Frequency and Conception of Non-normative Life Events

This section discusses which non-normative life events the couples of the sample experienced during the observation period and how these events are linked to relationship quality. The theoretical section in this chapter shows that non-normative life events can have negative consequences for the relationship. However, usually several events are analysed in a single analysis or only specific events are considered. In this thesis, events concerning different life domains are considered and their impact on conjugal relationships is investigated separately.

More detailed analyses on their effects on the relationship quality in dependency on conjugal interactions are presented in chapter 5. This chapter discusses descriptive results of the single life events.

In the study, participants were asked to give information about whether they had already experienced certain non-normative events, and if so, they were asked in what year (Question 8).

This thesis focuses only on events which occurred between the first and third wave, in detail, between 1998 and 2011. Limiting the occurrence of the events to this time span allows better control over the impacts of those events on the relationship. By dint of this restriction, it is also assured that each partner was already in a relationship with the partner who has been interviewed as well; therefore, the results can be interpreted on the dyadic level. Both, men and women provided information about the experience with the life events. From the perspective of stress spillover theory, it is assumed that an event which is experienced by only one partner will also have effects for the other partner (Bolger et al., 1989; Lavee & Ben-Ari, 2007; Neff &

Karney, 2004).

Table 15 shows the distribution of the occurrence of the non-normative life events. In this thesis, two groups are considered – socio-professional events and health-related events. The classification is oriented to the classification of the first wave. Using correspondence analyses, an examination was conducted of which single events show low distance to each other (Widmer et al., 2003). Socio-professional life events principally comprise events concerning the professional life as well as problems with the justice system. Health-related life events involve events which are related to specific health problems, injuries. Or death in the family. The table indicates that the event which was cited the most often is a serious illness or an accident. Other non-normative life events were rarely talked about by the respondents. A period of

3.2 Frequency and Conception of Non-normative Life Events 89

unemployment as well as depression or mental problems were experienced by ten percent of the sample. The figures also show that the responses of men and women differ only marginally from each other and that they are significantly associated.

Table 15: Non-normative Life Events between Wave 1 and 3 (%)

Men Women Cramers'V Chi² df

Socio-professional live events Problems with the justice system (trials,

convictions) 3 3 0.16*** 38.78*** 4

Significant professional downgrade 4 3 0.10 5.66 4

Period of unemployment 7 5 0.20*** 54.92*** 4

Serious financial difficulties, substantial debts,

insolvency 3 3 0.35*** 179.92*** 4

Health-related life events

Serious illness or an accident 28 24 0.19*** 51.76*** 4

Depression, mental problems 4 7 0.12*** 19.85*** 4

Death of a child or a partner 2 1 0.66*** 628.74*** 4

Involuntary pregnancy interruption/sudden

abortion 2 2 0.40*** 231.95*** 4

Infertility, unsuccessful pregnancy attempt 1 2 0.27*** 103.17*** 4 Note: indication that event was experienced, N: 719-721, *** p≤0.001.

In this thesis, non-normative life events will be analysed as a cumulative index of the single items; these have been grouped together in order to test whether couples experienced at least one of the life events in each category. Therefore, a cumulative index was constructed in order to examine how many socio-professional and health-related events the couples had to grapple with. The construction of these indices refers to those of Wave 1 (Widmer et al., 2003). The indices of each category of events have been dichotomised in order to distinguish couples who faced at least one event and couples who did not report the occurrence of an event. Almost half of the couples (48%) were confronted with health-related life events between Wave 1 and Wave 3. In contrast, only about one fifth of the couples faced socio-professional life events during the observation period.

In a next step, it will be shown how these non-normative life events are linked to the clusters of relationship quality, which have been introduced in chapter 2.3. A test of association between the variables (Cramers' V) showed that relationship quality is not significantly associated to health-related events (Cramers' V 0.1), whereas there is a significant association between socio-professional events and conjugal quality (Cramers' V 0.19***). Also tested was whether each single event of the health-related events were associated with different dimensions of

90 Chapter 3. Critical Life Events and Transitions

relationship quality as well as with the typology of relationship quality. That was done in order to test whether the use of an index may hide certain effects. Given the low case numbers of some items, the test only looked at accidents, illness and psychological problems. These results were not significant either, as can be seen in Table 16.

Table 16: Association between Health-related Life Events and Relationship Quality

Association between serious illness and accidents and relationship quality Cramers'V

Clusters of relationship quality 0.10 socio-professional life events. Illustration 18 presents a correspondence analysis between the cluster of conjugal quality and socio-professional life events. Correspondence analysis is used here to show graphically how the clusters of relationship quality are associated with the occurrence of socio-professional life events. Through use of correspondence analysis, associations between categorical variables are displayed in a map. This is regarded as an exploratory method to uncover possible associations between variables. The single points in this map illustrate the distances between the single variables. The smaller the distance, the more the variables are associated with one another (Everitt & Dunn, 2001). No indications about the direction of possible correlations are made using correspondence analyses. Here it is used to show how the categories of the variables are associated with each other.

3.2 Frequency and Conception of Non-normative Life Events 91

N =720, Cramers' V = 0.19***, Chi² = 26.30***, df = 6; *** p≤0.001.

The horizontal axis represents the socio-professional life events and the vertical axis the clusters of relationship quality. The experience of socio-professional life events is linked to the clusters of Conflicting couples, couples with Low quality and couples with a Decreasing quality. In contrast, couples of the Harmonious, Resigned and Decreasing satisfaction cluster are more related to the non-experience of socio-professional life events.

Illustration 18: Correspondence Analysis of Relationship Quality and Socio-professional Events

92 Chapter 3. Critical Life Events and Transitions