The Role of Religion in Adolescence for Family Formation in Young Adulthood

This paper examines the role of religion in adolescence for shaping subsequent family formation. Data were drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 13,895). We explored the role of three dimensions of religious life—affiliation, attendance, and religious fervor—both singly and in combination for the transition to either marriage or cohabitation. Although each dimension predicted subsequent union formation, it was the particular combination of these dimensions that was important for understanding the likelihood of cohabiting. We also found evidence that patterns of religious identity, attendance, and fervor in adolescence were associated with the length of cohabitation, the likelihood of the cohabitation ending in marriage, and beliefs about the purpose of cohabitation.     

The Role of Parental Indulgence and Economic Stress in Life Satisfaction: Differential Perceptions of Parents and Adolescents

The purpose of this study was to determine if there were differences between adolescents and parents in their perceptions of parental indulgence, stress (economic and life), and life satisfaction. In addition, using the conceptual frameworks of family ecosystems and developmental theory, the relationships between the three types of parental indulgence (soft structure, overnurturance, and giving too much), economic stress, life stress, and life satisfaction were examined for parents and adolescent children. Findings indicated that adolescents perceived higher levels of stress and soft structure as compared to their parents, whereas parents perceived higher levels of economic stress. Additionally, each type of parental indulgence affected parent and adolescent life stress and life satisfaction differently. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Economic Factors and Relationship Quality Among Young Couples: Comparing Cohabitation and Marriage

Are economic resources related to relationship quality among young couples, and to what extent does this vary by relationship type? To answer these questions, we estimated regression models predicting respondent reports of conflict and affection in cohabiting and married partner relationships using the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, 1997 (NLSY97, N = 2,841) and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health, N = 1,702). We found that economic factors are an important predictor of conflict for both married and cohabiting couples. Affection was particularly responsive to human capital rather than short‐term economic indicators. Economic hardship was associated with more conflict among married and cohabiting couples.     

Religion,Pledging, and the Premarital Sexual Behavior of Married Young Adults

Social scientists know little about the effect of religion and abstinence pledging on premarital sex beyond adolescence. Evidence from a sample of married young adults in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 2,079) reveals that premarital sex is widespread even among religious Americans and abstinence pledgers. Nevertheless, these individuals are much more likely than their counterparts to avoid premarital sex entirely. When they do have premarital sex, pledgers are more likely to restrict the behavior to their future spouse. Though contextual, exposure, and social control effects explain some of the influence of religion and abstinence pledging, religion and abstinence pledging appear to exert robust, direct effects on premarital sexual behavior.     

Research on Marital Satisfaction and Stability in the 2010s: Challenging Conventional Wisdom

Although getting married is no longer a requirement for social acceptance, most people do marry in their lifetimes, and couples across the socioeconomic spectrum wish their marriages to be satisfying and long lasting. This review evaluates the past decade of research on the determinants of satisfaction and stability in marriage, concluding that the scholarship of the past 10 years has undermined three assumptions that were formerly accepted as conventional wisdom. First, research exploiting methods such as latent class growth analyses reveal that, for most couples, marital satisfaction does not decline over time but in fact remains relatively stable for long periods. Second, contrary to predictions of behavioral models of marriage, negative communication between spouses can be difficult to change, does not necessarily lead to more satisfying relationships when it is changed, and does not always predict distress in the first place. Third, dyadic processes that are reliably adaptive for middle-class and more affluent couples may operate differently in lower income couples, suggesting that influential models of marriage may not generalize to couples living in diverse environments. Thus, the accumulated research of the past 10 years indicates that the tasks of understanding and promoting marital satisfaction and stability are more complex than we appreciated at the start of the decade, raising important questions that beg to be answered in the years ahead.     

Trait Expressiveness and Marital Satisfaction: The Role of Idealization Processes

This study examined the processes that underlie the association between trait expressiveness and marital satisfaction. A total of 168 newlywed couples participated in a four‐wave, 13‐year longitudinal study of marriage. Cross‐sectional and longitudinal path analyses suggested that expressiveness promotes satisfaction by leading spouses to engage in affectionate behavior and by leading them to idealize their partner. Expressive people formed idealized images of their partner because they brought out the best in their partner's behavior and because they interpreted their partner's behavior in a favorable light. The study extends previous research by showing that the benefits of trait expressiveness extend into the second decade of marriage and by providing a plausible explanation of the connections between trait expressiveness and marital satisfaction.     

