Theory and research have described developmental processes leading to damaged parent-child relationships, such as those that occur during a divorce. However, scholars dispute the scientific status of the literature on children who form unhealthy alliances with one parent against the other-termed parental alienation (PA). This comprehensive…

The movie "Ya Sonra" is evaluated in respect to the basic concepts and principles of symbolic-experiential family therapy. Carl Whitaker, who called his approach "Psychotherapy of Absurdity" mainly emphasized the concepts of absurdity, experientiality, and symbolism. Based on the hypothesis that film analysis supports and…

We analyze the causal impact of an increase in the risk of marital dissolution on the saving behavior of married couples. We use the legalization of divorce in Ireland in 1996 as an exogenous shock to the risk of divorce. We propose several comparison groups (unaffected by the law change) that allow us to use a difference-in-differences approach.…

Following the call for more stringent evaluation methodology and recently documented national Extension presence in the field of divorce education for parents and children, the study reported here describes a local multi-level evaluation to capture program impact of a stakeholder-accepted divorce education program. Using a post-then-pre…

Using a multistate sample of marriages that took place in the 1990s, this study examined associations between premarital cohabitation history and marital quality in first (N = 437) and second marriages (N = 200) and marital instability in first marriages (intact N = 521, divorced N = 124). For first marriages, cohabiting with the spouse without…

Economic restructuring in rural areas in recent decades has been accompanied by rising marital instability. To examine the implications of the increase in divorce for the health of rural women, we examine how marital status predicts adequacy of health insurance coverage and health care access, and whether these factors help to account for the…

Prior research suggests a correlation between incarceration and marital dissolution, although questions remain as to why this association exists. Is it the stigma associated with "doing time" that drives couples apart? Or is it simply the duration of physical separation that leads to divorce? This research utilizes data from the National…

This study examined self-reported marital conflict behaviors and their implications for divorce. Husbands and wives (N = 373 couples; 47% White American, 53% Black American) reported conflict behaviors in Years 1, 3, 7, and 16 of their marriages. Individual behaviors (e.g., destructive behaviors) and patterns of behaviors between partners (e.g.,…

Using longitudinal data covering 25 years from 1979 to 2004, the author examines the relationship between wives' economic resources and the risk of marital dissolution. The author considers the effects of labor force participation, income, and relative income while accounting for potential endogeneity of wives' economic resources. The extent to…

Despite progress in identifying the covariates of divorce, there remain substantial gaps in the knowledge. One of these gaps is the relationship between health and risk of marital dissolution. I extend prior research by examining the linkages between work-related health limitations and divorce using 25 years of data (N = 7919) taken from the 1979…

This study examined multiple dimensions of religious involvement and the risk of divorce among a nationwide sample of 2,979 first-time married couples. Multivariate proportional hazards modeling was used to analyze two waves of the National Survey of Families and Households. Results indicated that although each partner's religious attendance bore…

This article replicated and extended Harriet Presser's (2000) investigation of the linkages between nonstandard work and marital instability. We reexplored this question using data from a sample of 2,893 newlywed couples from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) and using different analytic techniques. In contrast to Presser, we found…

This report examines whether the presence of children in marriage differentially influences the risk of wives or husbands initiating separation. The analytic sample consists of 9,118 first marriages from the Households, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey (2001). Using event history and competing risks analysis, I find weak evidence…

Using grounded theory methods, we examined coparenting relationships for 25 divorced mothers who experienced violence during their marriages. How well former husbands were able to differentiate, or keep separate, their parental and spousal roles emerged as central to coparenting dynamics and was partly related to type of marital violence. Linking…

The authors examine whether young adults who experienced their parents' divorce and new relationships have different relationship trajectories than those who spent their childhoods living with biological parents in married-couple families. The analysis is based on longitudinal reports from more than 1,500 children from Wave 1 of the 1987-1988…