Leisure Activity Patterns and Marital Satisfaction over the Marital Career

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between the proportion of time husbands and wives spend in individual, joint, and parallel leisure activities and marital satisfaction over five marital career periods. A probability sample of upper-middle-class families in a moderate-sized Southeastern city yielded 216 husbands and 226 wives for the study. The results suggest that the three leisure activity patterns are differentially related to marital satisfaction, that husbands and wives are not influenced alike by leisure, and that the marital career period is a most critical variable in determining the influence of leisure.