Stressful Life Events, Marital Satisfaction, and Marital Management Skills of Taiwanese Couples

In modern societies, stress is a prevalent experience for people as there are more and more life demands. Over the life course, people not only experience multiple life transitions but also encounter unexpected life events. Normal transitions combined with critical life events can be stressful for people due to limited social, psychological, and economic resources and coping skills (Pearlin, 2010). This stress can become detrimental to individuals' mental and physical health (Pearlin, Schieman, Fazio, & Meersman, 2005; Reynolds & Turner, 2008) and marital relationships (Neff & Karney, 2009; Pearlin, 2010). However, research findings about the effects of stressful life events on relationship quality are inconsistent because couples react to major life events with different coping skills (Randall & Bodenmann, 2008). Therefore, one goal of this article is to extend the literature relatedtotheassociationbetweenmajorstressful life events and marital satisfaction and examine the interaction effects of coping skills with this relationship.Most stress research has been performed with Western populations and thus may not be equally generalized to Eastern societies. People in collectivist Eastern cultures have different perspectives of their world and interpersonal relationships and may handle stressful life events and relational distress differently. In this study, we specifically chose Taiwanese samples to study to explore how Chinese cultural values cultivated by Confucianism intersect the asso- ciation between stressful life events and marital satisfaction among current Taiwanese couples.STRESSFUL LIFE EVENTS AND MODERATING ROLE OF CULTURAL MARITAL MANAGEMENT SKILLS IN CHINESE CULTUREEmpirical studies have shown that major stressful life events in different life domains such as work and relationships with spouses' parents produce stressful situations and are negatively associated with couples' marital quality (Bryant, Conger, & Meehan, 2001; Pearlin, 2010; Schulz, Cowan, Cowan, & Brennan, 2004). In addition, internal and major events such as caregiving for ill spouses (Cannuscio et al., 2002) or a child with cancer (Long & Marsland, 2011) could cause stress.Stress process (Pearlin, 2010) and coping theory (Lazarus, 1993a, 1993b) suggest that people manage meanings of a stressful situation to reduce its detrimental outcomes when they perceive the specific life demands are exceeding their coping resources. What an individual copes with in a stressful situation also depends on the context in which the stressful life event occurs and how it informs people's meaning- making process (Lazarus, 1993b). To study how Taiwanese couples handle stress, it is important to recognize the Chinese sociocultural context that shapes the way people perceive their marital relationship and maintain marital satisfaction.In Taiwan, people practice Confucianism embedded in Chinese culture. Unlike China and HongKongwherepeoplealsoshareChinesecul- ture but have experienced Westernization much earlier because of social, political, and historical reasonssincetheearliertwentiethcentury(Chan, Ho, & Tam, 1997; Whyte, 2005), Taiwanese people still practice Confucianism and generally value the dominance of social interaction and reciprocal interdependence more than the inter- ests of individuals (Chan & Lee, 2004; Li & Chen, 2012). However, Taiwanese couples are increasingly adopting an egalitarian relationship and emphasizing romantic love due to economic development and Westernization (Shen, 2005; Whyte, 2005). In other words, Confucianism still influences Taiwanese people, but Western cul- tures also are gradually influencing their values.Taiwanese people grow up in family-oriented environments. The Confucian doctrine of ''five cardinal ethics'' defines each family member's interaction (e.g., relative role and power position) for dyadic relationships such as father and son, sovereign and subordinate, husband and wife, older and younger siblings, and friends (Chan & Lee, 2004). …