Personal network overlap and joint social contact of spouses have positive implications for social support and marital quality. Although these collective aspects of marriage constitute a valuable resource for couples, the factors impacting them during the later stages of life are underexplored. When faced with critical role losses in later life one compensatory mechanism for internal continuity is to jointly invest in relational dimensions of one’s marriage. Accordingly, this research hypothesizes that some later adulthood transitions lead to greater overlap in conjugal networks and more joint contact between partners. Using two waves of data from a nationally representative sample of Swiss couples, it was found that both transitions of children leaving the household and retirement were related to increases in personal network overlap and shared social contact between partners but differently for male and female partners. Results are discussed in the light of mechanisms promoted by continuity theory.

个人网络重叠和配偶的共同社会接触对社会支持和婚姻质量有积极影响。尽管婚姻的这些集体方面构成了夫妻的宝贵资源，但在生命后期影响他们的因素却未得到充分探索。当在以后的生活中面临关键的角色丧失时，一种内部连续性的补偿机制是共同投资于一个人婚姻的关系维度。因此，这项研究假设，一些较晚的成年过渡会导致夫妻网络中更大的重叠以及伴侣之间更多的共同接触。使用来自具有全国代表性的瑞士夫妇样本的两波数据，结果发现，孩子离开家庭和退休的过渡都与个人网络重叠的增加和伴侣之间共享的社会联系有关，但男性和女性伴侣不同。结果根据连续性理论促进的机制进行了讨论。