Bisexual women in marriages

A clinical sample of women who were currently or previously married were surveyed regarding demographics, homosexual experiences before marriage, problems in marriage, and sexual orientation. The average age of the 45 participants was 35.9. Before marriage, 21 (47%) were somewhat aware of their homosexual feelings but were much less likely to have thought of or identified themselves as homosexuals. Sexual difficulties were very common in these marriages (89%), the most cited sexual difficulty being a lack of sexual desire for their spouse (62%). Based upon Kinsey-type ratings, the sample could be described as almost exclusively heterosexual in behavior and fantasies before marriage. Some changes could be seen during marriage toward more of a homosexual orientation. The dramatic change, however, occurred following marriage, when the women reported even more of a homosexual orientation, tending toward the homosexual end of the Kinsey continuum. At the time of the study, a majority of the sample was, in fact, relating almost exclusively to other women. This study found that, compared to homosexual men who have been married, these women are more likely to marry at an earlier age, unlikely to be aware of their homosexual feelings prior to marriage, and more likely to terminate their marriage earlier because of conflicts arising as a result of their bisexual orientation and sexual dissatisfaction.     

Integration of male bisexuality and marriage

Eighteen couples who had originally entered therapy because of conflicts created by the husband's bisexuality were studied to determine the dynamics and adjustment of their marriages. All the couples, to varying degrees, had been openly dealing with the husband's bisexuality for at least two years. Through questionnaires and psychological instruments, couples indicated that openness and communication helped the relationship. The greatest difficulties they encountered were in their sexual relationships. Marital satisfaction and adjustment was found to be negatively correlated with increasing age, number of children, later onset of homosexual activities, increased emotional involvement with male partners, increased numbers of people who know about the husband's homosexual activities, and increased sexual dissatisfaction and conflict. Basically, this study reinforced the notion that some marriages can survive by way of open communication, acceptance and understanding, dynamics which help compensate for the inherent conflicts these couples face.     

Bisexual men in marriage: is a positive homosexual identity and stable marriage possible?

The negative picture of mixed-orientation marriages portrayed in previous research is challenged by results from a study and two-year follow-up of a non-clinical sample of 41 spouses representing 30 marriages. Evidence suggests that more recent marriages involving a bisexual are made for positive reasons, rather than as an escape from homosexuality. A comparison of couples in which the homosexual behavior is acknowledged to those in which it is secretive suggests a positive homosexual identity can be developed in the acknowledged situation. Data from a two-year follow-up provide information on the factors which led to the stabilization of such marriages. A schema of developmental crises, decisions, and consequences is presented.     

Heterosexual women's perceptions of their marriages to bisexual or homosexual men

Twenty-one heterosexual women who were or had been married to bisexual or homosexual men and had children by them responded to a 28-page questionnaire that explored their experiences as wives and mothers. All of the married women expected a lasting, monogamous marriage. Only three had partial knowledge of their husband's sexual orientation before marriage. All of them went through a painful grief reaction when they learned that their husbands had emotional or sexual, or both, attachments to other men. The suffering was aggravated by feeling deceived or stupid for not having guessed the truth. What made it difficult for them to seek support from family and friends was the fear of encountering social disapproval or ostracism. They were afraid for themselves, their husbands, and their children. At the time of the study 11 of the 21 women were still married and living with their husbands, but most of them felt unsure that the marriage would last. Ten were in transition, separated, or divorced. Only three of the still married wives had complete confidence in the future stability of their relationships. These marriages were characterized by good communications, husbands who considered themselves bisexual, and an open marriage contract whereby wives could have heterosexual affairs. Findings cannot be generalized from this small convenience sample, but will hopefully encourage further research. The writers are also soliciting more subjects to enlarge the sample.     

