ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the extent to which marriage functions as an attachment relationship reXected in working models incorporating organized representations of the self and of social relationships produced in narrative form. Marriage is an intimate adult relationship embedded within a family system that is linked with quality of functioning in numerous other aspects of family life. For example, research has shown that the marriage is related to a host of outcomes including how parents interact with their infants, how young children express and regulate emotion, and how episodes of depression in women are experienced, maintained, and resolved (Barnett & Gotlib, 1988; Hooley & Teasdale, 1989; Jacobson, Dobson, Fruzetti, Schmaling, & Salusky, 1991; Kowalik & Gotlib, 1987). There has been ongoing examination of the processes by which marriage inXuences (and is inXuenced by) various family subsystem functions. In this chapter, focus is placed on attachment processes to examine links among family subsystems.
