Erin Kramer and Dr. Alan J. Hawkins, Family Sciences

I conducted this qualitative analysis to better understand how men care for their wives, how this care influences men’s relationships with their wives, how this care may also influence men’s relationships with their children, and how this care influences men’s personal generative development. My research was written as an undergraduate honors thesis.

This research on care is based on Erik Erikson’s theory of human life-span development. In his theory, Erikson suggests humans spend the majority of their adult lives learning the concept of care in a stage called generativity. According to Erikson, generativity is based on a “procreative drive” and an individual’s “need to be needed” (1). When this work of caring for the needs of another human being becomes a large part of adult life, generativity becomes the “challenge to adults to create, care for, and promote the development of others, from nurturing the growth of another person to shepherding the development of a broader community” (7, p. 19). Implicit in generative care is a moral obligation adults have to care for other people once they recognize other people need care. This care is most often studied under the context of parent-child relationships, and researchers have used Erikson’s theory as the base of research on how fathers care for their children and how that care influences men’s personal development (4, 5, 6, 7).

Doherty, Kouneski, and Erickson suggest the care fathers give their children is also related to the relationship already established with the mother of these children. (3) In his theory of human development, Erikson also implies the same connection between fathers’ care for their children and fathers’ care for their wives. According to Erikson, despite a father’s role as parent, his ability to care for others is inhibited if he fails to develop intimacy (which produces the virtue of love) in his earlier years. Erikson describes intimacy as a “true closeness and sharing” (2, p. 97). This intimacy also includes a committed and faithful relationship which presupposes the sharing of life, work, and productivity nurtured by the bond of adult sexuality” (2, p. 98). One of the most common places one finds such an intimate bond is marriage. This suggests that a marital bond would promote the special intimacy which Erikson theorizes leads to a further desire to develop committed and productive relationships with others. Once this intimate bond is formed between spouses and a new child becomes part of their world, it is easy to infer from Erikson’s theory and from other research based on Erikson’s theory that the care men develop through their relationships with their children may also continue to develop in their already established relationships with their spouses. These ideas have not previously been explored by many researchers in human development, and the purpose of my research was to seek a better understanding of both love and care in family relationships.

I chose to explore my ideas in a descriptive qualitative analysis of 28 transcripts (14 wives and their respective 14 husbands). All interviews were previously collected by trained graduate students at BYU. Interviews lasted one-and-a-half to two hours. The majority of the participants in this sample were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Every couple in the sample was from central Utah, and every family had a child with a disability. (Families whose children have disabilities seemed a fruitful context in which to study care.) Approval from the Institutional Review Board was obtained before any interviews were conducted.

I discovered husbands care for their wives in five major ways. To support each category, I included numerous quotes from participants in the research. These quotes helped define and enhance the categories. However, since my space here is limited, I will only list the topics of these categories of care. First, husbands care for their wives by supporting their wives; second, they recognize and respond unselfishly to their wives’ needs; third, they share personal feelings with their wives; fourth, they care for their wives during the specific instances of pregnancy and childbirth; and fifth, they care for their wives indirectly by caring for their children. Each of these ways of caring is significant to the marriage relationship because they gives wives and husbands the opportunity to feel closer to each other. This closeness is a connection they both share, and the experiences when husbands cared for their wives become experiences each member of the couple can turn to when they begin to feel emotionally distant from each other. The closeness they feel to each other is an instance of intimacy in their relationship, much like the intimacy Erikson describes in his theory. This seems to suggest that people not only begin to move into the generative stage after they have developed intimate relationships, but it also suggests people move back and forth between Erikson’s sixth and seventh stages of intimacy and generativity in their relationships. It also seems to suggest that Erikson’s virtues of love and care continue to be learned in connection with each other. When a husband cares for his wife, he shows her he loves her. Both of them feel cared for, and both of them feel loved. It is the love they feel for each other that helps them seek other opportunities to care for each other. In turn, it is the care they give each other which reminds them that they belong to each other and will continue to love each other. Because they have experiences like these from which to draw, they are more resilient in those harder times in their relationships which have such great potential to break-up the intimate connection they once built.

I also discovered this care is similar to the care fathers give their children under a generative model. Like fathers for their children, husbands help promote their wives’ development by meeting their wives’ needs. Husbands, like fathers, also care for their wives by committing to them and sacrificing for them. This commitment and sacrifice not only helps wives develop because their needs are being met, but it also helps strengthen the relationship between husbands and wives. If husbands and wives have a stronger relationship, I can infer from previous research that children will benefit indirectly from their parent’s positive relationships (3, 4). Thus a husband’s care for his wife seems to be part of a larger cycle of care within families where all benefit directly and indirectly from the care offered in their homes.

References

1. Erikson, E. H. (1964). Childhood and society. New York: W. W. Norton.
2. Erikson, J. A. (1988). Wisdom and the senses. New York: Norton.
3. Doherty, W. J., Kouneski, E. F., & Erickson, M. F. (1998). Responsible fathering: An overview and conceptual framework. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 60, 277-292.
4. Dollahite, D.C., Hawkins, A. H., & Brotherson, S. E. (1997). Fatherwork: A conceptual ethic of fathering as generative work. In A. J. Hawkins, & D. C. Dollahite (Eds.), Generative fathering: Beyond deficit perspectives (pp. 17-35). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishing.
5. Hawkins, A. J., Christiansen, S. L., Sargent, K. P., & Hill, E. J. (1993). Rethinking fathers’ involvement in child care: A developmental perspective. Journal of Family Issues, 14, 531-549.
6. Palkovitz, R. (1996). Parenting as a gnerator of adult development: Conceptual issues and implications. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 13, 571-592.
7. Snarey, J. (1993). How fathers care for the next generation: A four-decade study. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.