"In Sickness and in Health"

Abstract

The effects of gender, age, marital satisfaction, and physical impairment on patterns of giving and receiving social support and social undermining (e.g., personal criticism) were examined in two samples totaling 431 older married couples. In the first sample, data were collected from husbands and their wives, half of whom were long-term breast cancer (BC) survivors and half who constituted an a symptomatic, matched control group. The second sample included data from husbands and their wives who had recently been diagnosed to have breast cancer. Wives reported giving more social support to their husbands than they felt they received from them; and they reported giving more support than their husbands reported giving to them. Similarly, husbands reported receiving more social support from their wives than their wives reported receiving from them, except for the group of recently diagnosed BC. Advanced age was correlated with husbands' reports of receiving more social support, and in the two breast cancer groups, of also giving more social support and engaging in less social undermining. It was also found that among the women in the a symptomatic control group, those who were more physically impaired reported both giving and receiving less social support, and this was corroborated by husbands' reports. In contrast, there were no associations between wives' degree of impairment and social support in the two breast cancer groups. The differential effects were hypothesized to result from the husbands' causally attributing their wives' impairment and difficulties to internal characterological factors versus to external ones beyond their control (i.e., the BC disease).