Suchergebnisse

Data are used from both waves of the National Survey of Families and Households to test the hypothesis that individuals who experience many parental relationship transitions will often reproduce these behaviors as adults by dissolving multiple marriages. This hypothesis is confirmed, and the findings are essentially unchanged when controlling for socioeconomic characteristics of both respondents and their families of origin. These results are consistent with the family change hypothesis, which attributes the deleterious consequences of nonintact parenting to the strain of experiencing family structure transitions rather than the state of living without a male role model or the poverty often induced by parental divorce. Finally, the findings reconceptualize the often-studied intergenerational transmission of divorce. Neither family structure of origin nor offspring marital behavior can be treated as dichotomies: Multiple family structure transitions make things worse for children, and many of these children will end more than one marriage.

Using data from the National Survey of Families and Households, an actor-partner interdependence model explored change in the frequency of disagreements and marital outcomes among 796 paired couples, early in marriage. Disagreements about money, time spent together, and the sexual relationship increased over 5 years. Money disagreements predicted disagreements about time and sex for husbands. Spillover findings showed disagreements about money and sex were related negatively to marital satisfaction. Disagreements in all three areas predicted marital instability for husbands, although only disagreements about money and time predicted marital instability for wives. Crossover findings showed husbands' disagreements about money to be related negatively to wives' marital satisfaction. Implications of the current findings are discussed.

This study attempted to examine the impact of relative income on marital happiness and instability among urban Chinese women. Using a sample of 1104 married women in Beijing, this study found that wives' relative income was negatively associated with marital happiness, and positively associated with marital instability to a small extent. Traditional breadwinner role attitudes were positively associated with marital happiness, and negatively associated with marital instability. Feminine role attitudes were not associated with any dimension of marital quality. Hierarchical multiple regression indicated that the moderating role of feminine role attitudes on marital happiness was supported. In other words, the negative impact of wives' income advantage on marital happiness was buffered by egalitarian feminine role attitudes. The implications of the findings for theoretical verification and family-friendly policy making are discussed.

Using typologies outlined by Gottman and Fitzpatrick as well as institutional and companionate models of marriage, the authors conducted a latent class analysis of marital conflict trajectories using 20 years of data from the Marital Instability Over the Life Course study. Respondents were in one of three groups: high, medium (around the mean), or low conflict. Several factors predicted conflict trajectory group membership; respondents who believed in lifelong marriage and shared decisions equally with their spouse were more likely to report low and less likely to report high conflict. The conflict trajectories were intersected with marital happiness trajectories to examine predictors of high and low quality marriages. A stronger belief in lifelong marriage, shared decision making, and husbands sharing a greater proportion of housework were associated with an increased likelihood of membership in a high happiness, low conflict marriage, and a decreased likelihood of a low marital happiness group.

A discussion of the ideological biases which have produced a static situation in marital stability & instability res, followed by an examination of the relationship between divorce (DIV) rates & class position. In the US an inverse r between SC & DIV obtains. A simple model of DIV decision is suggested based on the following items: (1) 'predisposition in the SE stratum in favor of or against DIV: values & att's,' (2) marital strains & satisfactions, (3) alternatives outside marriage, & (4) 'supporting or dissolving pressures on the part of relevant soc networks.' Data from Belgium, GB, S. Africa, Netherlands, Yugoslavia, Egypt, Jordan, Finland, Hungary, India, China, Japan are used to test the following hyp's: (A) 'in the pre-industrial or early industrialization period of Western nations the Uc's will have higher DIV rates,' (B) 'as a Western nation industrializes, its DIV procedures are gradually made available in all SC's,' (C) 'in China, India, Japan & Arab Islam, where the power to DIV remained in the hands of the groom's fam, no set of phases will occur,' & (D) 'since the dominant pattern of respectability was set by the Ur elite, & the Ru marriage & DIV patterns seem to have been looser, it is likely that in China, Japan, India & Arab Islam any modern changes would be toward a decline in the DIV rate of agri'ts.' With some irregularities, the data is generally supportive of the hyp's. It is suggested that a further factor to be considered is the price of the DIV re both monetary & soc costs. I. Taviss.

This study tests status inconsistency theory by examining the associations between wives' and husbands' relative statuses—that is, earnings, work-time, occupational, and educational inconsistencies—and marital quality and global happiness. The author asks three questions: (a) Is status inconsistency associated with marital quality and overall happiness? (b) Do those who hold traditional or egalitarian gender ideologies react differently to status inconsistency? (c) Are these patterns replicable across three data sets, gathered at different points in time? Data are from the Marital Instability Over the Life Course Survey (1980), the National Survey of Families and Households (1987-1988), and the General Social Survey (1996). With only one exception, status inconsistency is not associated with marital quality or global happiness, even among those who hold the most traditional gender ideologies.

