Seeking and giving emotional care

Abstract

What does the time deficit sharply experienced by most working parents have to do with marital adjustment? The results of a qualitative analysis of relationship interviews collected from working parents of 6-year-olds suggest that time, gender, and spouses' styles of attachment are among the major factors associated with emotional care in couple relationships. I argue that the "time bind" working parents endure might interfere with their ability to work out their conflicts and fulfill each other's emotional needs to mutual satisfaction. Although marital partners' styles of attachment to their partners are associated with their ability to seek and give emotional care, the decisive factor in how spouses feel about their relationship is whether they eventually take time to show mutual understanding and compassion with respect to one or both partners' emotional distress. In addition, the findings reveal gender differences in the ways husbands and wives deal with careseeking and caregiving and engage in every stage of emotion interaction process, confirming the earlier findings that women take on a greater share of emotion work than men.