A New Marriage Squeeze for Black Women: The Role of Racial Intermarriage by Black Men

Recent declines in the rate of marriage among Black women have been accompanied by substantial increases in rates of interracial marriage, especially between Black men and non‐Black women. Explanations for the retreat from marriage among Black women have focused on deficits in the quantity and quality of available partners, and the role of racial intermarriage largely has been ignored. This study examines the impact of interracial marriage by Black men on the marriage prospects of Black women. First, our analysis of data from the 1990 Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) reveals that intermarried Black men are selective of those with the highest levels of education, income, and occupational prestige. Second, multilevel analyses, using both the IPUMS and Panel Study of Income Dynamics, show that the level of intermarriage in metropolitan areas is significantly related to the marital behaviors of Black women. Local rates of intermarriage among Black men reduce the likelihood that Black women currently will be married and that they will make the transition to marriage. These effects are especially acute for highly educated Black women whose marriage markets are defined by those Black men who are most likely to intermarry. Finally, our analyses indicate that intermarriage affects the marital prospects of Black women by negatively affecting the pool of economically attractive marriage partners in the metropolitan area.     

Men's and Women's Pathways to Adulthood and Their Adolescent Precursors

This study compared men's and women's pathways to adulthood by examining how role transitions in education, work, marriage, and parenthood intersect and form developmental pathways from ages 18-30. The study investigated how sociodemographic factors and adolescent experiences were associated with these pathways. We used latent class analysis to analyze longitudinal data from a gender-balanced panel of 808 contemporary young adults. We found three similar latent pathways for both genders, but men and women differed in the timing of marriage and when they began to live with children and the likelihood of combining both roles. The present study points to the continued, though differential, relevance of marriage and family in the transition to adulthood for men and women.     

DO MEN “NEED” A SPOUSE MORE THAN WOMEN?: PERCEPTIONS OF THE IMPORTANCE OF MARRIAGE FOR MEN AND WOMEN

This study examines how important men and women feel marriage is for men and for women. Using data from the National Survey of Families and Households, we find that both men and women feel that men need to be married more than women do. Women are more likely than men to think that both men and women can have satisfying lives without marriage, but they are also more likely to think that only women can have satisfying lives without marriage. Younger, more educated people are less likely to emphasize marriage. On the other hand, religious people and those who are married with children are particularly likely to think that neither men nor women can have satisfying lives without marriage.     

Do women value marriage more? The effect of obesity on cohabitation and marriage in the USA

This paper looks into the impact of obesity and other factors on first entry into a marital or cohabiting union, using 1997 cohort data from the national longitudinal survey. Results show obese women are less likely to be accepted into either cohabitation or marriage, while obese men are less likely to be accepted in a cohabitating relation but are not less likely to enter into marriage. Income affects all union and all genders symmetrically, increasing the likelihood of a union. These results suggest that marriage is a special form of union for women, so they are willing to marry obese men because they value other factors related to the marriage choice, such as commitment or the prospect of having children. Men do not appear to value these factors as much, so obese women are less likely to be accepted into either cohabitation or marriage.

Migration to the US and marital mobility

When immigrants enter the US they typically access a marriage market with a larger supply of educated spouses compared to the marriage market in their home countries. Absent any selectivity bias, this access should increase the likelihood that migrants ‘marry-up’ in terms of education. We combine survey data on British and German immigrants in the US with data on natives in Britain and Germany to estimate the causal effect of migration on educational mobility through cross-national marriage. To control for selective mating, we instrument educational attainment using government spending on education in the years each person was of school-age. To control for selective migration, we instrument the migration decision using inflows of immigrants to the US during puberty and early adulthood. We find strong selectivity effects that work against the positive prospects of the US marriage market. All migrants give up spousal education in exchange for US entry and assimilation. Migrant men also give up spousal education because they cannot compete with native men as bread-earners. Migrant women have some advantage in the US marriage market, as they can compete with native women in home production.     

Do the Health Benefits of Marriage Depend on the Likelihood of Marriage?

Marriage promotion initiatives presume substantial health benefits of marriage. Current literature, however, has provided inconsistent results on whether these benefits would be shared by people unlikely to marry. We investigate whether the physical and mental health benefits of marriage depend on the likelihood of marriage. Whereas prior studies have compared health benefits of marriage across a single predictor of marriage chances, we define the likelihood of marriage as a composite of demographic, economic, and health characteristics. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we find that married adults are only modestly healthier than unmarried adults in both physical and mental dimensions. People with a higher likelihood of marriage generally do not reap greater health benefits from marriage than their counterparts. The only exception is that continuous marriage is more strongly associated with improved mental health among men who are more likely to be married.     

