Resilience and Stress in Romantic Relationships in the United States During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Michael J. Rosenfeld, Sonia Hausen

Sociological Science September 6, 2023
10.15195/v10.a17


We measure the perceived effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on romantic relationships in the United States. We contrast Family Stress theories emphasizing potential harms of the pandemic with Family Resilience Theory suggesting that crises can lead couples to build meaning and strengthen their relationships. We examine closed-ended and open-ended questions about relationship responses to the pandemic from the How Couples Meet and Stay Together surveys from 2017, 2020 and 2022. We analyze potential correlates of relationship outcomes including education, children at home, gender, time spent together and pre-pandemic relationship quality. Subjects were three times as likely to describe pandemic relationship benefits compared to harms. Couples in high quality relationships were especially resilient to pandemic stresses, and derived benefits from more time together. Couples made meaning out of the pandemic and used the normalcy of their domestic situations to make a common front against an external threat.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Michael J. Rosenfeld: Stanford University
E-mail: mrosenfe@stanford.edu

Sonia Hausen: Stanford University

Responsibilities: The article grew from conversations between Rosenfeld and Hausen. Rosenfeld wrote the grants to gather the data. Hausen had primary responsibility for coding the open-ended question about how the pandemic affected relationships. Rosenfeld performed the analyses and wrote the article with feedback from Hausen.

Acknowledgements: Data were gathered through the support of the National Science Foundation grant SES 2030593 (funding HCMST 2020 and 2022), and a grant from the United Parcel Service endowment at Stanford University (funding HCMST 2017). An earlier version of the article was presented at the Population Association of America meetings, 2022. For feedback, thanks to Kimberly Higuera, Hannah Tessler, Stanford’s Graduate FamilyWorkshop, and to anonymous reviewers. Replication statement: The HCMST 2017-2022 data, documentation, and a replication package for Tables 1-6 are available at https://data.stanford.edu/hcmst2017. The HCMST data and documentation have been deposited to and will eventually be available from ICPSR as well (timing subject to ICPSR’s production schedule for curated datasets). The open-ended text answers, in edited form, will be deposited to ICPSR and will be available as a restricted dataset addition to HCMST 2017-2022.

  • Citation: Rosenfeld, Michael J., and Sonia Hausen. 2023. “Resilience and Stress in Romantic Relationships in the United States During the COVID-19 Pandemic” Sociological Science 10:472-500.
  • Received: May 15, 2023
  • Accepted: June 12, 2023
  • Editors: Ari Adut, Kristen Schilt
  • DOI: 10.15195/v10.a17


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