psychology research topics on marriage

Topic: Marriage and Family: Suggested Topics

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• Do couples marry for love, to procreate, or for another reason?
• What is the history of arranged marriages or what are the current practices of arranged marriages?
• Do prenuptial agreements work?
• What effects does divorce have on the couple, their children, etc.?
• Should same-sex couples be allowed the same marital rights as heterosexual couples?
• How does the new trend of "cohabiting" change the institution of marriage?
• Do women in abusive relationships stay married to the abuser?
• Should mothers work outside the home or care for their children?
• How have family values evolved throughout history?
• What are the issues involved with single parents?
• Should same-sex couples be allowed to adopt children?
• What is the place of the elderly within the family? Should they live with their families or reside in an assisted living facility?
• How does child abuse affect those children psychologically? What happens to children if they see their mothers or fathers being abused?
• How are household chores handled by males vs females? 

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Marriage & Relationship Topics

Marriage Military marriages Divorce Custody Remarriage Stepfamilies Same-sex marriage Adoption Arranged marriages Cohabitation Household chores / tasks Work /  Careers Prenuptial agreements Widowhood ​ Gender  roles Love Dating Relationships Infidelity Communication Dating or Domestic violence Marriage customs around the world and in specific cultures

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A research-based approach to relationships

Marriage and Couples

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The infographic below highlights some of Dr. John Gottman’s most notable research findings on marriage and couple relationships. For a more in-depth review of the three phases of Gottman’s research with marriage and couples, continue reading.

Phase 1: The Discovery of Reliable Patterns of Interaction Discriminating the “Masters” From the “Disasters” of Relationships

In 1976, Dr. Robert Levenson and Dr. John Gottman teamed up to combine the study of emotion with psycho-physiological measurement and a video-recall method that gave us rating dial measures (still applying game theory) of how people felt during conflict. This was the new way of getting the “talk table” numbers. The research also became longitudinal. They made no predictions in the first study, but they were interested in a measure of “physiological linkage,” because a prior study showed that the skin conductance of two nurses was correlated only if they disliked one another. They thought that might be linked to negative affect in couples. Indeed it was.

They were also amazed that in their first study with 30 couples they were able to “predict” the change in marital satisfaction almost perfectly with their physiological measures. The results revealed that the more physiologically aroused couples were (in all channels, including heart rate, skin conductance, gross motor activity, and blood velocity), the more their marriages deteriorated in happiness over a three-year period, even controlling the initial level of marital satisfaction.

The rating dial and their observational coding of the interaction also “predicted” changes in relationship satisfaction. Such large correlations in the data were unprecedented. Furthermore, Gottman and Levenson had preceded the conflict conversation with a reunion conversation (in which couples talked about the events of their day before the conflict discussion), and they had followed the conflict discussion with a positive topic. Gottman and Levenson were amazed to discover that harsh startup by women in the conflict discussion was predictable by the male partner’s disinterest or irritability in the events of the day discussion. They found that the quality of the couple’s friendship, especially as maintained by men, was critical in understanding conflict. Furthermore, the ability to rebound from, or “repair” , conflict to the positive conversation became a marker of emotion regulation ability of couples.

Both Levenson and Gottman had discovered Dr. Paul Ekman and Dr. Wallace Friesen’s Facial Affect Coding System (FACS), and Gottman subsequently developed the Specific Affect Coding System (SPAFF) , which was an integration of FACS and earlier systems in the Gottman lab.

The SPAFF became the main system that Gottman used to code couples’ interaction. At first, it took 25 hours to code 15 minutes of interaction, but later Gottman was able to get the same coding done in just 45 minutes, with no loss of reliability. Gottman also began applying time-series analysis to the analysis of interaction data. He wrote, Time-Series Analysis: A Comprehensive Introduction for Social Scientists , a book on time-series analysis to explain these methods to psychologists, and developed some new methods for analyzing dominance and bi-directionality with James Ringland.

Phase 2: Prediction and the Replication of the Prediction

Soon after, Gottman and Levenson received their first grant together and began attempting to replicate their observations from the first study. The subsequent studies they conducted in their labs with colleagues eventually spanned the entire life course — with the longest of the studies following couples for 20 years, in Levenson’s Berkeley lab.

The Gottman lab at the University of Illinois also studied the linkages between marital interaction, parenting, and children’s social development with Dr. Lynn Katz, and later at the University of Washington involved studying these linkages with infants with Dr. Alyson Shapiro. Gottman developed the concept of “meta-emotion” , which is how people feel about emotion (such as specific emotions like anger), emotional expression, and emotional understanding in general. Meta-emotion mismatches between parents in that study predicted divorce with 80% accuracy.

Gottman and Levenson discovered that couples interaction had enormous stability over time (about 80% stability in conflict discussions separated by 3 years). They also discovered that most relationship problems (69%) never get resolved but are “perpetual problems” based on personality differences between partners.

In seven longitudinal studies, one with violent couples (with Neil Jacobson), the predictions replicated. Gottman could predict whether a couple would divorce with an average of over 90% accuracy, across studies using the ratio of positive to negative SPAFF codes, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Criticism, Defensiveness, Contempt, and Stonewalling), physiology, the rating dial, and an interview they devised, the Oral History Interview , as coded by Kim Buehlman’s coding system.

Gottman could predict whether or not their stable couples would be happy or unhappy using measures of positive affect during conflict. With Dr. Jim Coan, he discovered that positive affect was used not randomly, but to physiologically soothe the partner. Gottman also discovered that in heterosexual relationships, men accepting influence from their wives was predictive of happy and stable marriages. Bob Levenson also discovered that humor was physiologically soothing and that empathy had a physiological substrate (in research with Dr. Anna Ruef), using the rating dial.

