Out Drinking the Joneses: Neighborhood Factors Moderating the Effects of Drinking on Relationship Quality over the First Four Years of Marriage

• Author: Janette L. Funk,Soonhee Lee,Ronald D. Rogge,Dev Crasta
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12335
• Published date: 01 December 2018
• Date: 01 December 2018

Out Drinking the Joneses: Neighborhood Factors

Moderating the Effects of Drinking on Relationship

Quality over the First Four Years of Marriage

DEV CRASTA*

JANETTE L. FUNK*

SOONHEE LEE

†

RONALD D. ROGGE*

Neighborhood quality has been cross-sectionally linked to both relationship behaviors

and relationship well-being. Consistent with the Vulnerability Stress-Adaptation model of

relationship functioning (Karney & Bradbury, 1995), we hypothesized that associations

between social behaviors (e.g., drinking) and relationship quality could be moderated by

neighborhood factors. Specifically, we characterized neighborhoods along multiple dimen-

sions using multiple methods (self-report, census) to investigate how neighborhood factors

might clarify ambiguous effects of alcohol use on marital functioning. A nationally

recruited sample of 303 newlywed couples completed a baseline assessment around the time

of marriage and was then assessed yearly across the first 4 years of marriage (94% reten-

tion). Three level HLM slope-intercept models were used to model changes in relationship

satisfaction across the first 4 years of marriage. Results suggested that, for couples living in

highly disordered neighborhoods, positive shifts in overall levels of drinking within specific

waves of assessment were associated with corresponding negative shifts in satisfaction

whereas in neighborhoods without perceived disorder, this effect was reversed. For couples

living in neighborhoods with low levels of domestic structures (high census rates of single

renters without children), within-couple discrepancies favoring higher rates of husband

drinking in specific waves predicted poorer relationship quality for both partners in those

same waves whereas those same discrepancies predicted higher satisfaction in high domes-

ticity neighborhoods (high census rates of married homeowners with children). The find-

ings provide insight into the different roles of alcohol use in relationship maintenance and

highlight the importance of using external context to understand intradyadic processes.

Keywords: Marriage; Couples; Alcohol; Neighborhood disorder; Neighborhood cohesion;

Drinking

Fam Proc 57:960–978, 2018

*University of Rochester, Rochester, NY.

†

University of Delaware, Newark, DE.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ronald D. Rogge, University of

Rochester, CSP Department 462 Meliora Hall, RC Box 270266, Rochester, NY, 14627-0266. E-mail:

rogge@psych.rochester.edu.

We would like to thank the couples that participated for taking valuable time out of their lives to support

this research. We would also like to thank Maria C. Saavedra, Elizabeth Kovaleff Baker Davidson, Amy E.

Rodrigues, and Christine O. Walsh for helping to collect the data on this project—we could not have col-

lected the same breadth, scope, and quality of data without their efforts and tremendous dedication. We

would also like to thank the scores of hard-working undergraduate research assistants who contributed to

the project. Finally, we would like to thank the National Science Foundation for their support of the pro-

ject in the form of a graduate fellowship to the first author (DGE-1419118) and the University of Rochester

for the internal funding supporting this work.

960

Family Process, Vol. 57, No. 4, 2018 ©2017 Family Process Institute

doi: 10.1111/famp.12335

Traditionally in the marital research literature, studies have focused heavily on dyadic

processes and individual factors and the impact of these factors on cross-sectional and

longitudinal relationship satisfaction. This approach has been a powerful way to identify

processes with clear adaptive and maladaptive effects on relationship quality and stability

(see Karney & Bradbury, 1995). However, restricting the scope of research to such

intradyadic factors has been less effective in clarifying the role of socially ambiguous

processes demonstrating both adaptive and maladaptive effects on relationships, such as

alcohol use (Marshal, 2003). More recently, growing attention has been paid to external

factors (e.g., neighborhood quality) and their impact on relationship behaviors and overall

relationship well-being (e.g., Cutrona et al., 2003; Hostetler, Desrochers, Kopko, & Moen,

2012; Minnotte, Mannon, Stevens, & Kiger, 2008). While this work is primarily cross-sec-

tional, it promises to produce a nuanced understanding of relationship processes and raise

consciousness of how the larger socio-cultural context can alter the course of a marriage

(Fincham & Beach, 2010). Such work also supports models such as the enduring vulnera-

bility stress-adaptation model of relationship functioning (VSA; Karney & Bradbury,

1995), which posit that extradyadic factors (e.g., neighborhood environment) could influ-

ence relationship processes by providing stable sources of stress for couples that activate

individual vulnerabilities (Bradbury & Karney, 2004). Researchers from a contextualis t

perspective (Bronfenbrenner, 1986) would further assert that the same behavior can have

different functions in different environments, suggesting that socio-cultural factors might

also moderate the impact of relationship processes on relationship functioning over time.

The current study sought to integrate these frameworks to clarify the often ambiguous

links between alcohol use and romantic relationship functioning while also improving on

past studies by: (i) taking a multimethod approach to examining neighborhood factors

within a sample of newlywed couples, (ii) examining the effects of those neighborhood fac-

tors over the first 4 years of marriage (extending a mostly cross-sectional literature), and

(iii) illuminating their unique impacts on relationship functioning as moderators of the

impact of alcohol use, thereby highlighting drinking’s role in relationships as a contextu-

ally dependent behavior.

The Varying Effects of Alcohol Use on Romantic Relationships

High levels of drinking (i.e., alcohol misuse) have been consistently linked to negative

mental health effects such as depressive symptoms (Fergusson, Boden, & Horwood, 2009;

Wang & Patten, 2002) and increased anxiety disorders (Kushner, Abrams, & Borchardt,

2000). However, lower and more moderate levels of drinking have failed to demonstrate

similarly strong associations, and in many cases, can be linked to a number of positive

effects (see Peele & Brodsky, 2000, for review). Similarly, while alcohol use disorders or

more extreme levels of at-risk drinking have been linked to Intimate Partner Violence

(IPV), those associations are modest in magnitude, suggesting that drinking might be lar-

gely unrelated to IPV for many couples (see Klostermann & Fals-Stewart, 2006). Studies

that have allowed couples to drink moderate amounts of alcohol before beginning marital

interaction tasks have suggested drinking can increase both positive and negative affec-

tive expressions and both problem solving attempts and aggressive behaviors (Jacob &

Krahn, 1988; Leonard & Roberts, 1998). Consistent with this, alcohol use below clinically

problematic levels has been linked to both adaptive and maladaptive effects on relation-

ship functioning (Marshal, 2003). The inconsistent findings in the past literature suggest

the presence of underlying moderators that could help clarify the contexts in which cou-

ples’ drinking might be beneficial or detrimental to romantic relationships.

Modeling alcohol use in romantic relationships is further complicated by the fact that

drinking is occurring within a dyadic context. While assortative mating research has

Fam. Proc., Vol. 57, December, 2018

CRASTA, FUNK, LEE, & ROGGE

/

961