40th percentiles) dropped from 10% to 7%, a substantial decline in this 28-year period. To put a dollar value (USD) on these categories, the FPL in 2012 was, for example, $14,937 for a childless couple or $23,283 for couple with two children (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2013). That the remaining characteristic in the top four was "spending time together," a reasonably compelling operationalization of oxygenation, is consistent with the possibility that not only do Americans look to their marriage to help them meet relatively high altitude needs but also that they realize that doing so requires spouses to invest resources in the quality of their relationship. Pietromonaco and Perry-Jenkins (this issue) and Neff and Morgan (this issue) discussed the work of Edin and colleagues in addressing the topic of sociodemographic variation in what Americans seek from their marriage (Edin, Citation2000; Edin, Kefalas, & Reed, Citation2004; Gibson-Davis, Edin, & McLanahan, Citation2005). In contrast to the Trail and Karney (Citation2012) research, however, Edin's research focuses exclusively on low-income mothers, so it does not allow for any comparisons across sociodemographic groups. To be sure, her research does suggest that such mothers seek financial resources from marriage, and it is plausible that such considerations are stronger than among wealthier women, but it does not undermine the suffocation model perspective that such women are also looking to marriage for help with meeting higher altitude needs. Indeed, consistent with this perspective, Edin and Kefalas's (Citation2005) conclusion is that "the most fundamental truth these stories reveal is that the meaning of marriage has changed. … Now, marriage is primarily about adult fulfillment, it is something poor women do for themselves" (p. 136). To be sure, the ideas underlying this tenet came up many times throughout the target article, and our wording was not identical across cases. We used stronger language in some cases than in others, including in this sentence from the abstract (Finkel et al., this issue, p. 1): "Asking the marriage to help them fulfill the latter, higher-level needs typically requires sufficient investment of time and psychological resources to ensure that the two spouses develop a deep bond and profound insight into each other's essential qualities." Perhaps a more precise variant of this sentence would have jettisoned "typically requires" in favor of a focus on how, according to the suffocation model, bond strength and mutual insight are strongly and positively associated with the fulfillment of higher altitude needs (much stronger than the association of bond strength and mutual insight with the fulfillment of lower altitude needs). It is important to bear in mind that a central feature of the suffocation model is that the best marriages today are better than the best marriages of yesteryear. The present discussion regarding the assignment of blame focuses exclusively on that subset of marriages that are struggling, a group that encompasses the average marriage. For example, although there is altitude-relevant variability within each need category (e.g., among the physiological needs, the need to breathe is lower, or more prepotent, than the need to eat), nobody knows, for example, how much lower the highest need in a given category is from the lowest need in the category immediately above it. Addressing such issues is an important direction for future research on human motivation. Indeed, doing so may provide valuable contributions toward the integration of the suffocation model with Holmes and Murray's (this issue) perspective on the foundational importance of the need to feel loved. Perhaps this need resides at the very bottom of Maslow's "belonging and love" rung, below, for example, the need to love others.