Phase 3: Theory Building, Understanding, and Prevention & Intervention

The third phase of Gottman’s research program was devoted to trying to understand the empirical predictions, and thus building and then testing theory. Ultimately, Gottman aimed to build a theory that was testable or disconfirmable.

Testing theory in the psychological field requires clinical interventions. In 1996, the Gottman lab returned to intervention research with Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman. John and Julie Gottman designed both proximal and distal change studies. In a proximal change study, one intervenes briefly with interventions designed only to make the second of two conflict discussions less divorce-prone. In one of these studies, they discovered that a 20-minute break, in which couples stopped talking and just read magazines (as their heart rates returned to baseline), dramatically changed the discussion, so that people had access to their sense of humor and affection.

Together with Julie, John Gottman started building the Sound Relationship House Theory . That theory became the basis of the design of clinical interventions for couples in John Gottman’s book,  The Marriage Clinic , and Julie Gottman’s book,  The Marriage Clinic Casebook . In August of 1996, they founded The Gottman Institute to continue to develop evidence-based approaches to improving couples therapy outcomes.

Read more about The Gottman Institute’s mission here .

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40 Marriage, Monogamy, and Moral Psychology

Stephen Macedo is Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics and the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University.

• Published: 20 April 2022
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Marriage is one of our most consequential social institutions: it provides a legal and moral scaffolding around which many individuals form deep and enduring personal relations. Civil marriage is socially legible: it provides a way for two people to publicly declare their mutual commitment and enlist social norms and expectations that help stabilize the commitment. Marriage is more flexible and less obligatory than it used to be, but it still shapes family life, intergenerational ties, and social relations broadly. This chapter considers some major marriage controversies, including conservative opposition to same-sex marriage and the complaints of progressive marriage critics. It explains the case for state recognition of monogamy, and considers the charge that marriage unfairly favours particular ethical ideals.

40.1 Introduction

Marriage is one of our most consequential social institutions: it provides a legal and moral scaffolding on which individuals may form what are often their deepest and most enduring personal relations. In doing so, marriage shapes family life, helps cement intergenerational ties, and structures social relations broadly. Marriage norms are, in some measure, the same for everyone, yet the institution is also extremely flexible: it has a widely understood core meaning, but imposes few hard constraints.

From the standpoint of moral psychology, marriage’s central significance may be as a social institution and cultural practice that provides a way for two people to publicly declare their mutual commitment to build a life in common together. As I shall argue, a crucial feature of civil marriage is its social legibility and publicity: we all have a sense of what it means for two people to get married. It is not accidental that marriage vows are typically pronounced in front of family and friends, that wedding announcements appear in newspapers, and that the wedding ring visibly expresses people’s changed social position. The public declaration of commitment, the enlistment of social understandings and norms, and their periodic renewal via rituals such as anniversary celebrations, allow people to express and reinforce the commitment, providing a sense of widely valued and apparently valuable form of reassurance to the parties. I explore these ideas further below.

Marriage has an ancient lineage, yet it evolves constantly and has become a more egalitarian relationship. In the most progressive parts of the West, it continues to play a role, though a much diminished one, in regulating sexual activity. The fact that marriage has become optional rather than mandatory in Western societies may, in some ways, have heightened its significance. It is now a free choice—no longer a prerequisite for having sex and children. It enables the forming or deepening of a partnership in life.

Same-sex marriage, which conservatives long warned would be marriage’s death knell, gave rise instead to a marital boomlet in the US and, for many at least, imparted new meaning to the institution. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s closing remarks at the end of his landmark opinion in Obergefell , the same-sex marriage case, illustrates the moral importance and psychological resonance that marriage continues to have for many; his words are now quoted at many weddings:

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. ( Obergefell v. Hodges )

We should not be misled, however, by the celebratory aura (for most) around same-sex marriage: many aspects of the institution are deeply controversial and contested.

Susan Moller Okin (1989) argued that marriage helped underwrite a division of paid work and unpaid domestic labour that, due to the differential investments in labour force participation and human capital, left wives far worse off than their husbands after marriage and, thereby, made women vulnerable to oppression and exploitation within marriage. Spousal roles are now equal in law and more (though far from completely) equal in practice.

To many more recent critics, however, the entire institution of civil marriage—as deeply morally significant status relationship, defined in advance by law and culture—seems a troublesome and unfair anomaly. The whole trend of liberal modernity has been characterized as a shift from ‘status to contract’ ( Maine 2013 ): away from socially predetermined and inherited roles, and toward individuality and free choice. Clare Chambers argues that the ‘abolition of state-recognized marriage’ is necessary to make ‘a decisive break from the patriarchal and discriminatory associations of the institution’ (2016: 51). Many scholars and activists share Tamara Metz’s concern with the ‘Mysterious and Troublesome Special Value’ of marriage (2010: 33–7). Richard M. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein argued in 2009 that the existence of civil marriage, in parallel to religious marriage, is a source of unnecessary confusion and conflict. Making marriage more contractual could also encourage people to ‘personalize’ their partnership arrangements to suit their particular tastes and preferences ( Thaler and Sunstein 2009 : ch. 15).

Relatedly, some see state recognition and support of monogamous civil marriage as under-inclusive. The state should support caring and caregiving relationships in their many forms, as many feminists, such as Martha Albertson Fineman (2004) and others, have long argued. The existence of civil marriage is seen as an obstacle. These scholars join Andrew March and many others in arguing that we should abolish civil ‘marriage’ and instead institute ‘civil unions’ or ‘domestic partnerships’ for all.