A study of the married bisexual male: paradox and resolution

Men who live in conventional marriages and at the same time have significant love-sex relationships with members of their own sex are largely an invisible group in our society. However, there is evidence to suggest that they are not rare, only rarely identified. How these men perceive themselves, reconcile the ordinary aspects of their lives with their atypical sexuality, and conduct themselves in marriage and family life are the focus of this study. Particular attention is paid to two major paradoxes in their lives: the contradiction between their heterosexual public identity which places them comfortably in the mainstream of society and their stigmatized and forbidden homosexual desires and behavior; and the ethical issue of deceiving their wives as well as others to whom they are intimately related. Sixty men drawn from a non-clinical population presented their life stories in extended tape-recorded interviews. These men show great variations in their patterns of psychosexual development as well as in their accoMmodations to marriage and do not fit readily into simple categories. Most of them have found fulfillment and have no wish to change the pattern of their lives. In part, the study contrasts the more successful with the less successful marriages. A major conclusion is that some men are able to express with minimal conflict their homosexual and heterosexual impulses within the framework of a conventional marriage.     

Not your lucky day: romantically and numerically special wedding date divorce risks

Characteristics of couples on or about their wedding day and characteristics of weddings have been shown to predict marital outcomes. Little is known, however, about how the dates of the weddings correlate with marriage durability. Using Dutch marriage and divorce registries from 1999 to 2013, this study compares the durations of marriages that began on unusually popular wedding dates with marriages on ordinary dates. We identify several distinct types of popular dates, including Valentine’s Day and numerically special days (dates with the same or sequential number values, e.g., 9.9.99, 1.2.03), showing that on an adjusted basis, the incidence of weddings on such dates was 137–509% higher than ordinary dates. The hazard odds of divorce for these special-date weddings were 18–36% higher than ordinary-date weddings. Sorting on couples’ observable characteristics accounts for some of the higher divorce risks, but even after controlling for these characteristics, special-date weddings were more vulnerable, with 10–17% higher divorce odds compared to ordinary dates. These relationships are even stronger for couples who have not married before.     

摇摆的家庭：农村“新逃婚”的呈现及其产生机制——基于对赣南H乡新逃婚现象的调查与分析

“新逃婚”的出现给农村的婚姻与家庭带来了极大的不稳定。从相关案例分析发现,“新逃婚”现象主要出现在年轻夫妇、有婚生子女、跨省婚姻、男方家庭经济条件差和夫妇长期外出打工的家庭。“新逃婚”在打工潮的背景下表现的更加激烈,以打工过程中女性的婚外情为突出表现,并最终以女性的出走为结局。多数发生新逃婚的家庭男性都难以再婚,而女性则开始了新的婚姻生活。传统道德、舆论与地方性规范的式微,家庭关系与夫妻关系的松散和婚姻市场化程度的提升以及女性择偶观念的经济理性是导致“新逃婚”出现的主要机制。     

Can Pro-Marriage Policies Work? An Analysis of Marginal Marriages

Policies to promote marriage are controversial, and it is unclear whether they are successful. To analyze such policies, one must distinguish between a marriage that is created by a marriage-promoting policy (marginal marriage) and a marriage that would have been formed even in the absence of a state intervention (average marriage). We exploit the suspension of a cash-on-hand marriage subsidy in Austria to examine the differential behavior of marginal and average marriages. The announcement of an impending suspension of this subsidy led to an enormous marriage boom among eligible couples that allows us to locate marginal marriages. Applying a difference-in-differences approach, we show that marginal marriages are surprisingly as stable as average marriages but produce fewer children, children later in marriage, and children who are less healthy at birth.     

Marital decision-making and the timing of first birth in rural China before the 1990s

Using a sample of couples drawn from the three provinces of Guangdong, Shandong, and Shaanxi, we investigated whether couples’ increasing freedom to choose whom to marry influenced the timing of first birth in rural China during the four decades before the 1990s. The shortening of first-birth intervals in the period is found to be associated with the shift from arranged to free-choice marriages. The association is attributed largely to increased intimacy and coital frequency after marriage together with postponement of age at first marriage.     

