Personal Networks and Conjugal Role Relationships of Retirement Period Couples

What kinds of conjugal role relationships and personal networks (kins, neighbors, and friends) do couples remain in their retirement period? This study will examine 19 interviews and consider two points; ① the relationship between the conjugal role relationship (segregated or joint) and the connectedness of a husband’s and wife’s personal networks (low degree or high degree) are associated; ② the causal relationship between the conjugal role relationship and the network.

The results confirmed that many of the couples had a low degree of connectedness in their networks, which means husbands' network does not connected with wive’s network, even more each network (kins neighbours, friends) is not connected each other, and in the second, confirmed that four types of combination of degrees of connectedness in their networks and their conjugal role relationships.

Rather than there being a fixed combination of both the conjugal role relationships and the networks, there were both segregated and joint conjugal role relationships, depending on the thoughts of the husband and wife (their intentions) and the situation in which they found themselves (family crises).

Although couples are no longer subject to the normative pressures of social networks in the highly-mobile modern society, this has given rise to variable and unstable situations in which “it is totally up to each couple how they are as a couple”.