Yet other marriage critics, such as Cheshire Calhoun, Laurie Shrage, and Ronald C. Den Otter, focus on the question why marriage is limited to two persons ( Calhoun 2005 ; Shrage 2016 ; Den Otter 2015a and 2015b ). Indeed, now that we have same-sex marriage and the institution’s link to procreation is attenuated, what is so special about twoness in marriage? This revives old controversies concerning polygamy, and new questions about ‘polyamory’ or ‘polyfidelity’: egalitarian forms of group intimate relations.

Elizabeth Brake would agree with many of the aforementioned criticisms, and adds that marriage is unfairly ‘amatonormative’: it unfairly privileges amorous or romantic ‘dyads’ (2012: 144). She would radically broaden the character of marriage and refound it on a more ethically neutral and inclusive basis. ‘Minimal marriage’, as she calls her proposal, should recognize and support ‘adult care networks’ or ‘caring relationships’ of any number and combination of persons, with or without a romantic component ( Brake 2012 : 160–66).

Finally, these and other questions about marriage are also often linked to yet broader questions about the diversity of forms of human sexuality. Queer theorists, such as Michael Warner, have been especially vehement in their rejection of marriage as a way in which the state uses law, economic incentives, and the whole ‘machinery of administration’ to impose ‘heteronormative’ values and stifle sexual freedom and diversity, and thereby to ‘manipulate [ … ] people’s substantive and normative vision of the good life’ ( Warner 2000 : 112, 35–6). There is increasing recognition that the old binaries of man and woman, masculine and feminine, etc., are far from accurate or adequate. The burgeoning of diverse forms of human sexuality suggest to some that marriage is becoming a thing of the past.

Yet while it is certainly diminished, monogamous marriage persists and indeed flourishes, at least among the better off—among couples both of whom have college degrees, and so tend to be more economically secure—while many working- and middle-class people are unwilling or unable to undertake it.

Marriage is a central form of the kind of romantic partnership described by Monique Wonderly in Chapter 49 of this volume: in which one loves and needs another. Why exactly is the state involved in recognizing and regulating this particular form of relationship? Contemporary moral psychology studies ‘human thought and behavior in ethical contexts’, typically in ways that are sensitive to evidence ( Doris et al. 2017 ). That is very much my approach here: marriage forms an important part of the ethical and institutional context within which individuals, from very early on, form their moral attitudes and ethical aspirations. While the coercive aspects of marriage have largely fallen away in most of the West, it continues to shape our moral culture.

Despite its personal and social importance, the institution of marriage has not, until recently, received a great deal of attention from moral and political philosophers. John Rawls described ‘monogamous family’ as part of the basic structure of society, but never elaborated much (1999: 6). Ronald Dworkin described ‘the status of marriage’ as ‘a social resource of irreplaceable value [ … ] it enables two people together to create value in their lives that they could not create if that institution had never existed’ (2006: 86). And he said that, in a suggestive but brief discussion, in spite of his general commitment to state ethical neutrality.

My subject is the social institution, law, and practice of civil marriage as it has come to be, especially, but not only, in the United States. Countries differ in their marriage culture and law, and in the moral psychologies that inform and are shaped by marriage; so, while much of what I say applies elsewhere, much does not. My aim here is to describe the generally (though not unanimously) shared common conception—or social meaning—of civil marriage in a way that could inform a psychological account of why people value it, as well as how it functions from the standpoints of personal and social psychology.

I begin by exploring both the main contours of marriage law as well as the singular meaning and symbolism of marriage—its most controversial and notable aspect—and the social and personal functions served by marriage’s symbolic or expressive dimension. Marriage, as we will see, facilitates the serious desire of many people to enter into a form of mutual commitment that is widely understood in society as a whole (Wedgewood 2011). The various specific legal aspects or incidents of marriage balance rights and responsibilities in reasonable ways. The existence of a pre-existing package of such arrangements, consisting of default rules and responsibilities that have been hammered out over time, can be extremely useful for people.

I briefly consider some major shifts concerning marriage in recent decades, including the controversy over same-sex marriage, and the conservative opposition, some of it rooted in ideas about psychological and behavioural complementarity between men and women.

I then lay out some complaints of marriage critics, including those mentioned above. I defend state recognition of civil marriage and monogamy, and push back against the charge that the ‘special status’ of monogamous marriage in law unfairly favours one ethical ideal at the expense of others. I agree, however, that the state should do more to recognize and support caring and caregiving relationships in their many forms: marriage is no obstacle.

I next take up the issues raised by the variety of forms of plural sexual relationships. The overwhelming historical record suggests that monogamy has been essential to securing equality in marriage and some semblance of fairness in society. Nevertheless, I allow that plural committed relationships of various sorts may call for certain kinds of legal recognition and support.

To put my cards on the table, I write as a defender of monogamous civil marriage in its main aspects post- Obergefell , but also liberal toleration. Marriage is distinctive and deeply important to many. It need not and should not monopolize our attention in the broader field of caring and caregiving relationships (yet my subject here is marriage and not that wider field). Throughout I draw on empirical evidence. I abjure judgments to the effect that some sexual practices are inherently wrong. The moral norms that surround marriage can be analyzed and assessed based on their consequences for individuals and societies, and their consistency with the fundamental political value of securing equal freedom.

40.2 Marriage: what is it?

Civil marriage—as a public institution defined by law and social meanings—has two broad components. First, a wide array of legal provisions or ‘incidents’ that define the rights and responsibilities of spouses. And, second, a symbolic dimension, freighted with moral, cultural, and very often religious significance, that is unmistakable but, to some, mysterious. Together, these features furnish what I have elsewhere described as a socially legible form of mutual commitment that many people regard as deeply valuable. 1

An influential discussion has distinguished five broad functions of marriage law. First is an expressive function through which marriage furnishes a language and rituals for spouses to communicate their commitment to one another and the rest of society ( Schneider 1992 ). Marriage is also facilitative : it provides a set of legal rights and responsibilities as default rules that couples can take as a package, but which can also be varied and individualized via pre- or post-nuptial agreements. Once married, two people become each others’ default designees for a variety prerogatives involving incapacity, caregiving, access to confidential medical information, etc.

