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Research Findings on Marriage and Choosing a Marriage Partner

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Research Findings on Marriage and Choosing a Marriage Partner Ten Important Research Findings on Marriage and Choosing a Marriage Partner Information Brief, November 2004 David Popenoe and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, The National Marriage Project http://marriage.rutgers.edu/Publications/pubtenthingsyoungadults.htm 1. Marrying as a teenager is the highest "having children is still one of the least known risk factor for divorce. desirable characteristics a potential People who marry in their teens are two marriage partner can possess." The only to three times more likely to divorce than partner characteristic men and women people who marry in their twenties or rank as even less desirable than having older. children is the inability to hold a steady job. 2. The most likely way to find a future marriage partner is through an 5. Both women and men who are introduction by family, friends, or college educated are more likely to acquaintances. marry, and less likely to divorce, than people with lower levels of education. Despite the romantic notion that people meet and fall in love through chance or Despite occasional news stories fate, the evidence suggests that social predicting lifelong singlehood for college- networks are important in bringing educated women, these predictions together individuals of similar interests and have proven false. Though the first backgrounds, especially when it comes generation of college educated women to selecting a marriage partner. (those who earned baccalaureate According to a large-scale national degrees in the 1920s) married less survey of sexuality, almost sixty percent of frequently than their less well-educated married people were introduced by peers, the reverse is true today. College family, friends, co-workers or other educated women's chances of marrying acquaintances. are better than less well-educated women. However, the growing gender 3. The more similar people are in their gap in college education may make it values, backgrounds and life goals, the more difficult for college women to find more likely they are to have a similarly well-educated men in the future. successful marriage. This is already a problem for African- Opposites may attract but they may not American female college graduates, who live together harmoniously as married greatly outnumber African-American couples. People who share common male college graduates. backgrounds and similar social networks 6. Living together before marriage has are better suited as marriage partners not proved useful as a "trial marriage." than people who are very different in People who have multiple cohabiting their backgrounds and networks. relationships before marriage are more 4. Women have a significantly better likely to experience marital conflict, chance of marrying if they do not marital unhappiness and eventual become single parents before marrying. divorce than people who do not cohabit Having a child out of wedlock reduces before marriage. Researchers attribute the chances of ever marrying. Despite the some but not all of these differences to growing numbers of potential marriage the differing characteristics of people partners with children, one study noted, who cohabit, the so-called "selection - 1 - effect," rather than to the experience of active singles and cohabiting couples, cohabiting itself. It has been hypothesized according to the most comprehensive that the negative effects of cohabitation and recent survey of sexuality. Forty-two on future marital success may diminish as percent of wives said that they found sex living together becomes a common extremely emotionally and physically experience among today's young adults. satisfying, compared to just 31 percent of However, according to one recent study single women who had a sex partner. of couples who were married between And 48 percent of husbands said sex was 1981 and 1997, the negative effects extremely satisfying emotionally, persist among younger cohorts, compared to just 37 percent of supporting the view that the cohabitation cohabiting men. The higher level of experience itself contributes to problems commitment in marriage is probably the in marriage. reason for the high level of reported 7. Marriage helps people to generate sexual satisfaction; marital commitment income and wealth. contributes to a greater sense of trust and security, less drug and alcohol-infused Compared to those who merely live sex, and more mutual communication together, people who marry become between the couple. economically better off. Men become more productive after marriage; they 9. People who grow up in a family earn between ten and forty percent broken by divorce are slightly less likely more than do single men with similar to marry, and much more likely to education and job histories. Marital social divorce when they do marry. norms that encourage healthy, According to one study the divorce risk productive behavior and wealth nearly triples if one marries someone who accumulation play a role. Some of the also comes from a broken home. The greater wealth of married couples results increased risk is much lower, however, if from their more efficient specialization the marital partner is someone who grew and pooling of resources, and because up in a happy, intact family. they save more. Married people also 10. For large segments of the receive more money from family population, the risk of divorce is far members than the unmarried (including below fifty percent. cohabiting couples), probably because families consider marriage more Although the overall divorce rate in permanent and more binding than a America remains close to fifty percent of living-together union. all marriages, it has been dropping gradually over the past two decades. 