Marriage, Communication, and Parenting

Vocabulary flashcards covering key marital typologies, communication dynamics, conflict resolution strategies, parenting concepts, and developmental theories from Chapters 10 and 11.

Latent reasons for marriage

Unstated and not immediately obvious motives for getting married, such as gaining social legitimacy, relieving social pressure, gaining economic security, and solving personal problems.

Engagement

The formalization of a couple's decision to marry.

Couple Relationship Education (CRE)

Premarital education programs provided by religious groups, nonprofit organizations, schools, counselors, and family life educators.

Conflict-habituated marriage

A marriage characterized by ongoing tension and conflict where partners fight verbally and physically, believing feuding is an acceptable way to solve problems and not a reason for divorce.

Devitalized marriage

A marriage in which partners have lost their strong emotional connection but stay together out of duty, with one or both partners unhappy but committed to remaining married.

Passive-congenial marriage

A marriage where partners have little emotional investment, hold few expectations of each other, and often maintain separate activities and interests.

Vital marriage

A marriage in which partners' lives are closely intertwined, spend substantial time together, resolve conflicts through compromise, and make sacrifices for each other.

Total marriage

A marriage where couples participate in each other's lives at all levels and have few tensions or unresolved hostility.

Utilitarian marriages

Marriages entered into or maintained for convenience, encompassing conflict-habituated, devitalized, and passive-congenial types.

Intrinsic marriages

Marriages that seem to be inherently rewarding, encompassing vital and total marriages.

Hostile-detached couples

Partners who are frustrated, lonely, sniping, resigned, and prone to divorce.

Hostile couples

Partners who are critical, contemptuous, and prone to divorce, but typically stay unhappily married.

Conflict minimizers

Couples who have more positive than negative interactions, are happy, and maintain some separate interests.

Validators

Couples who are more positive than negative, happy, connected, and address conflict relatively calmly.

Volatile couples

Couples who are more positive than negative, highly expressive, persuasive, and use a lot of humor.

Marital stability

A measure that refers to whether a marriage remains intact.

Marital satisfaction

A measure that refers to whether each partner views the marriage as happy and satisfactory, even if not necessarily perfect.

Marital burnout

A couple's gradual deterioration of love and ultimate loss of an emotional attachment.

Selection effect

The tendency where healthy individuals are attracted to others like themselves, avoiding partners with psychological problems or substance abuse issues.

Protection effect

Also called the 'marriage advantage'; the health and longevity benefits gained from spousal emotional, physical, and financial support, which reduce anxiety and depression while enhancing psychological well-being.

Marital roles

The attitudes and behaviors of adult intimate partners regarding their economic and family responsibilities.

Identity bargaining

The process of partners negotiating adjustments to their new married lives.

Empty nest syndrome

Depression and a lessened sense of well-being, particularly among women, when their children leave home.

Boomerang generation

Young adults who move back into their parents' home after living independently for a period of time.

Effective communication

Verbal and nonverbal exchange that is clear, nonjudgmental, nonpunitive, and promotes attentive listening.

Listening

The process of giving thoughtful attention to what we hear.

Verbal communication

The spoken exchange of thoughts, feelings, or other messages, encompassing word content, tone, and expression.

Imprecision

A communication barrier caused by misunderstandings when a single word carries several different meanings.

Overgeneralizing

Communication statements that imply definitive conclusions have been reached about a partner's habitual behavior, often using terms like 'always.'

Static evaluation

Statements that remind someone of past statements or states and allow no room for change or growth.

Polarization

Speaking in extremes or viewing issues in absolute terms while ignoring the middle ground.

Self-disclosure

Telling another person about ourselves, our thoughts, and our feelings with the expectation that truly open communication will follow.

Validation

Showing respect for a person who holds a different opinion or point of view.

Mansplaining

An explanation of something by a man, typically to a woman, delivered in a condescending or patronizing manner.

Cross-complaining

A communication issue where partners present their own grievances without addressing the points raised by the other person.

Counterproposals

A pattern in which a spouse ignores or rejects their partner's suggestions and presents their own conflicting ideas instead.

Stonewalling

A pattern, more common among men, where a partner gives minimal responses like 'Hmm' or 'Uh-huh' while neither genuinely hearing nor responding.

Scapegoating

A way of avoiding honest communication by blaming another person, thereby implying that the other person must be the one to change.

Repression (in relationships)

Withholding wants and needs to prevent conflict, under the false assumption that unaddressed problems will disappear on their own.

Contempt

An intense negative communication pattern characterized by insults, name-calling, sarcasm, hostile humor, mockery, sneering, eye-rolling, and public humiliation.

Power

The ability to impose one's will on others.

Accommodation

A conflict ending technique in which one person submits or yields, ending the conflict by agreeing or going along with the partner.

Compromise

A conflict resolution technique where partners find a middle ground by each conceding a little, engaging in mutual collaboration and problem-solving.

Standoff

A conflict management technique where disputants drop the argument without resolving it, agreeing to disagree so that the conflict ends in a draw.

Withdrawal

The least effective conflict technique, in which a disputant refuses to continue the argument by clamming up or exiting the room without resolution.

Infertility

The inability to get pregnant after trying for a year.

Assisted reproductive technology (ART)

A general category encompassing all fertility treatments in which both egg and sperm are handled.

In vitro fertilization (IVF)

A procedure where ovulation-stimulating drugs produce an excess of eggs, which are surgically retrieved and fertilized with sperm in a laboratory setting.

Role overload

A feeling of being overwhelmed by multiple commitments, leaving inadequate time to fulfill family roles.

Role conflict

The frustrations and uncertainties experienced when the expectations of two or more distinct roles are incompatible with one another.

Role strain

Conflicts, stressors, or incompatible demands felt entirely within a single role.

Maternal gatekeeping

A mother's behaviors and attitudes that either encourage or discourage a father's involvement in family tasks and childcare.

Theory of the Social Self

George Herbert Mead's symbolic interactionist theory positing that the self is the core of humanity and develops through social interaction rather than biological urges.

Cognitive Development Theory

Jean Piaget's developmental framework addressing a child's efforts to understand the world, adapt to it, and develop an independent identity.

Psychosocial Theory of Development

Erik Erikson's developmental framework explaining human development across the entire lifespan rather than limiting focus to childhood and adolescence.

Bioecological Theory of Development

Urie Bronfenbrenner's model stating that development is shaped by the ongoing interaction between a child's intrinsic characteristics and their environment.

Social Learning Theory

Alfred Bandura's theory proposing that children acquire behaviors not only through direct reinforcement, but also by watching and imitating others.

Authoritarian parenting

A parenting style characterized by low parental support combined with high parental control.

Permissive parenting

A parenting style characterized by high parental support combined with low parental control.

Authoritative parenting

A parenting style characterized by high parental support combined with high parental control.

Uninvolved parenting

A parenting style characterized by low parental support combined with low parental control.