Married Chinese couples are becoming discontented with their marriages earlier than couples in other Asian countries. (Photo : www.metro.co.uk)
The Journal of Health and Social Science Behavior analyzed the rate of divorce in older couples where either the husband or the wife was diagnosed with one of the illnesses: stroke, lung disease, heart disease, and cancer.
Researchers were not surprised when they have found out that when either of the spouses fell ill with any of the four diseases, a raised risk of divorce is recorded to be higher when the wife is sick.
Amelia Karraker, the lead author of the 20-year-old study and family studies and human development professor at Iowa state, said that the data they have gathered and analyzed could not explain this result, but has emphasized that illnesses could stress a marriage relationship in numerous, different ways.
One of the most known ways that a spouse's illness could stress a marriage is when the healthy partner is the house's primary caregiver and is also the only person responsible for providing the household's financial needs.
"There is a difference between feeling too sick to make dinner and needing someone to actually feed you. That's something that can really change the dynamics within a marriage. If your spouse is too sick to work, we know that financial strain is a major predictor of divorce in and of itself," Professor Karraker explained.
The phenomenon of women acting as caregivers to their ex-husbands is very common than most people have expected, the Medical News Today reported in 2011. A few of the women who participated in the study were providing caregiving services to ex-husbands as a way of rekindling relationships.
