Competing views about the effect of retirement on marital quality emphasize the potential strains as well as the potential gratifications that retirement may bring to the marriage. This study compared marital complaints between 92 older couples in which husbands had been retired one year or less, and 125 couples in which husbands remained employed. Participants were members of an ongoing panel study of aging. For a range of instrumental, affectional, and companionate behaviors, findings showed largely similar levels of complaint between couples with retired and nonretired husbands, even after taking wife's employment status into account. Results of this and other research confirm that retirement is not generally disruptive for older couples, but suggest that strains may occur in circumstances that remain to be specified (e.g., dissynchronous role transitions).
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