The peer-reviewed work was a study done to discover and analyze the emotion work with respect to physical health problems in marriage. The author of this article was Mieke Beth Thomeer, Department of Sociology, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham in the United States of America.
Elsevier published it in the Journal of Aging Studies Journal. The authors acknowledge the grants from Debra Umberson, the Principal Investigator, and Mark Hayward. The authors also acknowledge the works and research done by others on the same issue.
The Purpose of the Research
In marriage, spouses do intentional work to promote each other’s emotional well-being. It is done as a duty towards the other spouse so as to support the institution of marriage. It also helps spouses to know how they can go the extra mile to make the relationship last longer. Very many researchers have dwelt on getting very positive results.
However, not much is available on emotion work in response to physical health problems. Therefore, the authors chose to delve deeply into this largely unexplored area. The research sought to test the ways in which the health impaired and their spouses relate with each other, how they treat each other, and how they try to make their relationship last long.
Health is an essential element in any relationship. It is good that one seeks to understand his or her partner. It enables them to work together towards making the marriage a success. The research was also meant to discover how physical health, marital dynamics, and emotion work differently in different relationships.
Previous Findings
Previously, there had been some findings related to this project. The researchers found out that emotion work was present in marriages during times of high stress. When one of the spouses was undergoing emotional problems, the partner employed emotion work as care for the suffering spouse. They also discovered that the physical health issue was the primary cause of high stress in the marriage. It could lead to undesired conflict.
Physical health problems also determined gender divisions. The reason some of their findings were different was that they were only testing one spouse in a marriage. Previous research also found out that emotion work directed towards enhancing a spouse’s emotional well-being was gendered. It was with regard to how the participants understood and explained the division of emotion work. Due to this, care work helped to produce or reproduce gender inequalities.
The society also defined what marriage was, and the expectations of each spouse. The socially constructed gender differences shaped the way each spouse behaved and hence created the disparities in marriage. The research by Arlie described paid work as emotion labor and unpaid work at home as emotion work. Gender scholars also found out that husbands maintain emotional control and rationality. They understand emotions.
Men were able to be caregivers to their health impaired wives just as women did. They also discovered that caregiving men were rarely emotionally caring. They also did not understand themselves. What they did not do was to study how the emotion work was linking to the physical health problems in marriage.
The study that was done previously concentrated more on women’s emotion work but never made any attributes to emotion work by men for their health impaired wives. Another finding from Hochschild was that previous research ignored the emotional component of service workers. Ignorance and lack of appreciation undermined their spirit.
The Research Methodologies
Researchers obtained the sample from Marital Quality. They used 30 couples, which translated to 60 individuals. The period for their marriage ranged from 7 years and above. They used a local newspaper to recruit the respondents. The participants also referred to other respondents.
Two of the authors conducted the interview (the second and the third author). Before the invitation for the interview, they used the phone calls to screen the respondents. It was to enable them to obtain their income and marital quality diversity. Interviews were carried out with the assistance of a research assistant. They separated the spouses during the interview so that each one could have the freedom to speak their minds. The meetings took a minimum of 1.5 hours and a maximum of 2.5 hours.
Afterward, they did an analytical sample composition where they sampled them according to their races. The majority of the respondents were whites, followed by the Blacks then the Asian Americans. They also sampled their average household incomes and their level of education. They also analyzed the data using the qualitative analysis approach. They coded the interview data. The dyadic interview design helped the authors to deal with all the issues they expected and got differing opinions from both sides.
The Key Findings of the Research
The research helped to discover that the spouses provided emotion work in marriage for each other. Another thing to note is that some men said they did not give emotion work. Their wives confirmed the same information. Ten out of the nineteen men who had married health impaired women produced emotion work.
The husband’s emotion work kept on changing depending on the problem being experienced. In a particular interview, the wife had suffered physical impairment at different stages of life. The way her husband cared for her was out of touch at first. After coaching, he learned more during the next impairment and was more caring for her than he had done previously.
Some husbands never cared at all for their physically impaired wives. Even their women confirmed the information. They never even concealed their emotions in the presence of their wives. It resulted in causing more stress to the spouse. Emotion work requires one to know how to control his or her emotions so that one may be able to encourage the physically impaired to have peace.
There were also mixed signals in some spouses’ statements. There were those husbands who felt that they were doing something to help their health impaired wives, but it was not enough. But their wives felt that for them to be around to support and give some encouraging words was sufficient to help them emotionally.
Implications and Applications of the Key Findings
Traditionally, women are known to offer emotion work. They become so nurturing that they more or so look like the best nurses. It is good that they continue with that same spirit. As wives, they need to coach their husbands as one spouse did.
In contemporary society, both genders have come to accept and practice roles that were wrong against particular genders career-wise. It is important for both to learn how to take care of each other’s spouses. It increases the bond of love they share as husband and wife. When one of the spouses is physically impaired, the other spouse needs to practice emotion work to prevent stress and emotional strain.