German Center for Age Issues
Berlin (ots)
The measures to contain the corona pandemic and the associated challenges have temporarily affected the quality of partnerships, but the results of the German Age Survey show that as early as winter 2020/21 people rated their couple relationships almost as well as they did before the pandemic. For women, however, the losses in the quality of partnership were not only particularly high: the previous level of satisfaction with the couple relationship was also regained less often than for men.
Satisfying partnerships make an important contribution to avoiding loneliness, to well-being and to mental and physical health. Data from the German Aging Survey was therefore used to examine how people in the second half of their lives assess the quality of their partnership – both before and after the start of the corona pandemic. The data from 2017, summer 2020 and winter 2020/21 could be compared. Not surprisingly, in the summer of 2020, i.e. a few months after the outbreak of the corona pandemic, many people rated their own partnership quality more critically than before the pandemic. This can be explained by economic (e.g. job loss or short-time work), family (e.g. limited childcare options) or social burdens (e.g. contact restrictions). However, the high resilience of partnerships is shown by the fact that in winter 2020/21 the proportion of people who reported a (very) good partnership quality was almost back to the 2017 level.
It is noticeable that women rated the quality of their partnership as less good than men even before the pandemic and this trend intensified at the beginning of the pandemic: While 88.1 percent of men rated their partnership as good or very good in the summer of 2020, this only applies for 80.8 percent of women.
But that’s not all: In the winter of 2020/21, the assessment of one’s own couple relationship among men approached the pre-pandemic level more closely than among women. While 95.0 percent of the men viewed their own partnership positively, only 90.7 percent of the women judged the partnership to be good or very good.
The background could be a tendency to re-traditionalize gender roles, which has often been discussed in connection with the corona pandemic. The increased need for care work, because day care centers and schools were closed and there were temporary restrictions in inpatient and outpatient care, was fulfilled more by women than by men. This may also have contributed to the divergence in the perceived quality of the partnership, which goes beyond the first pandemic shock.
Considering that satisfactory partnerships are an important source of health and well-being, there is still a need for equal division of tasks in couple relationships and families, which must also be proven in times of crisis.
A graphic “Assessment of the partnership quality of men and women aged 42 to 94 years, 2017, 2020 and 2020/21 (in percent)” is available on our website at ready to download.
The detailed results can be found in: Wunsch, J., Hameister, N., & Huxhold, O. (2023). Quality of partnership in the corona pandemic: People in the second half of life are adaptable in their couple relationships (DZA Aktuell 01/2023). Berlin: German Center for Age Issues. On-line:
The German Aging Survey (DEAS) is a representative cross-sectional and longitudinal survey of people in the second half of life. As part of the study, people on their way to old age have been regularly questioned for more than two decades. The German Age Survey is funded by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMFSFJ).
Press contact:
Stefanie Hartmann
German Center for Age Issues
press office
https://www.dza.de/presse.html
[email protected]
Tel.: 030 / 260 740 25
Original content from: German Center for Gerontology, transmitted by news aktuell
