by Benjamin Karney, Ph.D. Professor of Social Psychology, UCLA
Relationship expert, Benjamin Karney from UCLA, discusses couples and stress. Dr. Karney writes, "Reuben Hill first pointed out in his classic and influential Family Stress Theory, the impact of any specific stressor on a relationship is likely to depend on the broader landscape of additional stressors the couple faces and the resources available to cope with them."
by Paul C. Rosenblatt, Ph.D., Morse–Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor, Department of Family Social Science, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, prosenbl@umn.edu
An important way in which the family field benefits society is that our research and theory can illuminate everyday taken-for-granted relationship life in ways that enrich, empower, educate, and perhaps entertain the general public. Take couple bed-sharing. Tens of millions of adult couples in the United States share a bed, but until recently not much was written about it in the academic literature or the popular press.
by Judith Treas, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, University of California, Irvine
Housework has been a gold mine for research. Searching Sociological Abstracts online identifies more than 1,000 articles on the topic. The twenty-first century, however, has taken research in a new direction. There are now more studies on how couples in other countries divide the work around the house, including studies of non-Western societies such as China. Instead of simply putting couples' housekeeping under a microscope, researchers are switching to a wide-angle lens.