If Momma Ain't Happy: Explaining Declines in Marital Satisfaction Among New Mothers

This study tests competing explanations for the link between the transition to motherhood and declines in wives' marital satisfaction. Using data from the first and second waves of the National Survey of Families and Households (N = 569), we found that new mothers' marital satisfaction declines could be attributed to reductions in wives' quality time spent with their husbands and to increases in perceptions of unfairness in housework. Family role traditionalization in the wake of the birth of a child did not directly explain marital satisfaction declines but was linked to perceptions of marital unfairness. Attendance at religious worship services did not moderate the association between the transition to motherhood and marital satisfaction changes.     

Changes in the Satisfaction of Cohabitors Relative to Spouses Over Time

Family scholars have noted a gap in the subjective well‐being of cohabitors relative to spouses and have hypothesized that the size of this “cohabitation gap” varies depending on how far cohabitation has diffused in a society. For the first time we test this hypothesis across time in a single country, Italy, by analyzing 20 cross‐sectional, nationally representative surveys collected from 1993 to 2013 by the Italian Institute of Statistics (N = 279,190 partnered young adults). We find that differences in the assessments of family satisfaction between cohabitors and spouses have eroded over the years and that there has been no detectable cohabitation gap since 2011. In addition, we illustrate that the weakening of the cohabitation gap is attributable to the diffusion of cohabiting unions in Italian society.     

Housing Cost Burden and Marital Satisfaction

This study assessed the relationship between housing burden ratios and marital satisfaction. We also examined whether economic pressure might mediate this association and whether housing satisfaction would moderate it. Using existing data from the National Survey of Families and Households (n = 5,109 participants), results suggested that participants' housing burden ratio was negatively associated with marital satisfaction. Among homeowners, having a paid-off home mortgage was positively associated with marital satisfaction. These relationships were fully mediated by feelings of economic pressure. Although housing satisfaction was positively associated with marital satisfaction, it did not mediate the association between participants' housing burden ratio and their reported marital satisfaction.     

Nonmarital Relationships and Changing Perceptions of Marriage Among African American Young Adults

Cohabitation has become increasingly widespread over the past decade. Such trends have given rise to debates about the relation between cohabitation and marriage in terms of what cohabitation means for individual relationship trajectories and for the institution of marriage more generally. Using recent data from a sample of almost 800 African Americans and fixed effects modeling procedures, in the present study the authors shed some light on these debates by exploring the extent to which cohabitation, relative to both singlehood and dating, was associated with within‐individual changes in African Americans' marital beliefs during the transition to adulthood. The findings suggest that cohabitation is associated with changes in marital beliefs, generally in ways that repositioned partners toward marriage, not away from it. This was especially the case for women. These findings suggest that, for young African American women, cohabitation holds a distinct place relative to dating and, in principle if not practice, relative to marriage.     

The Role of Cohabitation in Remarriage

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 indicates that postdivorce cohabitation in general and postdivorce cohabitation with multiple partners in particular delay remarriage. Furthermore, echoing previous research findings on the relationship between premarital cohabitation and relationship quality, the ordered logistic analysis shows that postdivorce cohabitation with a spouse is associated with lower levels of remarital happiness, and postdivorce cohabitation of all types tends to be associated with higher levels of remarital instability. Implications of these findings are briefly discussed.     

Longitudinal Changes in Marital Relationships: The Role of Offspring’s Pubertal Development

This study charted the longitudinal trajectories of wives’ and husbands’ reports of marital love, satisfaction, and conflict and explored whether and how first‐ and second‐born offspring’s pubertal development was related to marital changes. Data were drawn from the first 7 years of a longitudinal study of family relationships. Participants included wives, husbands, and first‐ and second‐born children from 188 White, working‐ and middle‐class families. Multilevel models revealed declines over time in wives’ and husbands’ reports of marital love and satisfaction but only small changes in conflict. Offspring’s pubertal development was related to changes in marital qualities; declines in positivity and increases in negativity were most consistently linked to firstborns’ puberty. Overall, the results highlight the interrelatedness of family subsystems.     

Investments in Marriage and Cohabitation: The Role of Legal and Interpersonal Commitment

Cohabiters have been shown to invest less in their relationship than married couples. This study investigated the role of legal and interpersonal commitment by examining heterogeneity within marital and cohabiting unions. Going beyond the dichotomy of cohabitation versus marriage, different union types were distinguished by their level of legal and interpersonal commitment, followed by an assessment of their association with joint investments (specialization, having children together, purchasing a home). Using panel data from The Netherlands (N =2,362), the authors found considerable heterogeneity within marital and cohabiting unions. Joint investments increased as interpersonal commitment increased, with cohabiters without marriage plans investing the least and couples who directly married without prior cohabitation investing the most. The relationship between investments and legal union types was less straightforward and often challenged expectations, prompting the authors to elaborate on alternative explanations for their findings.     