The law plays a protective role for spouses and children by defining various forms of prohibited abuse and requirements of care. It plays an arbitral role via the law of divorce and in other ways to settle disagreements. These four broad functions all recognize and provide some support for couples typical economic and emotional dependence on one another ( Chambers 1996 ).

Finally, and most controversially, marriage law has had a channelling function: law and policy have sought to channel people into marriage for the sake of providing what has been regarded as a stable, healthy, and good framework for the relationships of spouses and the raising of children. Indeed, until fairly recently, sexual relations were considered licit only within marriage. Women who had children outside of marriage were social outcasts, and their children labelled as ‘bastards’.

Many of the legal and social constraints associated with marriage are considerably weakened, at least in most of the developed world if not everywhere, as news reports of ‘honour killings’ inform us. Nowadays, in much of the West, there is little stigma attached to sex before and outside of marriage, and single parenting is not nearly as stigmatized as in the past. Moral norms remain far more conservative in many parts of the world, especially for women. In the West, conservatives complain about what they see as a shift in emphasis away from traditional morality and its social constraints, and argue that children have tended to suffer as a consequence. They argue that today’s greater emphases on sexual freedom and adult happiness make many people worse off. Proponents of the abolition of monogamous marriage argue that moral norms and social disapproval still severely constrain experiments in living such as sexually open relationships and polyamory.

Critics of marriage argue that it is unfairly favoured by law, culture, and public policy. Their focus on the ‘special benefits’ of marriage is one-sided. Marriage includes special responsibilities, obligations, and expectations. Spouses generally enjoy what are called ‘homestead rights and protections’ that limit one spouse’s ability to throw the other out of the shared household, or to deny the other spouse support or maintenance, and a fair share of marital property in the event of one spouse’s death or divorce ( Macedo 2015 : ch. 5). These help protect spouses against vulnerabilities that come with marital commitments and the pooling of resources. The tax code imposes a ‘marriage penalty’ that reflects the relative advantages and efficiencies that married couples reap from establishing a joint household together ( Chambers 1996 : 472–3).

The many specific legal ‘incidents’ of marriage—benefits and responsibilities defined by state and federal law—are properly subject to ongoing deliberation and negotiation. Hospital visitation rights and powers of attorney in the event of incapacitation are being made available to people in non-marital relationships. Some courts have recognized third-parent rights. The law should adjust adjust to changing social patterns. It can do so while also recognizing the distinctive nature of marital commitment. We return to marriage’s specific provisions below.

40.3 The symbolic dimension and marital commitment

To attend only to the details of marriage law misses the most controversial and perhaps important aspect of marriage: the symbolic dimension that also seems most relevant to its role in moral psychology.

The symbolic and expressive dimension of marriage was crucial to the controversy over same-sex marriage. Prior to the recognition of a constitutional right to gay marriage, states like Vermont, Massachusetts, and California offered same-sex couples legal forms such as civil unions or domestic partnerships that contained all of the tangible legal aspects of civil marriage save the word ‘marriage’. Charles Cooper, the attorney tasked with defending California’s Proposition 8, which excluded same-sex couples from marriage, went so far as to say that the word ‘is essentially the institution’ (as cited in Boies and Olson 2014 : 199).

When asked to describe why access to a domestic partnership, with all the same legal aspects as marriage, was not adequate, Kristin Perry, the lead plaintiff in the constitutional challenge to Proposition 8, said this: ‘I’m a 45-year-old woman. I have been in love with a woman for 10 years and I don’t have a word to tell anybody about that [ … ] Marriage would be a way to tell our friends, our family, our society, our community, our parents [ … ] and each other that this is a lifetime commitment [ … ] we are not girlfriends. We are not partners. We are married’ ( Perry v. Schwarzenegger 12).

Marriage in America is nowadays commonly conceived of as an exclusive and long-term commitment, aspiring to permanence, between two people who love each other, share a household and sexual intimacy, and promise to care for each other through life’s trials ( Macedo 2015 : 89). It is a mutual commitment of two people to build a life in common together. Notwithstanding a divorce rate that hovers around 40 per cent, and much high rates of marital instability among the economically insecure, people entering into marriage generally aspire to permanence ( Carter 2017 ).

It does not seem wrong to speak of a common conception of marriage, so long as it is understood to coexist with considerable variation across different marriages, and ongoing debate and revision. Spouses are generally expected to care for one another and be there in time of need, and to work at sustaining the relationship. For younger couples, children are typically expected to be very central: the having and raising of children together is profoundly meaningful and children provide an extremely important reason to work at keeping a marriage healthy and stable. Their well-being is central to the public’s concern with marriage. For many older couples, children may be much less central. As Chief Justice Margaret Marshall of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts put it in extending marriage rights to same sex couples, ‘While it is certainly true that many, perhaps most, married couples have children together [ … ] it is the exclusive and permanent commitment of the marriage partners to one another, not the begetting of children, that is the sine qua non of civil marriage’ ( Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health ).

In an influential article, Ralph Wedgwood asks: if marriage has a reasonably well understood public meaning, what is added by the law of marriage? The existence of the legal form facilitates couples’ desire to get married and to be married as a matter of common knowledge in society: not simply in the eyes of their friends and associates, but in the eyes of the whole society ( Wedgwood 2011 ). The law of marriage, in other words, helps make marital commitment socially legible.