This paper examines changes in marriage as an institution for rearing children in the United States. It reviews the effects of marital instability and living arrangements on children's welfare, and focuses on how children's economic, emotional, and social needs are met when parents separate. The review shows that changes in marriage and childrearing have different consequences for women and men. For women, marriage and parenthood are distinct institutions. Women provide for children's needs, whether or not the women are married to their children's fathers. For men, marriage defines responsibilities to children. At divorce, men typically disengage from their biological children. When men remarry they may acquire new children whom they help to support. The review describes the effects on children of divorced mothers' and fathers' varying commitments to childrearing. It considers the difficulties that divorced parents experience when they try to continue to share responsibilities for children after separation, and it suggests avenues for future research.

Marital dissolutions occur for a variety of reasons. Among low income families, the added stress of inadequate earnings, intermittent job spells, and high unemployment may contribute to the decision to end a marriage. One approach to end poverty and marital instability is to give income assistance to the poor. At the same time, cash transfers might foster family breakups, intentionally or otherwise. For example, if the welfare system is designed such that individuals are better off living separately than together, there will be a financial incentive to split. The effect of income transfers on family structure is theoretically ambiguous. On the one hand, low income families may become more stable if stress factors associated with low earnings, intermittent job spells and the like are lessened by the receipt of assistance. On the other hand, unstable marriages held together strictly for economic convenience may have their bonds weakened if individuals, when separated, are eligible for support. Consequently, whether income assistance engenders, on balance, effects which are stabilising or destabilising is an empirical question which depends upon the specific population group and the assistance program under consideration. This paper employs microdata from MINCOME (Canada's experimental test of guaranteed income) to examine the effect of various income transfers on family dissolution. Employing a path model, we find that family income level is principally an intervening rather than a direct factor in determining whether or not a family will stay intact. Our results suggest that whether or not the male head has a stable work pattern, and whether or not the female head works at all, or earns more than her spouse, are more direct contributors to marital instability than the level of family income itself.

This article provides the first empirical study on how the perceived changes of marital satisfaction affect marital stability using a unique data set obtained in Hong Kong. It is found that the change of marital satisfaction due to extramarital affairs clearly increases the probability of divorce, but it is not the only determinant of marital instability. In particular, the presence of dependent children in a family and good marital quality before the discovery of extramarital affairs would lower the probability of divorce. Moreover, this article generates several interesting policy implications. (JEL D1, J1)

Objective. One of the most profound changes in American society since 1950 has been a decline in the stability of marriages. Previous work has not explicitly considered the role of spouses' individual traits in the process of marital dissolution. This article treats spouses' behaviors as distinct phenomena. Methods. The study is based on the Marital Instability over the Life Course 1980-1988 panel data set. The data do not include information on each spouse's choice. Instead we observe only the final outcome of the two decisions. To address that limitation, the model is estimated using a bivariate probit model with partial observability. Results. Estimates indicate that there are noteworthy contrasts between spouses with respect to variables that induce a choice in favor of marital dissolution. Conclusions. These findings suggest that husbands & wives are motivated by different socioeconomic factors in decisions relative to the stability of their marriages. 4 Tables, 1 Appendix, 19 References. Adapted from the source document.

This research aims to identify factors associated with marital instability among Jewish and mixed (Jewish and non-Jewish) couples following immigration from the former Soviet Union. Based on the Strangeness Theory and the Model of Acculturation, we predicted that non-Jewish immigrants would be less well adjusted personally and socially to Israeli society than Jewish immigrants and that endogamous Jewish couples would have better interpersonal congruence than mixed couples in terms of personal and social adjustment. The sample included 92 Jewish couples and 92 ethnically-mixed couples, of which 82 couples (40 Jewish, 42 mixed) divorced or separated after immigration and 102 couples (52 Jewish, 50 ethnically mixed) remained married. Significant differences were found between Jewish and non-Jewish immigrants in personal adjustment, and between endogamous and ethnically-mixed couples in the congruence between spouses in their personal and social adjustment. Marital instability was best explained by interpersonal disparity in cultural identity and in adjustment to life in Israel. The findings expand the knowledge on marital outcomes of immigration, in general, and immigration of mixed marriages, in particular.