The Spouse as Confidant: The effect of emotional network

In Taiwan, people often say “marriage is not only a union between two people, but also between two families.” However, current studies mainly focus on how personal attribution, and both attributions of husband and wife affect martial relationship, ignoring the effect of personal networks that married people are situated in. Therefore, based on Bott’s theory about how conjugal role associates with social networks, the main objective of this study is to examine how personal networks affect whether married people view their spouse as their confidant (the person that they mainly depend on emotionally). Using the data from the 1997 Taiwan Social Change Survey, this study investigates how the size, gender composition, and kin composition of the emotional networks affect whether married people include their spouse into their emotional networks or not. The following are the three most important findings of this study: first of all, the bigger the emotional networks’ size are, the less likely for married people to include their spouse into their emotional networks. Secondly, sex difference is observed in the emotional networks’ gender composition; married men are more likely to include their spouse into his emotional networks when it is predominantly male. Lastly, married people with higher kin proportion in their emotional networks are more likely to include their spouse. These results imply that it is important to consider the composition of the members in the personal networks. The implications of Taiwan society’s speciality are also discussed.