Marriage thus combines the personal and the public in distinctive ways. Marital relations are among the most intimate aspects of our lives, but marriage bonds are announced to one’s friends and published in the newspaper. Everyone has a general sense of what it means to be married, and of the social expectations and legal entitlements that come along with marriage: invitations are extended to couples, and hospital visitation rights and informational rights are extended automatically to spouses. How many people cannot recite or at least paraphrase the typical core of marital vows: ‘to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, in sickness and health, until death do us part’ ( Macedo 2015 : ch. 4)?

One benefit of a widely understood social institution like marriage is informational: committing to marriage, exchanging rings, and entering into it publicly allows people to signal their commitment to one another, to their family and friends. Those in attendance at marriage ceremonies are frequently asked: ‘Will you help support this couple in their marriage?’

The marital commitment is normative for the couple and society: others are expected to respect the marital bond. Marriage vows underwrite social expectations and form bases for moral evaluation: their violation is widely understood to justify feelings of embarrassment, guilt, and remorse. In fact, the percentage of people saying that it is always wrong for a married person to have ‘sexual relations with someone other than the marriage partner’ increased from 70 per cent in 1973 to 82 per cent in 2004 ( Cherlin 2010 : 26; and see Sides 2011 ).

The public and personal aspects of marital commitments together help create what Andrew J. Cherlin calls, ‘enforceable trust’, allowing ‘one to put time, effort, and money into family life with less fear of abandonment by your partner’ (2010: 138).

Whereas the law of contracts allows for ‘efficient breaches’ that are accompanied by compensation, it is not so with marriage: ‘when we marry, we are obligated unconditionally,’ says Robin West: the moral disapprobation ‘that would be our due should we breach that promise, is very much central to its meaning’ (2007: 98). As West further observes:

Civil marriage, as compared with private commitment ceremonies, unadulterated personal promises, nontraditional family forms, informal cohabitation, or single life, gives us a personal structure, validated by historical and current social norms, within which to mold our own expectations and aspirations for our own and our partner’s intimate lives. It gives us confidence that the form we’ve adapted to—a committed intimate relationship—is a good one. (2010: 76)

Marriage guides point to commitment as crucial: a mutual commitment to making the relationship work ( Macedo 2015 : 91–8). In marriage, as Eric Schwitzgebel puts it, one commits oneself to seeing one’s life, and pursuing one’s projects, ‘always with the other in view’ (2003).

Why would anyone want to undertake a commitment of this sort, with its constraints and the costs of reneging? Because these can be enabling constraints that allow us to provisionally settle important aspect of our lives in a good way. 2 Robert Goodin describes the ‘prime virtue of settling’ as providing ‘some fixed points around which to plan your life’: ‘settling facilitates striving by helping us to stop vacillating’ and helps ‘to prevent us from striving in too many directions at once’ (2012: 40). Settling down with another and committing to the relationship in a serious way allows us to proceed with common plans with the shared assurance of mutual support through all of life’s trials. Many people find this to be a great good.

The institution of marriage facilitates settling by providing a flexible template and rules that have proved generally satisfactory for many people in the past. Formalized public commitments, supported by a structure of law and backed by social expectations and the threat of sanctions, facilitate interpersonal reliance and cooperation. The costs associated with reneging help to seal the bargain—to make the commitment credible. Penalties can include alimony and child support, the division of marital assets, disrupted social networks and family ties, feelings of guilt, and whatever social disapproval—and fear of disapproval—that follows from marital breakdown.

Monogamy, as a crucial but little-discussed feature of modern marriage, closes off options that the wealthiest and highest-status males (in particular) have found highly desirable in the past, but whose foreclosure has, as we shall see, helped facilitate greater equality in marriage and in society, and greater happiness in marriage.

The emphasis here on marriage as commitment may seem excessively unromantic. So let us allow that, while in the past, and still in much of the world, marriage had much more to do with establishing alliances between families and securing a modicum of security, in today’s USA love tops Americans’ list of very important reasons for getting married, cited by 88 per cent. Lifelong commitment comes in second at 81 per cent ( Geiger and Livingston 2019 ). 3 Let us give love its due: romantic love is celebrated and reinforced by the typical arrangements surrounding courting and engagement, the wedding itself and its familiar rituals, and later with anniversaries, birthday presents, and in other ways. But the fact is that couples nowadays typically fall in love, have sexual relations, and cohabit before deciding to ‘tie the knot’. The decision to marry is a decision to enter publicly a widely understood form of commitment, and to take on the benefits, burdens, constraints, and social expectations that go with the institution of marriage. Marriage depends on sustaining a distinctive form of loving commitment that can encompass attitudes running from ‘passionate romance’ to nearly ‘complete disaffection’ (de Maneffe 2016: 142).

The sanctions and costs associated with marital breakdown may be much less than they once were, but they are typically far from negligible. As already noted, disapproval of married persons engaging in extramarital sexual relations has trended upward even while Americans became more accepting of divorce and same-sex sexual relations. The costs associated with divorce can induce parties to take a sober second look.

My account here is consistent, I think, with Simon Cabuela May’s defence of civil marriage as a ‘presumptively permanent commitment’. The existence of a cultural practice of civil marriage, says May, allows a couple to ‘gather their loved ones at a wedding and solemnly vow’ to build a life in common together. They thereby ‘place themselves under the community’s good faith norm and stamp their commitment with the imprimatur of a powerful cultural tradition’. Their mutual commitment thereby gains the support of the ‘familiar normative expectations of their community’ (May 2016: 20).

