The act of spending the rest of your life with someone is what some people consider to be the point of life which is why it is important to know exactly what it is you are getting into. Which is why I would like to provide not only a story that gives a visual image of a couple over many decades but also back that story up with research along the way. It must be noted that all the information gathered was on straight couples of the Millennial Generation as Generation Z remains too young to analyze fully. The roles of the couple will change over time due to many factors such as communication and relationship satisfaction. The couple are Mexican American in their early twenties living in separate homes. Henry and Josie both have jobs that help them pay for their own responsibilities as their parents provide a roof over their heads. Their relationship consists of going out on dates a couple times a week with the roles in their relationship simply being that of communication.

Proper Communication and spending time together are the basis for any relationship no matter how early or late into it the couples are as “there is substantial evidence that time spent together is indeed correlated with relationship quality” ¹ showing how it is necessary to spend more time with a partner than it is with other people. Which is exactly what Henry and Josie begin doing for a couple years before deciding to take it a step further in their relationship and move in together into their own house. This move changes them from just a dating couple to cohabitants which comes along with its own set of roles that has become more complicated now that time spent together includes managing a home.

At this point Henry and Josie now began to have more arguments over things that do not seem that important. Though they both know they still love each other, there is something that is different about their relationship. This can be attributed to the fact that “numerous theoretical models of relationship distress suggest that strong, negative reactions to conflict are directly associated with lower levels of relationship satisfaction” ² showing how their relationship seems to be on a downhill slope due to the constant arguing through negative communication rather than positive or neutral communication amongst each other. Now many years into the relationship, Henry and Josie have adopted a new set of roles because of the cohabitation shift has merged both of their responsibilities into one that affects them both.

When it comes to Josie and her role in the relationship there lies the stereotypical gender roles of the woman having to do the laundry and dishes, yet there is more freedom for her at this stage in her relationship. Josie being in a cohabitating relationship allows for this bending of the gender roles as “cohabiting couples [can] negotiate more egalitarian relationships than is the case in conventional marriages”. ³ Later into their relationship, as they get older and more comfortable with each other and if they choose marriage, it will shift around their roles to reflect the switch from cohabitants to a married couple. When considering the tradition of what is expected of a Latina wife, Josie, will become more submissive catering for her husband and complying to any demands that he may have.

When it comes to Henry and his role in the cohabiting relationship keeping in mind the egalitarian nature of the roles he too also performs similar tasks as “cohabiting men do a greater proportion of indoor housework activities than married men 40 percent compared to 28 percent” ⁴ showing in a similar manner to Josie that his roles will shift. Opposite of his wife as a Latino husband, Henry, will be more vocal in telling his wife to do things while slowly doing less indoor housework as he becomes expectant of his wife to take care of those tasks. The communication between the couple depending on whether it is positive or negative will have an effect on their relationship satisfaction.

This relationship satisfaction is affected by the number of activities done together and the extent to which these activities impact the couple which correlates with research about couple happiness as “several studies reported substantially stronger correlations with relationship quality for activities that were intensely interactive versus passive, parallel, or merely in the company of others”. ⁵ This shows how there has to be an active effort from both parties involved in the relationship. Henry and Josie continue cohabiting, continue going on dates with each other, and telling each other about their day to day lives which only makes their bond stronger.

Henry pops the question and proposes to Josie on the night of their eight-year anniversary to which she replies with “yes” and a surprise that she is pregnant. This turns the couple from the cohabiting stage to a married couple and soon to be parents. This shift causes some of their previous roles to change with others remaining the same as they were when they were cohabiting. One of these major changes being Josie spending more time at home rather than at work as “cohabiting women have been found to spend more time in paid work per week and to contribute more to the household income than married women”.⁶ The research supports that gender roles change over time and due to certain circumstances that society imposes on a married couple.

Alongside being married there is now the factor of child being involved which creates a family dynamic. Rather than focusing on each other and their personal lives the couple now have to shift toward caring for their child instead of worrying only about themselves. In this family dynamic “women do a much larger proportion of child care and routine indoor housework tasks than men, regardless of marital status” .⁷ A role that remains the same with women makes them typically the one who focuses on family and keeping up with house chores.

Henry and Josie over the course of their lives have spent most of their time in their relationship that was altering the way they viewed each other along with their roles whether they realized it or not. These changes can be due to people becoming more comfortable with each other and the pressure that society places on couples through the use of media. There lies the cultural expectations as well making people who try to skew from traditional roles outcasts by people within their own culture and family. While the gender roles change overtime to a general family dynamic outcome the way a family’s roles change in modern times may cause the gender roles that follow it to change as well.

When it comes to the longevity of this study it will not hold up as within the next twenty years when the same research has been done on Generation Z as the gender roles will have changed substantially by that point in time. These changes can already be seen within modern relationships as same sex couples have become more common along with the studying of gender being fluid. This would shift the gender roles in a relationship like that and that future data will surely differ from the data that we have today that is based on the Millennium Gender roles.