Adolescent Substance Use and Marital Status in Adulthood

Researchers have noted that substance use in the adolescent years is associated with a variety of consequences. The majority of studies have focused on relatively short-term consequences of substance use. Using data from the 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, this study examines how early substance use and current substance use affect individuals’ eventual marital status. Higher levels of substance use in the adult years are shown to be relatively deleterious to both women’s and men’s chances of marriage. However, initial cigarette use in the adolescent years is shown to enhance adults’ likelihood of marriage, whereas adolescent marijuana use substantially reduces the chances of marriage. Interestingly, early alcohol use decreases women’s chances of becoming married yet increases the chances for men. Similarly, early alcohol use was associated with a greater risk of divorce. Overall, the results point to the intricate nature of early substance use and the long-term consequences thereof. The results are discussed within a framework of precocious development theory.     

Not just maternalism: marriage and fatherhood in American welfare policy

The United States' 1996 welfare reforms are often interpreted as a historical break in transitioning from supporting motherhood to commodifiying women's labor. However, this cannot account for welfare reform's emphasis upon heterosexual marriage and fatherhood promotion. The paper traces continuities and shifts in over a century of familial regulation through American welfare policy, specifying the place of marriage promotion within welfare policy. Up until 1996, families were key sites of intervention through which the American welfare state was erected, especially through single women as mothers - not wives. However, as of the 1960s, concern with African American men's "failed" familial commitments turned policymakers toward concern over marriage promotion for women and men. While marriage "disincentives" for aid recipients were lifted in the 1960s, the 1996 reforms structured a new form of nuclear family governance actively promoting marriage rooted in, but distinct from, the previous. Given the historical absence of welfare policies available to poor men, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families' (TANF) marriage promotion policies have positioned poor women as nodes connecting the state to poor men, simultaneously structuring poor women as breadwinners, mothers, and wives. Recent welfare reform has also started to target poor men directly, especially in fatherhood and marriage promotion initiatives. The article highlights how, in addition to workfare policies, marriage promotion is a neoliberal policy shifting risk to the shoulders of the poor, aiming to produce "strong families" for the purposes of social security.     

Gender,marital status,and mental well‐being: A retest of Bernard's his and her marriages

In The Future of Marriage, Bernard (1972) states that marriage is good for men but not for women: she reports married males to be happier than unmarried males or married women, who in turn are worse off emotionally than single women. The present study tests Bernard's thesis with a multi‐item index of mental well‐being and does not substantiate the relationships stated above. However, marriage is more beneficial for men than for women in that there is a greater difference in mental well‐being between married and unmarried men than women.     

The Performance of Desire: Gender and Sexual Negotiation in Long-Term Marriages

We integrate theoretical traditions on the social construction of gender, heterosexuality, and marriage with research and theory on emotion work to guide a qualitative investigation of how married people understand and experience sex in marriage. Results, based on 62 in-depth interviews, indicate that married men and women tend to believe that sex is integral to a good marriage and that men are more sexual than women. Moreover, husbands and wives commonly experience conflict around sex and undertake emotion work to manage their own and their spouse's feelings about sex. We refer to this emotion work as "performing desire" and show how it is linked to gendered experiences in marriage and to competing cultural discourses around gender, heterosexuality, and marriage.     

Generous or Greedy Marriage? A Longitudinal Study of Volunteering and Charitable Giving

Recent scholarship has explored whether marriage encourages individuals to contribute to or withdraw from society. The authors examined how marriage affects volunteering and charitable giving, using longitudinal data from the 2001 to 2009 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Newly married men, but not women, were significantly more likely to give money to charity in the first survey wave after marriage and gave larger amounts of money. Newly married women, but not men, were significantly less likely to volunteer after marriage and volunteered fewer hours. Marriage had a stronger effect on religious giving than overall giving among men and had a significant and positive effect on religious giving among women. Marriage had a stronger positive effect on men's giving in the second wave after marriage than after the first.     

Returning to school after marriage: Results for whites and blacks

We investigate the impact of various family background, socioeconomic, and life-course factors on the likelihood of white and black women returning to school after marriage. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972, results indicate the following: (a) many married women return to two-year schools rather than four-year schools, (b) blacks are more likely than whites to return to school after marriage, (c) fewer measured predictors are significant in models for blacks and for two-year schools, and (d) changing life-course position affects the likelihood of returning to school.     

MARRIAGE ROLE EXPECTATIONS OF DIVORCED MEN AND WOMEN

Marriage role expectations of divorced men and women were compared to those of married men and women. Six dimensions of expectations were examined along the continuum of traditionalism versus equalitarianism in sex roles: (I) authority patterns. (2) household tasks, (3) childcare, (4) personal characteristics, (5) social participation, and (6) finances and employment. The data suggest that women, more than men, view marriage role responsibilities as evenly applying to both sexes. Divorce appears to have a liberalizing effect on men's perceptions of marriage roles, but divorced women express a significantly higher level of equalitarianism in their marriage role perceptions than any other comparison group. Differences in expectations regarding authority, finances, and employment appear to be broadened between men and women as a result of divorce.     