My account also coheres with Peter de Marneffe’s description of marriage as an ‘exclusive life partnership’ (2016). As he elaborates: ‘civil marriage affirms and symbolizes something that most adult want for its own sake: a stable, committed, exclusive, romantic partnership’ (2016: 142). De Marneffe goes so far as to affirm marriage as ‘a distinctive human good’ which government recognition can help strengthen (pp. 148–9). The institution of civil marriage makes ‘the relationship of partners with eachother more fulfilling than it would otherwise be’. Moreover, de Marneffe observes, marriage encourages people to form this life partnership with the other parent of their children, and this is generally good for children and society, as we will see (2016: 142).

All this provides a prima facie justification for civil marriage in the currency of broadly public goods (May 2016; de Marneffe 2016 ; Macedo, 2015 : conclusion).

40.4 Monogamy, liberty, and moral pluralism

At this point, it might be worth clarifying what I mean by ‘monogamy’ as a feature of civil marriage. Dictionaries (and common usage) describe monogamy ambiguously as ‘the practice or state of being married to one person at a time’, or ‘the practice or state of having a sexual relationship with only one person’. 4 These two aspects have generally been understood as two sides of the same coin, but they need not be. I consider the first aspect as essential to civil marriage as it now exists: marrying one other person. Monogamous marital commitment is exclusive as well as presumptively permanent: two people agree to build a life in common, assuming special responsibilities for one another. The terms of that life in common are up to them to decide jointly: where to live, how to live, whether to have children and how many, and, as de Marneffe adds (2016: 149), ‘how to conduct their sexual relationship and whether to have sexual relationships with other people’—these are all to be decided jointly. Spouses might agree to pursue a threesome with one other, join other couples as ‘swingers’, or have separate extramarital relations while remaining monogamously married to each other. Others may approve or disapprove of their choices, but such choices are and should be generally protected by law. 5 Adultery is not punished by law, but people are free to disapprove of consensual non-monogamy in marriage, whether as a foolish or immoral choice, or one that is unlikely to prove stable, or perhaps because they doubt that such decisions are genuinely mutual. Certainly, the grounds for concern become much more serious if children suffer because their parents have adopted a ‘swingers’ lifestyle. We should not expect or want the law to settle all of these matters, given the importance of sexual liberty among consenting adults.

When I defend monogamy in marriage, I mean limiting the partnership to two people and do not thereby limit their choices. I will say more about this in the context of reform proposals and plural marriage.

40.5 The marriage revolution

As we have already begun to see, marriage underwent a revolution from the late 1950s and early 1960s to the 1970s and beyond. Using the 1950s as a baseline of comparison is misleading in some ways: the age at marriage declined during the post-Second World War marriage boom ( Cherlin 1981 : A31). Nevertheless, the changes during ‘the long 1960s’ were enormous, and included much greater access to birth control, and far more equal educational and career opportunities for women, increased rates of divorce, and much greater sexual freedom. Sex before marriage has become extremely common—the rule rather than the exception—and out-of-wedlock births and single parenting are much more common and much less stigmatized than in the past.

The rate of divorce climbed to near 50 per cent in the 1980s before declining to the low 40 per cents ( Miller 2014 ). Sociologist Philip N. Cohen provides evidence showing that the divorce rate has been declining substantially over the last decade due partly to the ageing of the Baby Boomers: younger generations are considerably less prone to divorce ( Cohen 2019 ). Trends in the UK also indicate a steep decline in divorce ( Office for National Statistics 2019 ).

The idea of marital commitment was once thought to be becoming increasingly passé. A smaller proportion of American adults are currently married than in the past: half of Americans 18 and older were married in 2017 compared to 72 per cent in 1960. But a significant part of the declining percentage of the currently married is due to people marrying later in life. The median age at marriage has risen by around seven years for men and six for women since 1970, and is now the highest on record: nearly 30 for men and 27.4 for women ( Rabin 2018 ). It is true that more American couples are choosing cohabitation over marriage, but only 7 per cent of American adults were cohabiting in 2017 ( Geiger and Livingston 2019 ). Young people, those born since 1980, attribute less importance to marriage than older generations, but this may also be due partly to the postponement of marriage ( Geiger and Livingston 2019 ).

As we saw, the divorce rate has declined markedly since its peak in the early 1980s, and some marital norms, such as disapproval of marital infidelity, have strengthened. Harry Benson of the UK’s Institute for Family Studies predicts (2018), on the basis of past patterns and current trends, that only 35 per cent of couples now entering into a first marriage will divorce. Among the reasons divorce may decline further are that young people are waiting longer to enter into their first marriages, and are often doing so only after knowing one another for years and establishing two careers: there is reason to think these choices are relatively deliberate and informed, and also that both spouses have a financial stake in the marriage’s success ( Cohen 2018 ).

It is also important to note that the rate of break-ups among unmarried cohabiting couples is much higher than for married couples ( Guzzo 2014 ).

Interestingly, and finally, while past studies found no effect or even a positive effect of cohabitation before marriage on marital stability, a recent study links premarital cohabitation to greater marital instability, at least after the first year of marriage ( Stanley and Rhoades 2018 ). There are several possible explanations. Part of it is likely a selection effect: the economically disadvantaged are more likely to cohabit, cohabit with more than one partner, and experience marital instability. However, cohabiting may change attitudes toward marriage and divorce, and may encourage couples to ‘slide’ into marriage, rather than deliberately commit to marriage, reducing the level of psychological commitment and marital stability ( Stanley and Rhoades 2018 ).

