Used interview data from national sample of married persons to examine extent to which people in remarriages have attributes that adversely influence marital quality/stability. Found that persons in remarriages were more likely to be poorly integrated with parents and in-laws, willing to leave marriage, be poor marriage material, and to have lower…

Longitudinal data on over 1,300 married persons suggest that divorce was deterred by absence of divorce in reference group (normative integration) and was deterred for shorter marriages by more friends and organizational affiliations (communicative integration). Sharing friends and organization affiliations with spouse (functional integration) may…

Evaluated effectiveness of marital therapy designed to enhance intimacy through self-disclosure of personal constructs. Couples in therapy (n=22) and controls (n=19) showed significant reduction in symptoms of nonpsychotic emotional illness. Couples in therapy subjectively reported improvement. Found significant pattern of improvement for wives in…

Compared communications patterns and conflicts over psychological distance in 25 nondistressed couples, 15 clinic couples, and 22 divorcing couples. Compared with nondistressed couples, both distressed groups had less mutual constructive communication, more avoidance of communication, more demand/withdraw communication, and more conflict over…

The risk of separation or divorce late in the marital career is examined from a family development perspective. A hazards framework is used to estimate the effects of women's economic independence, couples' economic status, and family life course factors on the risk of middle-age separation or divorce. (Author/EMK)

Identifies empirical links between social homogamy, similarity in leisure interests, and role performance preferences and the dynamics of premarital relationships. Data were collected from 168 working- and middle-class couples married for the first time in central Pennsylvania during the early 1980s. Discusses findings. Argues for the importance…

We use data from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth (N=4,547) to investigate racial and ethnic differences in risk factors for marital disruption, with a particular emphasis on premarital cohabitation. We find that the nature and strength of the estimated effects of several risk factors for disruption differ across groups. In particular,…

Life history theorists have proposed that humans have evolved to be sensitive to specific features of early childhood environments and that exposure to different environments biases children toward development of different reproductive strategies, including differential pubertal timing. The current research provides a longitudinal test of this…

Contemporaneous and longitudinal associations among marital conflict, parent-child relationship quality, and youth maladjustment were examined using data from the National Survey of Families and Households. Analyses were based on 551 married families with a child age 5 to 11 years at Wave 1. The concurrent association between marital conflict and…

Several theorists have advocated marital therapy in treatment programs for alcoholics. Given the promise of marital therapy for alcoholics, it is important to develop successful techniques for recruitment. One approach toward improving recruitment is to identify the characteristics of couples who are likely to accept or reject marital therapy.…

To systematically test previous assumptions about grief in widows and divorcing women, 410 separated, divorced, or widowed women, between the ages of 23 and 76, with at least one child, completed the Multiple Affect Adjective Checklist, the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale, the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory--Form C, the Attachment Index, and the…

Mexican American women have higher fertility rates and higher divorce rates than does the general population of the United States. In light of these data and the documented negative effects of marital distress and divorce on spouses, Mexican American women appear to be at risk for psychological stress. To provide some insight into the marital…

This report discusses data obtained from 123 female respondents living with spouses, averaging 2.6 children under six years of age, in identical apartments in married student housing. The survey, containing some items investigating opportunities for companionship with spouses, focused on time to be together without children and the strategies used…

The Locke-Wallace Marital Adjustment Scale was administered to 35 Caucasian, Protestant couples who were married an average of nine years, largely middle class, and lived in Knoxville, Tennessee. Significant correlates of marital adjustment were organized into groups of similar variables. Correlate groups that were the same for the husband and…

Income data for 413 male Wisconsin high school graduates whose first marriages ended in divorce or separation are used in this study to analyze the relationship of men's earnings to their probability of remarriage. A review of related literature is provided to illustrate the hypothesis that the higher a man's earnings are, the more likely he is to…