Cohabitation in the Philippines: Attitudes and Behaviors Among Young Women and Men

We examine data from a national survey of 15 – 27 year olds in the Philippines to assess attitudes toward marriage and cohabitation, and we analyze the marital and nonmarital union experiences of 25 – 27 year olds. We find that attitudes toward cohabitation remain quite conservative among young Filipinos, although men view cohabitation more favorably than do women. We also find that men’s socioeconomic status affects their ability to enter unions, particularly marriage, whereas women’s union formation patterns are influenced by the family in which they grew up, their participation in religious services, and to some degree by their place of residence. Both men and women who hold more liberal attitudes on a range of issues are more likely to have cohabited than are individuals who do not share those views. For now, however, we do not expect cohabitation to become a widespread substitute for marriage in the Philippines.     

Assisted Reproductive Technology and Women’s Timing of Marriage and Childbearing

This paper exploited variation in mandated insurance coverage of assisted reproductive technology (ART) across US states and over time to examine the connection between the price of ART and women’s timing of family including marriage and child bearing in and out of wedlock. Duration and competing risks analyses were estimated to investigate the effects of ART insurance mandates on women’s timing of first marriage and first birth using the 1968–2009 Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The findings suggest that the mandates were associated with delayed marriage and childbearing at younger ages and an increased likelihood of marriage and motherhood at ages 30 and older, but only for college graduate women. For the full sample of women, the mandates were associated with an increased likelihood of marriage at ages 25 and older and motherhood within marriage after at ages 30 and older, but not with delay at younger ages. Results by race were similar to those for the full sample for Whites, but were generally less significant for Blacks. No significant effects of the mandates were found for out-of-wedlock childbearing.     

Two Decades of Stability and Change in Age at First Union Formation

The landscape of union formation has been shifting; Americans are now marrying at the highest ages on record and the majority of young adults have cohabited. Yet little attention has been paid to the timing of cohabitation relative to marriage. Using the National Survey of Families and Households and 4 cycles of the National Survey of Family Growth, the authors examined the timing of marriage, cohabitation, and unions over 20 years. As the median age at first marriage has climbed, the age at cohabitation has remained stable for men and women. The changes in the timing of union formation have been similar according to race/ethnicity. The marked delay in marriage among women and men with low educational attainment has resulted in a near‐convergence in the age at first marriage according to education. The authors conclude that the rise in cohabitation has offset changes in the levels and timing of marriage     

Managing Money in Marriage: Multilevel and Cross‐National Effects of the Breadwinner Role

We examine whether institutionalized practices and beliefs regarding breadwinning roles are associated with the choice of more or less equal money management strategies in marriage. Using cross‐national data from 21 country contexts in the International Social Survey Programme and multilevel modeling, we find that in contexts of shared breadwinning, there is a greater likelihood of shared management of money, controlling for the relative income contribution of each spouse. We also find some evidence that the effect of spouses’ relative income contributions diminishes in contexts of shared breadwinning. Our analysis comparing women’s and men’s money management is consistent with previous research indicating that women’s management may be more work than power.     

Predicting Commitment to Wed Among Hispanic and Anglo Partners

Ethnic differences in commitment to wed were examined between 46 Hispanics (27 women, 19 men) and 160 Anglos (84 women, 76 men). Although limited by sample sizes, findings indicated that Hispanics and Anglos did not differ, on average, on measures of attitudes toward marriage, perceived family influence, commitment to wed, belongingness, and trust. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that, after controlling for age and income, attitudes toward marriage, perceived family support, and trust predicted commitment to wed for women, whereas only perceived family support emerged as a predictor among men. Finally, although no ethnic differences emerged for men, the degree to which trust, perceived family support, and attitudes toward marriage predicted commitment to wed for women varied by ethnicity.     

Revisiting the relationships among gender,marital status,and mental health

Three decades ago, Grove introduced his sex-role theory of mental illness, which attributes women's higher rates of psychological distress to their roles in society. Central to his hypothesis is that marriage is emotionally advantageous for men and disadvantageous for women. This article revisits this topic with data from the National Survey of Families and Households. The analyses indicate that the emotional benefits of marriage apply equally to men and women, but that men and women respond to marital transitions with different types of emotional problems. The implications of these findings for future research on gender and mental health are discussed.     

Conflict and Compatibility? Developmental Idealism and Gendered Differences in Marital Choice

Developmental idealism (DI) theory suggests that individuals who endorse DI schemas about marriage are more likely to choose their own spouses and do so for love. Such DI schemas conflict with South Asian gender schemas about marriage for women, but not for men. In turn, such conflict and compatibility may create gender differences in incorporating DI into expectations and experiences of marital choice and love in South Asia. Connections between endorsing DI as an abstract model of the world and using DI as a concrete guide for marriage may also differ by gender. Using survey data from Nepal, the author finds that men are more likely than women to expect to choose their own spouse and do so for love. Their parents' expectations show the same gender differences. Men are also more likely to choose their own spouses in practice. Connections between abstract and concrete DI are not stronger among men though.