Over the past five years, marriage equality and charter schools have emerged at the forefront of political conversations about equality and rights. Some argue that these policies extend access to certain benefits and opportunities to historically oppressed communities, thus furthering liberalism and egalitarianism. In this article, I engage these…

The authors elaborate on the role of playfulness as a preferred characteristic in potential long-term partners recently espoused by Garry Chick and others. They aim to replicate the findings of such research by studying a different culture (that of German-speaking countries) and to develop them further by taking into account the participants'…

Scholars have called for discussions of same-sex marriage in schools as one way of ending the curricular silence around lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) people. Yet, concerns about how students might talk about LGBTQ people can contribute to teachers' reluctance to initiate such discussions. Queer theory suggests that…

Research has extensively examined matching on race and other characteristics in cohabitation and marriage, but it has generally disregarded sexual and romantic relationships. Using data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we examine the tempo of key transitions in the recent…

Despite much research into mate selection, non-heterosexual populations are often only included for comparison purposes, while trans people and their partners are overlooked. This study attempts to address this using qualitative methodology to explore the mate selection of the partners of trans people. Six participants were recruited from online…

This paper explores Indian women's views on arranged marriages in the United Kingdom. It is based on research carried out with 32 Indian women studying at a university in the South East of England, UK. The article draws on Wenger's social theory of learning to explore how Indian women's participation in communities of practice in higher education…

Social cohesion theory is tested using data on ethnic intermarriage in former Yugoslavia. Before the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the proportion of marriages outside the own ethnic group was generally low, but in this respect large differences among the groups existed. The proportion of mixed marriages with a Serbian partner was much higher among…

Using longitudinal data from the National Survey of Families and Households and both wife- and husband-reported data (N = 4,574 couples), this study examined how financial well-being, financial disagreements, and perceptions of financial inequity were associated with the likelihood of divorce. When financial disagreements were in the model,…

Prior research found that lower sexual frequency and satisfaction were associated with higher rates of divorce, but little research had examined the role of sexual activity in the dissolution of cohabiting unions. We drew upon social exchange theory to hypothesize why sexual frequency is more important in cohabitation: (a) cohabitors' lower costs…

Although previous work has attributed the instability of African marriages to the diffusion of Western norms and values in the region, fewer attempts have been made to empirically assess how Africa's internal institutional structures, such as extended kinship ties, impact marital outcomes. Guided by rational choice and exchange theories, we argue…

National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and census data are used to examine the effect of both individual- and contextual-level determinants on Latinas' transition to first marriage (n = 745). Hypotheses derived from 4 leading theories of marriage timing are evaluated. Discrete-time event-history models that control for clustering within Labor…

Provides a feminist critique of rational-choice theory and the interdisciplinary feminist theories of sociology. Applies the separative model of self to four assumptions of the neoclassical economics version of rational-choice theory. Uses research on marital power to illustrate how removing distorting assumptions can help illuminate sociological…

Since possible predictor variables of marital adjustment are too numerous for a complete analysis in any one study, determination of the relative importance of such predictors is needed for theory development. In order to examine the importance of socioeconomic rewards, family development characteristics, and religiosity as predictors of marital…

Examined beliefs regarding resource distribution in marriage. Subjects (N=114) were presented a description of a marital relationship with equity, inequity, and projected equity conditions. Results confirmed that individuals feel equity should be present in marriage and are influenced by the gender of the partner in the most advantageous position.…

The attributes of couples planning to marry can affect their future relationship satisfaction. To study this phenomenon, a social exchange model was applied to a sample of couples planning to marry to assess the predictive validity of a measure of positive exchange. The longitudinal design of the two-and-a-half year investigation provided direct…