Patterns of Leisure and Marital Interaction

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Abstract
This paper examines the relationship between the extent of shared participation of husbands and wives in leisure activities and the extent of communication and task sharing in the marriage. Because marriage is an interactional system and leisure activities vary in their interactional requirements, a theory is proposed linking leisure activity patterns to marital interaction. The hypotheses generated by the theory were tested on a random sample of 223 husbands and 228 wives. The results indicate that interaction in leisure activities is related to interaction in marriage but that this relationship varies over the marital career. Also, it was found that the hypothesized relationship was greater when openness of communication was used as the marital interaction indicator compared to household task sharing. The theory is then reformulated in light of the data analysis.