Exploring the Experience of Race-related Stress and Marital Satisfaction among African American Married Couples
Files
TR Number
Date
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how race-related stress influenced marital satisfaction among ten African American married couples. Each couple participated in a 60 to 90 minute interview and completed a measure of marital satisfaction. Using phenomenology, symbolic interactionism, and family systems theory as a theoretical lens, this study described how African American married couples came to understand if and how the phenomenon of race-related stress influenced their marital satisfaction, and what meanings they created from this experience. Using modified analytic induction, couples discussed how their individual factors influenced their perceptions of race-related stress. Race-related stress couples also discussed how the phenomenon strengthened and challenged their marital satisfaction. It was also discovered that couples with race-related stress developed ways of coping with race-related stress in an effort to protect their marital satisfaction. One of the ten couples reported not experiencing race-related stress. A conceptual model, future research, and clinical implications from these findings are discussed.