Psychological Well‐being Among Older Adults: The Role of Partnership Status

Today's older adults are increasingly unmarried. Some are in cohabiting unions, others are dating, and many remain unpartnered. Unmarried older adults are at risk of poorer well‐being than married older adults, but it is unclear whether older cohabitors fare worse than or similar to their married counterparts; nor have well‐being differences among cohabitors, daters, and unpartnered persons been considered. Conceptualizing marital status as a continuum of social attachment, data from Waves I and II of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project are used to examine how older married, cohabiting, dating, and unpartnered individuals differ across multiple indicators of psychological well‐being. Among men, cohabitors appear to fare similarly to the married, and better than daters and the unpartnered. In contrast, there are few differences in psychological well‐being by partnership status for women.     

Marital Outcomes and Consideration of Divorce Among Orthodox Jews After Signing a Religious Prenuptial Agreement to Facilitate Future Divorce

This study examined marital satisfaction, marital adjustment, and consideration of divorce among Orthodox Jews in North America (N = 2,652). These marital outcomes were compared for individuals who signed or did not sign a religious prenuptial agreement that facilitates a woman’s future ability to receive a religious divorce from her husband. Results indicated a higher level of marital satisfaction among those who signed the religious prenuptial agreement, and no significant difference in marital adjustment or tendency to consider divorce between groups of individuals who signed or did not sign the religious prenuptial agreement.     

Relationship Transitions Among Older Cohabitors: The Role of Health,Wealth, and Family Ties

This study explored how health, wealth, and family ties shape older cohabitors' chances of marrying or separating. Drawing on rational choice and exchange theories, the author argues these factors affect women and men differently because the rewards, alternatives, and barriers of later‐life union formation differ by gender. The study used panel data from the 1998–2006 Health and Retirement Study and a sample of cohabitors 50 and older (N = 1,136). For older female cohabitors, large families and entitlement income lower the risk of marrying, whereas close social networks raise the risk of separating. Moreover, health and wealth have an interactive relationship in that the risk of marrying is highest for unhealthy male cohabitors when they are very wealthy but is highest for the poorest female cohabitors when they are in excellent health. Older men may be exchanging economic resources for caregiving, and cohabitation may be an adaptive response to the gendered costs and barriers of later‐life union formation.     

Complex Life Course Patterns and the Risk of Divorce in Second Marriages

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. I pay particular attention to the roles played by stepchildren and cohabitation. I find that women who brought stepchildren into their second marriage experience an elevated risk of marital disruption. Premarital cohabitation or having a birth while cohabiting with a second husband did not raise the risk of marital dissolution, however. In addition, marrying a man who brought a child to the marriage did not increase the risk of marital disruption.     

Psychological Wellbeing Among Same‐sex Attracted and Heterosexual Parents: Role of Connectedness to Family and Friendship Networks

Increasing numbers of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) adults are entering into parenthood. Previous studies indicate many of these parents receive little or no support from their families of origin due to family members' negative attitudes toward homosexuality. This study looks at the extent to which LGB parents report a lower sense of connectedness to family of origin and friendship networks than heterosexual parents and whether this has an impact on psychological wellbeing in either of these groups. Data were derived from two studies of parents: Work, Love, Play, a study of Australian and New Zealand LGB parents (n=324); and the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, a population‐based study of young children and parents (n=6460). Structural equation modelling was used to explore the relationships between: parent sexuality and family/friendship connectedness, family/friendship connectedness and psychological wellbeing, parent sexuality and psychological wellbeing. LGB parents reported feeling less connected to their families of origin but more connected to their friendship groups than heterosexual parents. Counter to previous studies, we found no difference in the psychological wellbeing of LGB parents compared to heterosexual parents when examining the direct effect of sexuality on psychological wellbeing. Clinical implications for counsellors and family therapists are discussed.     

Stress and Marital Satisfaction of Parents to Children Diagnosed With Autism

This investigation expanded on previous research conducted among parents caring for a child who is diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). An online web survey was used to collect data from 253 parents caring for a child with a diagnosis of ASD. Both parents reported elevated levels of parental stress associated with caring for the child on the spectrum. Lower levels of marital satisfaction were found in both parents. About 13% of the parents met the diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder, and about 15% of the parents met the diagnostic criteria for generalized anxiety disorder. Although the majority of the sample was female (94%), significant differences were found between males and females in relation to meeting the diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder and for generalized anxiety disorder. Higher levels of stress were associated with higher number of generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder symptoms. Findings from this study indicate how vulnerable parents, especially mothers, are in relation to caring to a child diagnosed with ASD.