What Kind of Personal Networks Do Spouses Share with One Another? Focusing on the Degree of Urbanization

What kind of personal networks, if any, do spouses share with one another? This study analyzes this question focusing on the degree of urbanization of city centers, suburbs, and villages. This study was conducted with data from 335 married couples.

Consequently, several network patterns were identified, namely “wife’s network-led (city centers),” “husband’s network-led (suburbs),” and “a multilayered social sphere of relatives, neighbors, and friends (villages).” Overall, the sharing of networks between spouses was found to be marked by differences due to socio-environmental factors, namely “formation of relationships from indigeneity (villages)” and “formation of relationships by norms of gender roles (city centers and suburbs).”

 In other words, urbanization has the effect of freeing spouses from the embedded social relationships of their indigenous context and simultaneously incorporates those relationships into the new norms of role division by gender. From this study, I would like to consider the impact of urbanization on spousal relationships and the resulting challenges that married couples confront.