What Does Marriage Mean to Us? Marital Centrality among Newlywed Couples (original) (raw)

“Marriage Is More Than Being Together”: The Meaning of Marriage for Young Adults

Journal of Family Issues, 2011

Based on 424 qualitative interviews with a racially, ethnically, and socio-economically diverse population of young people ranging in age from 21 to 38, the authors ponder the paradox of the evolving role for contemporary marriage within the developmental perspective of the transition to adulthood. The authors identify two groups: marriage naturalists and marriage planners. Naturalists comprise one fifth of the sample, are largely from rural America, and follow the fast-track into marriage that defined the mid-twentieth century. Planners comprise the remainder of the sample, are based in metropolitan areas, and follow an elongated transition to adulthood. The authors examine the views of each group on commitment and the nature of relationships, and apply their findings to the debates about whether marriage is resilient, in decline, or becoming deinstitutionalized.

Adolescents' concepts of marriage: A structural-developmental analysis

Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 1979

This study involved the construction of a theory and scoring manual for assessing the developmental stages of individuals' concepts of marriage. Four stages (Magical, Idealized Conventional, Individualistic, Affirmational) were identified. The reliability of the scoring procedure (interrater and item-total protocol) was judged to be acceptable. Correlations with age, schooling, ego development, and years of marriage support the marriage concepts stage sequence. Adolescents (N=162) scored at the first two stages of marriage concepts. However, in ego development, their mean score was above the Conformist level, thus suggesting that the adolescents were more advanced in their overall personality development than in their developmental stages of marriage concepts.

Perceptions of married life among single never- married, single ever-married, and married adults

Personal Relationships, 2019

With the increasing prevalence of single adults in the United States, perceptions of marriage as the relationship "gold stan-dard" may be diminishing. In this study (N = 6,576), we explored perceptions of married life in three subgroups of participants: Those who have never married, ever married, and currently married. Across subgroups, most did not perceive married life more positively than single life in external/ tangible domains (e.g., more friends), but did in emotional experiences and frame of mind (e.g., contentment). These findings suggest conceptualizations of marriage may be changing to be less positive or less discrepant from conceptu-alizations of single life. However, these findings also suggest that people continue to view marital relationships as a positive source of emotional experience and support. K E Y W O R D S cognition, interpersonal perceptions, marital satisfaction, marriage, relationship types

An Exploration of the Construction of Commitment Leading to Marriage

Marriage & Family Review, 2015

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how newly married couples construct and reconstruct commitment through events in courtship and early marriage. Fifteen newly married couples, 30 participants, were interviewed individually. Through the use of grounded theory six different themes (friendship, gradual process, positive examples, negative examples, planning for the future, and words of affirmation) emerged in the construction, origination, and communication of commitment. The results of this study have specific implications for theory, research, and practice with young adult couples. The concept of resilient commitment is introduced and briefly discussed.

Stability and change in the first 10 years of marriage: Does commitment confer benefits beyond the effects of satisfaction?

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012

Although commitment is theoretically distinct from relationship satisfaction, empirical associations between the concepts are high. After drawing from classic definitions of commitment to distinguish between commitment as the desire for a relationship to persist versus the behavioral inclination to maintain the relationship, we predicted that the former component would function much like satisfaction, whereas the latter component would operate independently of satisfaction to stabilize couple relationships. Using satisfaction and commitment data collected over the first 4 years of marriage (N ϭ 172 couples), we demonstrate that only behavioral inclinations to maintain the marriage are related to observed marital interaction behaviors, to reported steps taken toward dissolution, and to 11-year divorce rates, independent of satisfaction. Consistent with dyadic "weak-link"' conceptions of commitment, likelihood of divorce was found to increase as a function of the lower of the 2 partners' inclination to maintain the relationship. Commitment may stabilize declining intimate partnerships, particularly when it is conceptualized as the inclination to maintain the relationship.

Marriage in the New Millennium: A Decade in Review

Journal of Marriage and Family, 2010

This review focuses on broad themes characterizing marital research in the past decade. In addition to continuing themes, such as a focus on conflict, violence, and impact on physical and mental health outcomes, we also address the impact of the Healthy Marriage Initiative on marital research and recent advances in methodology. We highlight an overarching theme that characterizes much of the literature: the importance of context in understanding marital outcomes and the impact of positive marital transactions and marital strengths. Given the increasing diversity of married couples, the attention given to context over the past decade has been timely and appropriate, providing an increasingly solid foundation for future research. The current analysis comes at a time when pair bonding options are increasing and marriage as a social institution is less dominant in the United States than at any other time in history (Cherlin, 2004). Similarly, fewer people in Western industrial societies are marrying, and divorce rates are increasing throughout the world Family Institute, 225 Sandels Building,

When marriages die: Premarital and early marriage precursors to divorce

This paper reviews a series of studies addressing the question of whether loss of love and affection early in marriage and long-term marital instability have roots in couples' premarital relationships. The findings summarized in this paper suggest that loss of love and affection early in marriage and later marital instability can be traced back to couples' courtship experiences; findings also suggest that the courtship dynamics of couples who are likely to divorce early in marriage are different from those who are likely to divorce later in marriage. Also, compared to couples who remained stably married over a period of 13 years, couples who divorced had courtships characterized by more extremes regarding the passion and pace of their courtship. Implications of the findings for premarital education are presented.