Join us for the School of Social Sciences Brown Bag lecture series on Monday, February 28th at 12pm with Teresa Nguyen, Assistant Professor of Psychology.
Title: Beyond Marital “Happiness”: Underemployment and New Paradigms in Marital Outcomes
Beginning in the Great Depression, social scientists from a number of disciplines have attempted to understand how experiences of unemployment affect marital satisfaction and stability. Despite a strong rationale that unemployment or working less than full-time should negatively affect the stability of marital relationships, previous studies have yielded contradictory findings. Adding to this complex picture is the number of different approaches to studying unemployment and the methodological issues associated with each approach. In this study, I examine the effects of husbands’ unemployment on multiple and specific facets of marital functioning among White, Black, and Latinx couples living in low-income neighborhoods. The findings demonstrate how relationship dissatisfaction, divorce ideation, and divorce—assumed to be part of a single linear cascade—are differentially affected by underemployment. In this paper, I also discuss the methodological refinements of the study design that enabled stronger inferences regarding the role of husbands’ employment in marital functioning.
Dr. Teresa Nguyen is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department. Her research focuses on understanding why and how external stressors place couples at risk of distress and divorce.
The School of Social Sciences Brown Bag Series is always free, open to faculty, staff, students, and the public, and provides a congenial interdisciplinary forum for the discussion of recent research by School of Social Sciences faculty. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2021-2022 Brown Bag Series will take place via Zoom.