Gender differences in marital satisfaction across cultural contexts: does ‘knowing one’s spouse’s friends’ matter?

ABSTRACT More than three decades after Jessie Bernard’s argument on marriage is good for men, but not for women, the post-millennium marriage and family literature has largely shown that men’s reported marital satisfaction is higher than women’s across socio-cultural contexts. This study examines gender differences in marital satisfaction from a social network perspective, investigating the role of ‘known friendship network’ using cross-sectional, large-N samples in mainland China, Taiwan, and the United States. The ‘known friendship network’ concept captures the cognitive component of an individual’s perception of their knowledge of the spouse’s ‘interactive networks’ [Milardo, R. M. (1989). Theoretical and methodological issues in the identification of the social networks of spouses. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 51(1), 165–174. https://doi.org/10.2307/352377. We found that knowing more of one’s spouse’s friends enhances marital satisfaction in an incremental fashion, especially in Taiwan and the United States. The lower importance in China may reflect China’s predominantly kinship-based social networks. Regarding how ‘known friendship network’ patterns explain marital satisfaction, the United States has the least pronounced gender differences, while the gender gap is most significant in Taiwan. This study contributes to the cross-cultural literature on relationship satisfaction, social networks, and global family change. Our findings have complex implications for marital selectivity and the gendered connotations of marriage, suggesting a marital expectations mismatch among heterosexual couples in some low fertility contexts.