40.6 Increased gender equality

Perhaps the most conspicuous and important change with respect to marriage over the last 150 years has been the great (though incomplete) progress that has been made toward spousal equality. For millennia, ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ denoted a hierarchy of control and distinct roles and expectations. Wives could not enter into contracts without their husband’s consent, could not sue or be sued, or ‘serve as the legal guardians of their children’ ( Latta v. Otter ). Profound changes in marriage law in the US, culminating in the 1970s, have eliminated all formal spousal inequalities. Judge Marsha S. Berzon, in a 2014 concurring opinion in a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals case, Latta vs. Otter, points out that, ‘the legal norms that currently govern the institution of marriage are ‘genderless’ in every respect’ except the requirement (in 2014) that the spouses be ‘of different genders’ ( Latta v. Otter ; see also McClain 2006 ).

Americans’ attitudes toward ‘non-traditional’ gender roles—working mothers and stay-at-home fathers—have also become markedly more egalitarian in recent decades ( Donnelly et al. 2016 ). Among working-class people, those who lack a four-year college degree, rates of marriage have declined while out of wedlock births and marital instability have increased, as we will see below. Among the top fifth of Americans, in terms of education, the median age of motherhood increased from 26 to 32 between 1970 and 2000. Those in this top cohort typically finish college or even a graduate degree, begin a career, and then get married before having children. While only 18 per cent of mothers in the top quarter worked outside the home in 1970, by 2000 it was 65 per cent. And on average, these mothers still spend as much time reading and playing with their children as the non-working mothers of old; the fathers are more involved with their children as well ( Sawhill 2014 : 609—11; see also Carbone and Cahn 2014 ). Husbands and fathers still tend to do less of the domestic labour than wives and mothers, including working wives and mothers; fathers with college degrees on average spend much more time with their children than less-educated fathers (perhaps 50 per cent more in the US), and they spend more time than they used to on domestic chores, such as cooking and washing dishes ( Dotti Sani and Treas 2016 ; Putnam 2015 ).

It would be wrong to conclude that gender equality is fully realized. Patterns of family and work life, while more equal than in the past, are still gendered in many ways ( Hartley and Watson 2018 ). This includes the division of paid and unpaid work and the distribution of childcare and household tasks: these have changed more slowly and less completely than the law. And strikingly, while 72 per cent of American men and 71 per cent of women say that ‘being able to support a family financially is very important’ in order for a man to be a ‘good husband/partner’, only 25 per cent of men and 39 per cent of women say that this is ‘very important’ in order for a woman to be a ‘good wife/partner’ ( Parker and Stepler 2017 ).

Conservative scholars such as Steven E. Rhoads and Harvey C. Mansfield point to research suggesting that men tend to be more reluctant than women to participate in domestic tasks like doing the dishes and changing their children’s diapers ( Rhoads 2004 : 10–12; Mansfield 2006 : 7–8). Even in what are likely to be among the most egalitarian parts of the population—marriages in which both spouses have graduate degrees for example—women still tend to do more of the housework than men.

Some point to ‘natural’ sex-based differences between typical men and women to account for this. There are some such differences. Higher levels of testosterone among young men contribute to higher rates of violence. Men seem far more willing to abandon their biological children as compared with mothers, and that may have something to do with what Anne-Marie Slaughter has called a ‘maternal instinct’ among many women ( Slaughter 2012 ). 6

Yet these sorts of differences are also linked to cultural norms and both explicit and implicit attitudes towards the roles of men and women in family and society. Tania Lombrozo points out that very small initial differences in the dispositions of men and women can, over time, lead to far more substantial divergences in patterns of activity as spouses or domestic partners begin to specialize in one set of tasks or another. Small differences in attitudes and behaviour, nature-influenced or not, can contribute to patterns of specialization that are reinforcing—via what Ron Mallon calls ‘accumulation mechanisms’—leading to large behavioural patterns and also stereotyping (Mallon cited in Lombrozo 2017 ).

40.7 The marital and racial class divides

One of the most striking features of marriage in America is the substantial and widening class divide in marriage participation. 7 Here as elsewhere, the class divide has come to be based on levels of education. Case and Deaton point out that in 1980, ‘82 percent of whites with and without a bachelor’s degree were married by age 45’. By 1990, that rate had dropped to 75 per cent for both groups, where it has held steady for those with four-year college degrees while dropping to 62 per cent for those without such degrees by 2018 ( Case and Deaton 2020 : 168–9). Only 26 per cent of the poorest Americans are married ( Wilcox and Wang 2017 ). While only about 10 per cent of births to college-educated women are out of wedlock, that figure is 60 per cent among women without a high school degree. The rates also vary by race and ethnicity. Among African American women without a high school diploma, 82 per cent of the births are to unwed mothers. Among African American women with a four-year college degree, the rate is 33 per cent. The rates for Hispanics fall in between ( Wildsmith et al. 2018 ). Among the less well educated, not only are marriages rarer but divorce is more common ( Martin 2006 ).

Clearly, rates of marriage and unwed motherhood have diverged markedly in recent decades. Sarah McLanahan (2004) terms this our ‘diverging destinies’. Children born to advantaged married parents—in terms of years of schooling and income—are the beneficiaries of greater financial resources and also of intensive and high-quality parenting. These advantages in the early years and even months of life are hugely important predictors of future success, and even of cognitive development. 8 Among less-advantaged parents, those with only a high school degree, and even more so among high-school dropouts, childbirth much more commonly takes place in cohabiting relationships that tend to be fluid, unstable, financially insecure, and stressful.