Group psychotherapy for bisexual men and their wives

A significant number of men and women experience conflict surrounding homosexual expression within marriage. As the media focuses more attention on these relationships, more bisexual men and their wives seek counseling or psychotherapeutic assistance. Based upon the author's research and clinical experience, this article outlines a group psychotherapy strategy for bisexual men and their wives. Relevant research and background data on mixed-orientation marriages are summarized. Treatment strategy explores intervention processes, resistances to treatment, the unique supportive experiences of the group, and qualities of the co-therapist who may provide assistance to bisexual men and their wives.     

Bridal pregnancy in rural England in earlier centuries

Abstract A sample of 3,786 marriages, recorded in the parish registers of 77 rural and semi-rural parishes in 24 English counties during the period 1540-1835, is investigated. 49% of the marriages can be followed through to a maternity recorded in a baptism-entry in the baptism register of the same parish, i.e. the parish of marriage. Of these brides traced to a maternity, roughly one-third had their maternity recorded within eight and a half months of marriage and were therefore probably pregnant at marriage. When allowance is made for delayed baptisms, and for brides whose pre-maritally conceived pregnancy terminated in an abortion or stillbirth and hence went unrecorded, the proportion of 'traced' brides pregnant may approach one-half. Turning to the 51% of marriages untraced to maternities in this investigation, for a large number (perhaps two-thirds) the most likely explanation is the removal ofthe married couple from the parish of marriage before maternity occurred, for reasons unconnected with the bridal condition. It is concluded that there is direct and detailed evidence in the parish registers that more than one-sixth of all brides were pregnant at marriage, and that it can be reasonably deduced from the direct evidence that in fact about one-third were pregnant. The proportion of brides pregnant in the earlier centuries (before 1700) appears to have been only about one-half of that in the later centuries. Regionally, the highest rate in both periods appears to have been in the northern four counties. The social interpretation of these bridal pregnancy rates poses many problems for the social historian.     

The resort to divorce in England and Wales, 1858–1957

This paper consists of a statistical analysis of the increasing resort to divorce in England and Wales over the past hundred years. In view of the social, financial and procedural barriers surrounding the Divorce Court over most of the period it is impossible to regard the spread of divorce as an index of increasing marital breakdown. It indicates merely the greater ability and willingness of estranged couples to take advantage of the legal machinery for bringing their marriages to a formal end.

The analysis of published data shows that since 1857, the rate of petitioning per 10,000 married couples (of whom the wives were 15–49 years of age) has risen from 0.83 to 37.98. Various factors have been responsible for this fifty-foild increase: it seems that a five-fold rise was due specifically to the lowering of formal barriers (which made divorce more accessible to the poor and to women petitioners), while the remaining tenfold increase was brought about by the growing acceptance by society and by discordant couples, of divorce as an appropriate end to a broken marriage. This change in public opinion can be seen not only in the slow yet persistent rise in the rate of petitioning over all but the last few years, but also in the long-term effects of the two world wars.

Divorces since 1921 have been allocated to the various marriage cohorts involved so as to estimate the proportion of each cohort divorced by successive marriage anniversaries. This procedure has shown that the recent war had its greaters disruptive impact on the “hastliy contracted” marriages of the early war years; the impact on these cohorts was, however, only slightly in excess of that exerted on the immediately preceding cohorts married in the later 1930's. In fact the war took its toll of all cohorts back to 1921.

As complement to this study of trends the position near the beginning and near the end of the whole period was investigated by analysing a special extraction of statistics relating to all the 1871 petitions and to a sample of those of 1951. The study of couples involved in divorce in these two years, illustrates its extension in the intervening period to most sectors of the married population. From a tiny group of predominantly well-to-do and frequently childless couples in 1871, the divorce population by 1951 appeared to have become very nearly a cross-section of all married couples, at least in respect to occupational structure and family size. To some extent, the close similarity between the divorcing and the still married couples in 1951 was a temporary phenomenon, due to the entry into the divorce courts in that year of an unuually large number of poor petitioners using the new legal aid provisions introduced in 1950. Nevertheless, there is good reasong to believe that this factor has led to only slight over-emphasis of the long-term trend for the poor and those with families to take an increasing share in divorce petitioning.

