College of Education

School of Continuing and Distance Education 2014/2015 – 2016/2017

Lecturer: Dr. Joana Salifu Yendork, Department of Psychology

Contact Information: jyendork@ug.edu.gh

Session Overview

• Relationship, love, sex and marriage are critical to the psychological well-being of adults given the protective function they play. This session will focus on explaining the types of relationships, issues in relationship, family dynamics and the life course. The implications for well-being will also be discussed.

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Session Outline

The key topics to be covered in the session are as follows:

• Types of relationships

• Issues in relationships

• Lifestyles and love relationship

• Family dynamics and the life course

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Reading List

• Read Chapter 11 of Recommended Text – Adult development and aging, Cavanaugh & Blanchard-Fields (2006).

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TYPES OF RELATIONSHIPS Topic One

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Friendship • Friendship is important throughout the life span • Friendship provides people with:

– Companionship – Intimacy/affection – Support – Source of self-esteem, self-awareness and self-respect – Help us socialise into new roles throughout adulthood – Friendship in adulthood is tied to life satisfaction

• Patterns of friendships in late life are different to those in young adulthood – Older adults have fewer relationships than younger adults

• Friendship in older adulthood provides a sense of independence, fun

– Older adults develop fewer new relationships than those in midlife and young adults

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Friendship

• To explain why older adults have few friends, Carstenten (1993, 1995) developed Socioemotional selectivity

• Socioemotional selectivity - social contact is motivated by many goals, including information seeking, self-concept, and emotional regulation.

– Each of these goals has different degree of importance at different points in the adult lifespan, leading to different social behaviours

• Information seeking is predominant for young adults, whereas emotional regulation is the major goal for older adults (Carstensen, 1995).

• The three goals are in balance in midlife

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Siblings relationship

• Siblings are among the closest in older adulthood – Dates to childhood and adolescences and based on shared family

experiences

– Other dimensions include involvement with each other, frequency of contact, envy, and resentment

• Gold et al. (1990) identified 5 types of sibling relationships:

• Intimate sibling relationships • High closeness, involvement, and contact.

• Low envy and resentment.

• Congenial sibling relationships • High closeness, involvement. Avg. contact.

• Low envy and resentment.

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Sibling Relationships

• Loyal sibling relationships – Avg. closeness, involvement, and contact. – Low envy and resentment.

• Apathetic sibling relationships – Low closeness, involvement, contact, envy and resentment.

• Hostile sibling relationships – High involvement and resentment. – Low levels of closeness and contact.

• Sister ties are strongest, most common, and most intimate whereas brothers tend to maintain less frequent contact

• Sibling ties are strongest in adolescence and late life

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Love relationship

• Love underlies most important relationships in life

• Components of love (Sternberg, 1986)

– Passion: intense physiological desire for someone

– Intimacy: the feeling that one can share all one’s thoughts and actions with another

– Commitment: the willingness to stay with a person throughout good and bad times.

• True love relationship has all 3 components

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Love relationship

• Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love:

• Triangle with three main dimensions:

– Passion: physical and sexual attraction to another

– Intimacy: emotional feelings of warmth, closeness, and sharing

– Commitment: cognitive appraisal of the relationship and the intent to maintain the relationship even in the face of problems

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Sternberg’s triangle of love

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How do men and women fall in love?

• The theory of assortative mating (Sher, 1996) explains how men and women fall in love

• The theory states that people find partners based on their similarity to each other.

• Similarity occurs along several dimensions: religious beliefs, physical traits, age, socio-emotional status, intelligence, and political ideology.

• Mate selection is assumed to be non-random, allowing people to have control over their own dating and pairing behaviours.

• Most common in Western societies

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How do men and women fall in love?

• Cultural effects

– Chastity is highly desired in some cultures, but it matters little in other cultures

– Arranged marriages are a major way of ensuring appropriate match on key dimensions in some cultures

– Family members have stronger influence on mate selection in some cultures

• Electronically mediated means of mate selection or matching.

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ISSUES IN RELATIONSHIPS Topic Two

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Violence in Relationships

• Abusive relationship: Relationship in which one person becomes aggressive toward the partner.

– Example: the battered woman syndrome

– O’Leary (1993) argues that a continuum of aggressive behaviours toward a spouse progresses as follows:

• verbally aggressive behaviours, physically aggressive behaviours, severe physically aggressive behaviours, and murder of the partner.

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Types of violence in Relationship

• Abusive relationship – Common couple violence: violence that occurs

occasionally and that be instigated by either partner

– Patriarchal terrorism: systematic violence by men against women

– Women are not as violent as men in relationships

• Factors related to abusive relationship: – Need for control, misuse of power, jealousy

– Contextual factors (culture): abuse of women higher in cultures that emphasize female honour and portray woman as passive

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Violence in Relationship

• Elder abuse – “The infliction of physical, emotional/psychological, sexual or financial

harm on an older adult. Elder abuse can also take the form of intentional or unintentional neglect of an older adult by the caregiver” (APA, 2012, p. 3).

– Categories include: • Physical abuse

• Emotional or psychological abuse

• Financial/material exploitation

• Abandonment

• Caregiver neglect

• Sexual

• Self-neglect

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Violence in relationship

• Elder abuse

• Factors associated with elder abuse

– Family stressors

– Caregiver stressors

– Societal and cultural factors

• Stereotypes about the aged (ageism)

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LIFESTYLES AND LOVE RELATIONSHIP Topic Three

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Adult lifestyles: Single adults

• Dramatic rise in the last 30 years

• Common problems: – Forming intimate relationships with other adults

– Confronting loneliness

– Finding a place in a society that is marriage-oriented

• Advantages: – Having time to make decisions about one’s life

– Freedom to make autonomous decisions and pursue one’s own schedule and interests

– Opportunities to explore new places and try out new things

– Privacy

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Cohabitation

• Types of Cohabitation

• Part-time or limited cohabitation: based on convenience, sharing expenses, and sexual accessibility. No long-term commitment involved; marriage usually not a goal

• Premarital cohabitation: involves couple engaging in a trial marriage. Couple usually separates, if marriage doesn’t follow

• Substitute marriage: involves a long-term commitment between two people without a legal marriage – Common in most European, South American, and Caribbean countries.