8. People who are married are more Also, the risk of divorce is far below fifty likely to have emotionally and percent for educated people going into physically satisfying sex lives than single their first marriage, and lower still for people or those who just live together. people who wait to marry at least until Contrary to the popular belief that their mid-twenties, haven't lived with married sex is boring and infrequent, many different partners prior to marriage, married people report higher levels of or are strongly religious and marry sexual satisfaction than both sexually someone of the same faith. - 2 - Research Sources 1. Teenage marriage and divorce (Washington, DC: Civitas, 1998): 72-76. Depending on how the age categories are 5. College education and marriage delineated and the length of the time period Joshua R. Goldstein and Catharine T. Kenney, covered after marriage, teenage marriages "Marriage Delayed or Marriage Forgone? have been found to be from two to three New Cohort Forecasts of First Marriage for U. times more likely to end in divorce compared S. Women," American Sociological Review 66 to marriages at older ages. See T. C. Martin (2001) 506-519; Elaina Rose, "Education and and L. Bumpass "Recent Trends in Marital Hypergamy in Marriage Markets," (Seattle, Disruption," Demography 26 (1989): 37-5. A WA: Department of Economics, University of recent government study found that 59% of Washington, 2004). Available at marriages for women under age 18 end in http://www.econ.washington.edu/user/erose divorce or separation within 15 years, /hypergamy_v2a_paper.pdf compared with 36% of those married at age 6. Cohabitation as trial marriage 20 or older. National Center for Health See discussion in Claire M. Kamp Dush, Statistics, Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce, Catherine L. Cohan, and Paul R. Amato, "The and Remarriage in the United States. Relationship between Cohabitation and (Hyattsville, MD: Department of Health and Marital Quality and Stability: Change Across Human Services, 2002), Cohorts?" Journal of Marriage and the Family http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_23/s 65 (August 2003): 539-49. For a r23_022.pdf comprehensive review of the research on the 2. Finding a marriage partner relationship between cohabitation and risk of Edward O. Laumann, John H. Gagnon, marital disruption, see David Popenoe and Robert T. Michael, and Stuart Michaels, The Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Should We Live Social Organization of Sexuality (Chicago, IL: Together?, 2nd Ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: The University of Chicago Press, 1994) pp. 234-5. National Marriage Project, Rutgers University, 3. People of similar backgrounds 2002). See also William G. Axinn and Jennifer Finnegan Alford-Cooper, For Keeps: S. Barber, "Living Arrangements and Family Marriages that Last a Lifetime (Armonk, NY: M. Formation Attitudes in Early Adulthood," E. Sharpe, 1998); Judith Wallerstein and Journal of Marriage and the Family 59 (1997): Sandra Blakeslee, The Good Marriage 595-611; William J. Axinn and Arland Thornton, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1995); Jeffry H. "The Relationship Between Cohabitation and Larson and Thomas B. Holman, "Premarital Divorce: Selectivity or Causal Influence," Predictors of Marital Quality and Stability," Demography 29-3 (1992): 357-374; Robert Family Relations 43 (1994): 228-237; Robert Schoen "First Unions and the Stability of First Lauer and Jeanette Lauer, "Factors in Long- Marriages," Journal of Marriage and the Term Marriage," Journal of Family Issues 7:4 Family 54 (1992): 281-84. However, living (1986): 382-390. together with the person one intends to marry 4. Single parents and marriage does not increase the risk of divorce. For first time cohabiting couples who eventually Gayle Kaufman and Frances Goldscheider, marry, living together is linked to the "Willingness to Stepparent: Attitudes Toward engagement process. See, for example, Jay Partners Who Already Have Children," paper Teachman, "Premarital Sex, Premarital presented at the annual meeting of the Cohabitation and the Risk of Subsequent American Sociological Association, 2003. Marital Dissolution Among Women," Journal of Available at Marriage and the Family 65 (May 2003): 444- (http://www.asanet.org/convention/2003/pro 455; Susan L. Brown and Alan Booth, gram.html). On the situation of African- "Cohabitation versus Marriage: A Comparison American men and women, see Orlando of Relationship Quality," Journal of Marriage Patterson, Rituals of Blood: Consequences of and the Family 58 (1996): 668-678. Slavery in Two American Centuries - 3 - 7.
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