An ongoing question remains for family researchers: Why does a positive association between cohabitation and marital dissolution exist when one of the primary reasons to cohabit is to test relationship compatibility? Drawing on recently collected data from the 2006-2008 National Survey of Family Growth, the authors examined whether premarital…

Parents of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are at risk for having higher stress and lower marital quality than other parents. Survey data regarding respite care, marital quality, and daily hassles and uplifts were obtained from 101 mother-father dyads who were together raising at least one child with ASD (total # of children = 118).…

We evaluated maternal gatekeeping attitudes as a mediator of the relation between marital problems and father-child relationships in 3 waves when children were in Grades 7-10. We assessed each parent's contribution to the marital problems experienced by the couple. Findings from mediational and cross-lagged structural equation models revealed that…

Second marriages are known to be more fragile than first marriages. To better understand the factors that contribute to this fragility, this qualitative study compared stepfamilies that stayed together with those that separated by collecting interview data from one adult in each of the former (n = 31) and latter (n = 26) stepfamilies. Data were…

Secondary respondent data are underutilized because researchers avoid using these data in the presence of substantial missing data. The authors reviewed, evaluated, and tested solutions to this problem. Five strategies of dealing with missing partner data were reviewed: (a) complete case analysis, (b) inverse probability weighting, (c) correction…

Much research has argued for the existence of a marriage benefit to men, women, and children. Although the commonly suggested current response to a husband's violence has been for the couple to separate, traditionally women were often told to "stay for the children." This paper uses the Project on Human Development in Chicago…

We used data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 7,686) to determine whether racial and ethnic differences in socioeconomic stress and social protection explained group differences in the association between family structure instability and three risk behaviors for White, Black, and Mexican American adolescents:…

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…

This research examines trends in a broad set of reproductive and marital behaviors in Ghana, focusing on religious group differences. These comparisons provide evidence of how family trends are constrained by religious identity in a less developed country. Three waves of the Ghana Demographic and Health Surveys are used to track trends in the age…

As the number of people choosing to marry has plunged during recent decades, the tally of children living with one parent and having limited or no contact with the other has soared. Attuned to the hazards that such separations impose upon children but also upon parents who, studies show, fare physically and emotionally better in a thriving…

The authors used data from the Add Health study to estimate the effects of parents' marital status and relationship distress on daughters' early family formation transitions. Outcomes included traditional transitions (marriage and marital births) and nontraditional transitions (cohabitation and nonmarital births). Relationship distress among…

We used adopted and biological children from Waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households to study the links between parents' marital conflict, divorce and children's behavior problems. The standard family environment model assumes that marital conflict and divorce increase the risk of children's behavior problems. The passive…

This article develops an imbalance theory to explain physical violence against women in intimate relationships in South Africa. The theory proposes four typologies: dependence, compensation, submission, and transgression, through which imbalances in resource contribution and power distribution between spouses are hypothesized to contribute to…

This article discusses how the conditions in Russia are changing the characteristics of rural families, reducing the prevalence of traditional culture, changing the behavior of rural youth, and increasing familial conflict and the incidence of divorce. The deterioration of the social and economic situation that is being experienced today by many…

This study deals with the relationship between number and spacing of children and family role structure as measured by decision making and household task performance. Data on childbearing patterns and family role structure indicate that family size, spacing between marriage and first birth, and spacing between first and last birth are all related…