Discuss research into the impact of life events in adulthood.

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Discuss research into the impact of life events in adulthood

There are three key events affecting many adults: marriage, parenthood and divorce.

Marriage fulfils basic needs for companionship and security.  It is an overt sign of adult status and provides a legitimate unit to raise children.  Through time initial passionate love may deepen into a more profound secure attachment that can withstand time and all the obstacles of life, including the inevitable rough patches.  

Bee studied marriages and formed a theory called the U shaped curve.  This suggests that satisfaction in marital relationships decline after marriage, reach a low when children go to school, then rise to a peak at retirement.  The problem with this research, (apart from the value judgement of what is a satisfactory marriage), is that the findings were based on a cross cultural study and when unsatisfactory marriages were finished and lost from the samples then the marriages left would have been satisfactory leaving an artificial impression that satisfaction increased with time.  Vaillent and Vaillent’s study suggested that the u-shaped curve may be an illusion created by using a retrospective approach rather than a prospective one, which can suggest marital satisfaction appears to remain stable.

Bee also studied the link between marital status and health.  He found that compared with never married individuals married people enjoy better health, both physically and mentally.  It showed married men were much more healthy than unmarried men and women fell in-between the two extremes.  This is because women provide better confidantes for their husbands than their husbands are for them.  Also women’s role may be less satisfying because of their domestic role, work conflict and also the outset of children will have greater adjustment for women than men.

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Berk and bee summarised a number of factors that correlate with marital stability and quality:

Parenthood like other life events can be stressful and rewarding.  In our culture it can sometimes be unexpected and there is often little preparation and support.  

Whereas compared to LEDCs, the newborns are welcomed into a tight system of social support, e.g. the Amazonian Penare Indians, Nomadic Wodabe of western Sudan or Mexican Americans, where there is a ritual that lasts 40 days called la cuarntena.  This is where grandmothers, friends, mother’s in law… all come and help with chores ...

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