Partner Support
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Partner Support Silvia Donato, Raffaella Iafrate, Anna Bertoni and Giada Rapelli Family Studies and Research University Centre, Catholic University of Milan, Milan, Italy
Synonyms Marital support; Partner social support; Social support; Spousal support
Definition The term partner support traditionally refers to the process of responding with helping acts (behavioral as well as psychological) to a difficulty or problem of one’s partner in a couple relationship. More recently, this definition was extended as to include responses apt to sustain the partner when facing positive events and life opportunities as well.
Description Historically, from the interest for general social support, researchers have recognized the relevant role of the specific relationships on the effects produced by social support.
Couple relationship scholars, in particular, have drawn attention on the fact that intimate partners are especially important sources of support, who cannot be easily substituted. Indeed, social epidemiology has often used marital status as a measure of social support availability. Components of Partner Support To summarize the multicomponent nature of partner support, cognitive and behavioral aspects of support can be distinguished. As for cognitive components, studies have focused on perceived availability of partner support (i.e., the belief that support from the partner has been available to one in the past and will be in the future) or the perception of partner supportiveness (i.e., perceiving one’s partner as more or less responsive to one’s needs). As for the behavioral components, that is, the partner’s tangible supportive acts, we can make a more subtle distinction as a function of the standpoint used to measure the enactment of support. Specifically, supportive acts within a couple may be measured (a) as they are observed by a third party (i.e., observer’s ratings of support behaviors in an interactive tasks), (b) as they are reported by the provider in his/her self-perception (i.e., provider’s self-reports of his/her own support behaviors), and (c) as they are received by the recipients, who reports about the other’s support (i.e., recipient’s self-reports of the partner’s behaviors). Using these different points of view some studies also measured the degree of congruence of
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 F. Maggino (ed.), Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69909-7_2087-2
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support provided and received between partners (e.g., Iafrate et al. 2012; Lemay and Neal 2014). It should be noted that in most cases, with the term partner support, studies have examined the various aspects of the support process separately from one another. Moreover, little agreement still exists on the terms used to capture these different aspects. For example, the term enacted support is sometimes used to refer to the actual provision of support (vs. the perceived availability of partner support), sometimes to the support behaviors that the provider reports (vs. partne
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