Among 4,462 former servicemen surveyed, testosterone levels were positively related to not marrying and marital instability, and negatively related to every aspect of marital quality examined. Findings are analyzed in relation to three sociological theories of marital success based on socioeconomic status (educational attainment, income, and…

Results of 2 studies suggested that 11- and 12-year-old children's appraisals of marital conflict are influenced by the content, intensity, and cause of the conflict; and that the meaning of marital conflict to children is an important determinant of its impact on them. (MDM)

Studied affect, psychophysiology, and verbal content of arguments in 60 couples with violent husband. Found that no wife behaviors successfully suppressed husband violence once it began; husband violence escalated in response to nonviolent and violent wife behaviors. Both battering husbands and their wives were angrier than their maritally…

Reports on measures of marital success based both on rates of divorce and separation and on the quality of intact marriages constructed from U.S. national survey data gathered over the 15-year period from 1973 to 1988. Concludes that the probability of ever-married persons attaining and maintaining marital success dropped in the past few years.…

Explores intimacy enhancement through a psychoeducational method, the Practical Application of Intimate Relationship Skills (PAIRS) Program. Participants were more distressed and less intimate than general population. Clients' perceptions of intimacy and what maintains intimacy were measured. Findings suggest a multifaceted view of intimacy.…

Discusses divorce among ethnically heterogeneous couples. Uses Australian data from the 1970s to show that divorce risks are consistent with a modified model of behavioral convergence in which divorce rates for mixed marriages are largely a function of revealed group preferences for divorce and convergence between them. A convergence model may…

Few studies have examined the relationship between life events, suicide attempts, and personality disorders (PDs), in spite of the strong associations between PDs and suicidal behavior, and the poor coping strategies often exhibited by these individuals. The authors examined whether participants with PDs who attempted suicide during the first 3…

Two studies addressed the implications of concordance versus discrepancy of attachment representations in individuals at 2 stages in their marital relationships. Engaged (n = 157) and dating (n = 101) couples participated in a multimethod 6-year longitudinal study of adult attachment. Individuals completed the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), the…

A sample of ever-married women from the NLSY79 is analyzed to examine the effects of age at first marriage and gender ideology on the likelihood of experiencing marital disruption. The authors hypothesize that age at first marriage will have no effect on the likelihood of experiencing marital disruption for non-traditional women, but that there…

This study examines whether the financial and time pressures associated with spouses' working lives play a role in the relation between work and divorce during the first years of marriage. Using retrospective data from the Netherlands, the results show that divorce is more likely when the husband works on average fewer hours and the wife more…

The weeks following the birth of a child can be stressful for new mothers. Maternal stress may be increased when mothers are dissatisfied with instrumental partner support (e.g., division of childcare duties and family decision-making power). The purpose of the current study was to determine if there is an association between dissatisfaction with…

This article describes a conceptual framework for couple-based assessment strategies grounded in empirical findings linking couple distress to a broad range of both individual and relationship characteristics. These characteristics can contribute to, exacerbate, or result from relationship problems. On the basis of these findings, the authors…

We test the so-called escape hypothesis, which argues that for people from a poor marriage, a divorce has a less negative or even a positive effect on well-being. In an analysis of two waves of the National Survey of Families and Households (N = 4,526), we find only limited evidence. When people divorce from a dissatisfactory or unfair marriage,…

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…

Recent qualitative investigations of abusive men have indicated that power and control of the wife are central themes in incidents of marital violence. Furthermore, anecdotal and empirical evidence suggest that abusive husbands hold more traditional sex-role stereotypes, are more possessive and jealous, and are more controlling than nonabusive…