Context and Objectives: Marriage brings many challenges, which require careful management and adjustment by both spouses. One of the noteworthy challenges is that individuals will start to view themselves in different ways. During the newlywed period, the self-concepts corresponding to the couple’s new role of spouse and family group members will be developed. As a spouse in a marital relationship, Chinese couples’ marital self-concept (MSC) represents their relationship-oriented self-construal to have mutual love and support with their spouses and maintain a harmonious interaction in their relationship. As a member of both the original family and in-law family, Chinese couples’ familial self-concept (FSC) represents their group-oriented self-construal to honor their families, reach consensus among family members, and achieve the goals of all their family members. Even though the self- concept has an important effect on couples’ marital adaptation, research on how the marriage couples’ self- concepts would be reconstructed is scarce. Because one’s self-concept would be reconstructed by life experience, the purpose of this study is to investigate how marriage life influences Chinese couples’ MSC and FSC in the early stage of marriage. Considering that positive and negative self-involved experiences could drive dissimilar mechanisms, this study attempts to explore the specific effect of positive and negative marital quality. Then, based on the nature of interdependence between marriage couples, this study also uses the actor-partner interdependence model to further explore the actor effect and partner effect between husbands and wives. Method: This study conducted two waves of follow-up surveys separated by a 2-year lag and collected a total of 93 valid dyad-data from couples living in the north (n = 53), middle (n = 11), south (n = 20), and east regions of Taiwan (n = 9). The average length of marriage at the first wave was 1.30 years (SD = 0.68 years), and the average age of the husband and wife were 31.46 years old (SD = 3.51 years) and 29.89 years old (SD = 2.84 years), respectively. This study used structural equation modeling to analyze two hypothetical actor-partner interdependence models. Results: The first model investigated the actor- and partner-effect of positive marital quality on couples’ MSC and FSC and showed acceptable model fit ( 2 = 264.16; df = 204; p = .003; 2/df = 1.29; CFI = .93; TLI = .91; RMSEA = .056; SRMR = .052). The actor-effects of husbands’ and wives’ positive marital quality was positively significant on their own MSC (husbands:11 = .50, SE = 0.11,p < .001; wives:γ32 = .55,SE = 0.12,p < .001) and FSC (husbands: 21 = .33, SE = 0.12, p = .007; wives: 42 = .27, SE = 0.13, p = .034). The partner-effect of wives’ positive maritalqualitywaspositivelysignificantonhusbands’MSC(12 =.24,SE =0.12,p =.036),andtheotherpartner- effects were non-significant. The second model investigated the actor- and partner-effect of negative marital quality and also showed acceptable model fit ( 2 = 253.49; df = 204; p = .011; 2/df = 1.24; CFI = .93; TLI = .91; RMSEA = .051; SRMR = .059). The actor-effect and the partner-effect of husbands’ negative marital quality were non-significant on their own and with wives’ MSC and FSC. However, the actor-effect and the partner-effect of wives’ negative marital quality were negatively significant on their own and with husbands’ MSC (actor-effect: 32 = -.53, SE = 0.14, p < .001; partner-effect: 12 = -.48, SE = 0.15, p = .001) and FSC (actor-effect: 42 = -.42, SE = 0.14, p = .003; partner-effect: 22 = -.35, SE = 0.15, p = .025). Discussion and Conclusion: This study highlighted that positive and negative marital quality in the early stage of marriage can shape and restructure Chinese couples’ self-identification as a spouse and a family group member. Additionally, husbands’ and wives’ marriage life experiences can have different influences on their own and their partners’ self-concepts. Particularly, the wives’ both positive and negative marital qualities have impressive impacts on shaping their own and their husbands’ marital and familial self-concept. The limitation of sampling bias and its influences on the current results are discussed, and the understanding of the detailed mechanism linking positive and negative marital quality to Chinese couples’ self-concept is still very limited and requires further exploration and more attention. These findings might be of importance in providing professional consultants and family life educators a better understanding of how Chinese couples’ marital and familial self-concept will be affected by their life experiences in the early stage of marriage.
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