So far as the mid-twentieth century position is concerned cohort analysis shows that, at least in the early years of matrimony, the couples married since 1945 have petitioned for divorce less than their immediate elders in the wartime or just pre-war cohorts. While the post-war marriages have not run their full course through the most divorce-prone years, this finding suggests that the rate of petitioning is not likely to go on increasing in the future nearly so rapidly or so persistently as it has done in the past. It seems possible that the rate may be stabilized in the next few years at approximately its present level, i.e. within the range of 5%–10% of each marriage cohort. If this should occur, it would probably mean that divorce in England and Wales had found its own level, and that virtually all those requiring to terminate marriage in the existing context of social circumstances were no longer prevented by extraneous barriers from using the appropriate legal procedures.     

90年代以来中国夫妇年龄差变动趋势及其原因分析

夫妇年龄差的研究是人口学研究的一个重要领域。但目前的研究由于数据来源多样化,得出的结论不尽一致,关于年龄差的变化方向也没有形成定论。为此,本文利用我国三期妇女地位调查数据,对年龄差变动趋势进行分析。结果发现：我国同龄婚配的特点非常稳定,其比例维持在16％～17％之间。中国夫妇年龄差模式自90年代以来,发生了较大的变化,2010年中国传统的＂男高女低＂的婚配模式有所改变,这种＂男高女低＂婚姻明显下降,而＂女高男低＂婚姻明显升高,扣除同龄婚后二者平分秋色。其原因可能与我国出生性别比持续偏高和婚姻观念的转变等因素有关。     

Interracial marriage: Data for Philadelphia and Pennsylvania

Our knowledge of interracial marriage in the United States is fragmentary, inadequate and fraught with contradictions. A major methodological finding of this study, discovered by a comparison of statistical records for Philadelphia (1960-1962 and 1965-1966) with marriage license applications, is that there has been a 32 percent error in reporting mixed race cases. The full significance of this as regards existing data can only be conjectured at present. In Pennsylvania, it would seem, areas of high concentration of nonwhites show the lowest intermarriage rates. In the state, excluding Philadelphia, about 3 out of 4 mixed marriages involve nonwhite males; in Philadelphia, the figure is 52 percent. To some extent nonresidents seem to be attracted to Philadelphia for their intermarriages; but, on the other hand, a considerable number of the 84 percent who are residents declare to having the same address. As measured by the interval from application to performance of the ceremony, they do not marry in haste, nor do they show a strong urge to use their license elsewhere in the state. There is no remarkable age disparity for these couples. They do marry somewhat later—about 2 years later for those who are entering upon their first (primary) marriage; and a large proportion of the couples show a prior divorce experience. These data for Philadelphia and Pennsylvania disclose a tendency, noticed also in other studies, for the rate of such marriages to increase, so that now about 2 percent of Philadelphia and nearly 5 percent of Pennsylvania nonwhites are marrying interracially.     

Marital decision-making and the timing of first birth in rural China before the 1990s

Using a sample of couples drawn from the three provinces of Guangdong, Shandong, and Shaanxi, we investigated whether couples' increasing freedom to choose whom to marry influenced the timing of first birth in rural China during the four decades before the 1990s. The shortening of first-birth intervals in the period is found to be associated with the shift from arranged to free-choice marriages. The association is attributed largely to increased intimacy and coital frequency after marriage together with postponement of age at first marriage.     

Good marriages gone bad: Health mismatches as a cause of later-life marital dissolution

This study explores the impact of health status on marital dissolution for couples in late mid-life. A key feature of the empirical framework is that it incorporates the interaction of health between the spouses. This specification allows not only a general test of whether health matters but also a specific test of an important implication of cost-benefit models of marriage dissolution. In particular,cost-benefit models imply that marriages exhibiting a ``health mismatch' (where one partner has substantially better health than the other one) are more likely to get divorced than couples who have similar health (whether good or bad). Using a Cox proportional hazards model, we test this hypothesis by estimating the impact of different spousal health combinations on the probability of marital dissolution (as indicated by separation). Data are taken from four waves of the Health and Retirement Study (1992–1998) and consist of 4,241 couples where at least one spouse is between the ages of 51 and 61 in 1992. We do find evidence for the health mismatch hypothesis, but only among couples in which both couples report their marriages to be very satisfying. Among other couples, no effect is found. This suggests that health is of minor consequence for already unhappy couples, but health mismatches pose a significant risk of dissolution to happy couples within this age cohort, possibly because of the unexpected nature of poor healthat a relatively young age.     

