Sacrifice, commitment, and marital quality in the early years of Chinese marriage

Abstract

Using the actor–partner interdependence moderation model, this study provides a first look at the associations among sacrifice, commitment, and marital quality during the early years of marriage based on two annual waves of data obtained from Chinese couples. We found that both husbands’ and wives’ perceived cost of sacrifice (HSC and WSC, respectively) rather than frequency of sacrifice was negatively associated with the concurrent levels of their own marital quality, and that HSC was also negatively related to the subsequent changes in their own marital quality. Moreover, wives’ commitment (WCOM) moderated the association between their perceived cost of sacrifice and the concurrent levels of their own marital quality; husbands’ commitment (HCOM) moderated the associations between WSC and the concurrent levels of both husbands’ and wives’ marital quality; and WCOM moderated the association between their perceived frequency of sacrifice and the subsequent changes in husbands’ marital quality. Such findings advance our understanding of how sacrifice and commitment operate in conjunction to influence marital well-being during a stressful, transitional family life stage in a historically understudied population.