Religiosity and Joint Activities of Husbands and Wives in Enduring Marriages

Understanding ways to strengthen marriage in middle age and beyond is increasingly important as the population of older adults rises. Using couple-level growth curve modeling in a sample of 371 middle-aged husbands and wives in long-term, enduring relationships, we examined the association between "joint activities," an index of couple connectedness, and "couple religiosity," an index focused on active participation in organized religious activities, across a 10-year period, using data from the years of 1991, 1992, 1994, and 2001. Confirming expectations there was a bidirectional and positive relationship between couples' religiosity and joint activities. Follow-up analyses indicated that greater religiosity at baseline or greater levels of joint activities at baseline produced particularly strong cross-lagged effects when the other construct was initially low, suggesting that these constructs are mutually protective in long-term marital dyads and become more tightly connected across later middle age. Exploratory comparisons of separate models for husbands and wives indicated that effects were stronger among wives.