Mobility,Non-Familial Activity,and Fertility

In this analysis of fertility data from a sample of non-Catholic faculty couples in an American university, temporal patterns and variations in education, employment, marriage, and parenthood of the husbands and wives are discussed in reference to (1) the social mobility-fertility hypothesis and (2) a non-familial activity-fertility hypothesis.The couples are divided into four groups on the basis of family size and mobility status: (1) mobile-small, (2) non-mobile-small, (3) mobile-large, and (4) non-mobile-large. Whatever their mobility status, the four groups of husbands successfully completed requirements for the doctoral degree at about the same age and became established at about the same time in life and within the profession. Whatever their husbands' social origins, the wives also differ little with respect to educational attainment and in their work experiences in prematrimonial days. However, a different pattern is found in the work experiences of the wives since marriage. Those with two children are more likely to be employed after marriage and parenthood.On the other hand, a good many more wives with four or more children not only never worked before marriage but also remained outside the labor force after marriage (in the earlier years of marriage as well as after the tenth anniversary). The present data thus seem to support an analytically useful distinction between the "working wives" and the "working mothers."     

Differentials in divorce in maryland

The basic data needed for measurement of the risks of termination of the legal relationship of marriage by characteristics of the marital partners are not available at this time for the United States because the national divorce registration area includes less than half the States. Special studies based on selected census data or the records of marriages and divorces occurring in one State or community have provided much of the valuable but limited information at hand. Statistics for individual States are subject to substantial bias as a consequence of inter-State migration between time of marriage and time of divorce, but they must serve as a basic data source until national reporting has improved. A record linkage study was undertaken which tied marriages occurring in the State of Maryland in 1959 with divorces occurring in the State in the years 1959–66. Relative, not actual, divorce risks by race, age at marriage, and previous marital status were calculated for couples with at least one partner an in-State resident at the time of marriage. The dissolution rate was higher for whites than for nonwhites. Marriages contracted by persons at very youthful ages and by persons who had been married previously were found subject to greater than average risks of dissolution through divorce.     

Consanguinity and child mortality: The risk faced by families

Previous research reveals that the characteristics and practices of a child's family are important determinants of its chances of surviving beyond childhood. This study investigates the effects of consanguinity on a family's odds of experiencing the death of a child in Pakistan, a society in which marriage among close relatives is common. Analysis of data from the 1991 Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey reveals that first cousin marriages increase a couple's risk of enduring the death of one or more of their children. These couples are 1.18 times as likely to have a child die by its fifth birthday than couples not related by blood net of other factors associated with child mortality. Elimination of first cousin marriages would contribute to a modest decrease in the proportion of Pakistani families suffering the death of a child.     

Heterosexual Marital Intention: Effects of Internalized Homophobia,Homosexual Identity,Perceived Family Support,and Disclosure Among Chinese Gay and Bisexual Men

ABSTRACT

The present study explored the factors that influence the likelihood that 217 Chinese gay/bisexual men will engage in heterosexual marriage, focusing on the Chinese cultural context, in which filial duties to marry, have children, and support one’s parents in their old age are taken seriously. Data on heterosexual marital intention (HMI) were examined in relation to demographics, internalized homophobia, homosexual identity formation (HIF), perceived family support, and disclosure. We estimated a multinomial logistic regression model for HMI. Internalized homophobia was a predictor for HMI. Lower levels of HIF and disclosure were found in gay/bisexual men who have married or who intend to marry; and the more family support gay/bisexual men perceived, the more likely they were to enter heterosexual marriages. The findings could help to better evaluate and comprehend the factors leading to heterosexual marriages involving Chinese gay/bisexual men. The social implications of this research are also discussed.