The United States shows striking racial and ethnic differences in marriage patterns. Compared to both white and Hispanic women, black women marry later in life, are less likely to marry at all, and have higher rates of marital instability. Kelly Raley, Megan Sweeney, and Danielle Wondra begin by reviewing common explanations for these differences,…

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…

This study examines main effect and interactive models of the relations between marital conflict, divorce, and parent-adult child relationships and gender differences in these relations. Data were drawn from a longitudinal study of a community sample (N = 585). Parental marital conflict and divorce were measured from age 5 through age 17 years.…

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…

The literature on interracial families has examined social stigmas attached to interracial relationships but has not thoroughly documented whether crossing racial boundaries increases the risk of divorce. Using the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth (Cycle VI), we compare the likelihood of divorce for interracial couples to that of same-race…

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…

In this article, I use data on women (N= 655) from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth to examine the correlates of second marital dissolution. I update the limited number of previous studies on this topic by focusing on the relationships between divorce and the complex life course patterns that characterize respondents in second marriages.…

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…

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 data from Waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households to study high- and low-distress marriages that end in divorce. A cluster analysis of 509 couples who divorced between waves revealed that about half were in high-distress relationships and the rest in low-distress relationships. These 2 groups were not artifacts of…

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…

Using 3 subsamples of remarried respondents (n=1,583, 971, and 926) in the first wave of the National Survey of Families and Households, this study investigates how different types of cohabitation, especially postdivorce cohabitation, affect the timing and quality of remarriage in the United States. Ordinary Least Squares regression analysis…

Tested two hypotheses relative to duration of marriage in 11,559 divorcing families in northern California. Confirmed that the presence of children is associated with longer marriage duration but not that the presence of children younger than age two was associated with longer marital duration. (NRB)

Used data from National Survey of Families and Households to examine cohabitation. Couples who cohabited before marriage reported lower quality marriages, lower commitment to institution of marriage, more individualistic views of marriage (wives only), and greater likelihood of divorce than couples who did not cohabit. Effects were generally…

Premarital cohabitation has consistently been found to be associated with increased risk for divorce and marital distress in the United States. Two explanations for this "cohabitation effect" are discussed: selection and experience. We present an empirically based view of how the experience of cohabitation may increase risk for…