Although several factors condition mental health differences between married and never-married adults, given recent increases in marriage delay and permanent singlehood, one modifying factor--deviation from desired age at marriage--has yet to be examined. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (N = 7,277), the author tested…

The current study used an online survey to explore the anticipated impact of legalized marriage on partners in same-sex couples living in California. These data were gathered prior to the California Supreme Court decision in May 2008 legalizing same-sex marriage, which held sway for 5 months before California Proposition 8 eliminating same-sex…

Understanding the financial well-being of single mothers who care for children with developmental disabilities is important to ensure that public policies can be effectively targeted to support these vulnerable families. The authors analyze data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation to describe income poverty, asset poverty, income,…

The process of being a woman starts with biological gender but it is shaped by learning the social gender roles. Besides social gender role; age, education, marriage, and motherhood supply social roles and attributions and they have an impact on women identification and their interpersonal relationships. The aim of the study is to investigate…

A study of 320 women, ages 21 to 69, explored the relations among relationship status, subjective age, self-esteem, and life satisfaction. Women in married or partnered relationships had higher levels of life satisfaction than did single women. Women in their 30s and 40s had significantly lower levels of life satisfaction than did other age…

Although some emphasize the integrative character of marriage, others argue that marriage undermines relations with extended kin, including aging parents. Utilizing NSFH data (N= 6,108), we find that married women and men have less intense intergenerational ties than the never married and the divorced: The married are less likely to live with…

Although contributing greatly to current criminological theory and research on crime and desistance, Sampson and Laub's theory of age-graded informal social control is limited in explaining gender differences in desistance. The authors addressed this limitation by comparing how adult institutions such as marriage, family, and employment affect…

Social institutions that have been around for thousands of years generally change slowly, when they change at all. But that's not the way things have been playing out with marriage and family since the middle of the 20th Century. Some scholars argue that in the past five decades, the basic architecture of these age-old institutions has changed as…

The purpose of this study was to identify factors distinguishing Mexican American women living near the U.S.-Mexican border who are resilient to the experience of stress from those who are not. The study sample consisted of 418 participants ranging in age from 20 to 61 years. Data were gathered through a self-report survey instrument composed of…

A decade ago we published a book reporting an extensive analysis of nationwide panel data from the Monitoring the Future (MTF) project showing impacts of post-high school experiences on substance use (Bachman, Wadsworth, O'Malley, Johnston, & Schulenberg, 1997). One of the most important findings was that various categories of marital status,…

Many studies point out the importance of marital satisfaction for well-being. However, although being married is still the norm in middle and old age, research on the determinants of marital satisfaction has neglected long-term marriages. While research on short-term marriages mainly focuses on partner fit (e.g., in personality traits and…

This qualitative research study examined the "lived experiences" of learning identity during work transitions among three women (ages 35 to 55) who were not previously married. The research question was how do particular mid-life women who engage in a work transition re-construct the meaning of (or make sense of) their identity? Primary research…

Examined adolescent marriage, adolescent childbirth, and their co-occurrence in adult women. Poorest socioeconomic outcomes were associated with adolescent childbirth regardless of presence or timing of first marriage. Marital instability was associated with both adolescent marriage and adolescent childbirth. Findings suggest that risk associated…

This study discusses how many persons have had multiple marriages and have been divorced; length of time between marriages and the probability of marriage; and divorce, widowhood and remarriage by various social and economic characteristics based on marital history information from the Survey of Economic Opporutnity. (Author/CG)

Data from seven recent American national surveys found that persons remarried after divorce had rather high levels of reported well-being, but never-remarried women reported lower aggregate marital happiness than never-divorced married women or never-remarried men; the difference was not explained by race, age, or socioeconomic variables.…