– Cohabitation rates are generally lower in Africa and Asia

• Problems: – Disapproval by parents and other family members

– Difficulty with legal and financial issues

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Marriage

• Factors influencing marital success

– Relative maturity of the two partners at the time of marriage:

• Older couples are more likely to be similar in mental and physical health and show fewer gender differences in sources of pleasure

• Older couples usually have developed effective ways to avoid conflict

– Homogamy: similarity of values and interests

– Feeing of equality in the relationship

• Overall, couple satisfaction is highest at the beginning of marriage, falls until children being leaving home, and rises again in later life (Miller eta l., 1997).

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Divorce

• Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, cancelling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties involved (Ambert, 2009).

• 664 divorces out of over 1,647 registered marriages between 2006 and 2007 in Accra

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Divorce

• According to Sasse (1997), before the final stage of divorce, the couple’s relationship goes through three general stages.

– Isolation: couples become separated from each other as intimacy behaviour breaks down, although they might still converse and be polite to each other.

– Invalidation: couples begin to negatively assess each other’s worth and belittle one another, giving rise to accusations.

– Betrayal: trust is broken down and there is no support from each other.

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Why do marriages break down?

• Asante, Osafo, & Nyamekye (2014) did a qualitative study among 12 Ghanaian divorcees and found the following factors:

• Non-submissiveness – linked to women’s economic empowerment – “To me women empowerment is not too good because the

women tend to be arrogant when they are successful in business.”

• Inadequate love and affection: lack of affection, desire for orgasm (sexual dissatisfaction)

• Lack of commitment and trust

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Aftermath of divorce

• Labelling, stigma and regret (Asante et al., 2014); more severe in females than males. – Yes, I was judged especially at church. It got to a time I was not

affected by the divorce but the environment, gosh! It was so piecing. For about 9 months I could only go to church in the evenings and I always had to rent a taxi cab as soon as church was over and as soon as I got out of the house, I never walked. I was also not looking into people’s faces because the smiles in their eyes were different from that of their heart because I hear so many things. I had to leave the church because the whole blame was shifted on me.

• Recovery from divorce is different for men and women. – Men tend to have tougher time in the short run; women have harder

time in the long run, often for financial reasons

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Widowhood

• The death of a spouse is among the most traumatic experiences a person will experience

• More than half of all women over 65 are widows

– 15% of men the same age are widowers

• Friends and family may not visit or socialize as much with elders after the death of a spouse

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Widowhood

• Men are at a higher risk of dying themselves, soon after the death of a spouse – Some researchers believe that a man’s wife is often his only

close friend and confidant

– There is evidence that older men are less likely to be able to carry out routine activities such as shopping and financial responsibilities

• Women are usually less financially secure when widowed and are more likely to enter poverty status

• Widowers (male) are 5 times more likely to remarry than widows (female)

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FAMILY DYNAMICS AND THE LIFE COURSE

Topic Four

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Family dynamics and the life course

• Families experience a series of fairly predictable changes that constitute the family life cycle

• Family life cycle models help us understand the changes families go through as children mature

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Intergenerational relationships

• Kinship ties can be conceptualized in three ways (Riley & Riley, 1996)

– Simple: involve two generations

• Parents and children

– Expanded: involving three generations

• Connections with each are mediated by the middle generation

– Latent: involving in-laws, step kins and other relatives

• Lacks formal boundaries

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The parental role

• Primarily involves taking care of one’s own children

• Alternative forms of parenting

– Single parenting

• Financially strained, difficulty balancing work and family, less emotional support and intimacy

– Foster parenting, adoptive parenting, and step-parenting

• Problems with bonding (older children), mental challenges for children, conflict between non-custodian biological and adoptive parents

• Dealing with empty nest in mid-adulthood

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Grandparenthood

• Becoming a grandparent can be exciting and represent new roles

• Styles of grandparenting (Neugarten & Weinstein, 1964) – Formal: express strong interest in the grandchild, occasionally indulge

and babysit but maintain a hands off attitude towards childrearing

– Fun seeking: relationship is characterized by occasional playfulness

– Distant: Appear mainly on holidays, birthdays or other formal occasions with gifts but otherwise has little contact with grand children

– Surrogate parent: Steps in when parents are absent

– Dispenser of family wisdom: Assume an authoritarian position and offer information and advice

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Grandparenthood

• Meanings derived from grandparenting (Kivnick, 1982)

– Centrality: the degree to which grandparenting is a primary role in one’s life

– Value as an elder: being perceived as a wise, helpful person

– Immortality through clan: the feeling that a person is leaving behind not just one but two generations.

– Reinvolvement with one’s personal past: recalling relationships with one own grandparents

– Indulgence: getting satisfaction from having fun with one’s grandchildren.

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Great-Grandparenthood

• Great-grandparenting is an enjoyable and important role

• Three important aspects of great-grandparenthood:

– Gives a sense of personal and family renewal

– Great-grandchildren provide new diversions and a positive new role

– A major milestone of longevity, which is usually viewed positively

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Sample Questions

• What role do friends play across the adult life span?

• How are siblings important, especially in late life?

• What characterizes love relationships? How do they vary across cultures?

• What are abusive relationships? What are elder abuse and neglect?

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References

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