William A. Galston once observed that those who finish high school, marry after age 20, and only then have a child, face an 8 per cent chance of being poor, while among those who do not do these three things nearly 80 per cent will be poor (cited in Wilson 2002 ). Statistics like this lead some to suggest that ‘liberals need to preach what they practise’. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, one might have expected that more permissive attitudes toward sex, and more positive attitudes toward non-traditional gender roles, would weaken marriage most among the highly educated. Sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox argues that, in recent decades, ‘middle- and upper-class Americans have rejected the most permissive dimensions of the counterculture for themselves and their children, even as poor and working-class Americans have adapted a more permissive orientation toward matters such as divorce and premarital sex.’ The result has been that, ‘key norms, values, and virtues—from fidelity to attitudes about teen pregnancy—that sustain a strong marriage culture are now generally weaker in poor and working-class communities’ ( Wilcox and Wang 2017 ).

Yet while the change in people’s values, attitudes toward premarital sex, and social norms have undoubtedly had significant consequences, it would be wrong to underestimate the role of material conditions. Automation and globalization, resulting in the loss of secure employment among working-class people, along with other factors such as the decline of private-sector trade unions and a weak social safety net, have undermined the economic underpinnings of marriage for many working class people in the US. Economic insecurity worsens people’s marital prospects. Young men without steady jobs and a decent income are often regarded as unattractive marriage partners, and young adults in precarious economic circumstances are increasingly choosing to cohabit rather than marry ( Edin and Nelson 2013 ). Among the least well-off, contraceptive use is irregular and often unreliable, and access to abortion is often difficult. A strikingly high number of pregnancies among less-well-educated single mothers are unplanned or not fully planned. 9 Many less-educated women drift into childbirth, becoming mothers at a much earlier age than the better-educated and, in many if not most cases, before they really want and are ready to ( Sawhill 2014 ). 10

Marriage, family, and decent jobs are all vital sources of structure and meaning in life, as well as conferring social status and sources of pride. Economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton argue convincingly that the astonishing rise in middle-aged mortality among white working-class people, especially men—resulting from increasing rates of drug abuse, suicide, and alcoholic liver disease—are linked to the collapse of working-class cultures, including marriage and decent jobs, declining rates of church attendance, and participation in other forms of community life. All of these have declined precipitously among those without four-year college degrees, who have also seen their job security and real wages decline while others have prospered ( Case and Deaton 2020 : 8, 178; Putnam 2000 ). Poorer couples have less of an economic stake in marriage compared with the better off: they are much less likely to own a home together, for example. Social welfare policy may also contribute: in one national survey, ‘31 percent of Americans say they personally know someone who chose not to marry for fear of losing a means-tested benefit’ ( Wilcox and Wang 2017 ).

While the white working class is the main focus of Case and Deaton (because the recent rise in middle-aged mortality is concentrated there), we should not forget what they also affirm: that structural injustices based on race have for many decades imposed severe hardships on African Americans. Slavery, Jim Crow, inner-city disinvestment, the massive loss of manufacturing jobs, opportunity hoarding in suburbs, biased policing, the spread of illegal drugs, and excessive incarceration, have all contributed enormously to what scholars often refer to as the shortage of marriageable African American men. African Americans are, moreover, far more likely than whites or Hispanics to live in areas of concentrated poverty, with poor schools and higher crime rates ( Edin and Nelson 2013 : 14). While inner-city African Americans who are unwed fathers and mothers generally profess the same values and ideals as more advantaged Americans, according to Edin and Nelson, their material circumstances and lack of trust and commitment mean that very few choose marriage. Yet parenthood is still a source of pride for many fathers and maturity, responsibility, and meaning for very many mothers ( Edin and Nelson 2013 : 90–102, 216–26).

Because marriage tends to confer considerable benefits on children—financially, emotionally, and in terms of cognitive development—the marriage divide portends a future widening of class divisions in our society ( Putnam 2015 ).

40.8 Benefits of marriage for spouses and children

Defenders of marriage point to a variety of good consequences of participation in the institution for spouses, children, and society. Let us consider each in turn.

Galston observed some years ago that ‘a mountain of evidence’ supports the association between marriage and greater individual well-being (1991: 281). Many other scholars would agree ( Macedo 2015 : ch. 5). Married people are, on average, happier, healthier, live longer, enjoy better sex and social lives, and are more financially secure. Married people have lower rates of depression, are less likely to drink heavily and use controlled substances, and experience less violence inside and outside the home. 11 The health and happiness advantages include higher self-reports of subjective well-being, or how people say they experience their lives, and also less subjective measures ( Bartolic 2012 ). And it is important to emphasize that the apparent advantages of marriage in the United States are in comparison with cohabitation, and not only with being single. This all suggests that the ‘reassurance’ function of marriage has some tangible effects, giving couples more of a stake in the future and each other’s futures. Of course it’s also true that the family income of married couples is higher, and so they experience less economic stress.

It is often reported that the benefits of marriage are concentrated among, or even entirely confined to, men. But some recent studies suggest that, ‘the health effects of marriage are equally distributed among men and women’ ( Strohschein 2016 ; Strohschein et al. 2005 ; Williams 2003 ). This may be due to the increasingly egalitarian nature of spousal marital relations.

The advantages of marriage, insofar as they exist, are all on average. Marriage does not guarantee good outcomes. Some married people are unhappy, unhealthy, violence-prone, substance-abusing, and economically unstable. And plenty of single people are highly accomplished, happy, and healthy. But on average, the benefits of marriage are ‘pervasive’ according to many marriage scholars ( Emery, Horn, and Beam 2012 : 126).

And yet, it must be noted that it is not easy to isolate the effects of a complex institution such as marriage, or to control for ‘selection effects’: there are no ‘randomized controlled trials’ here. Tamara Metz, for example, suggests that it is not that marriage makes people happier, but rather that happier and healthier people are more likely to get married. There is some evidence for this, and it is also important to note that the effects of marriage seem to vary across societies, and to depend partly on systems of social provision. 12 Studies of identical twins provide some evidence that marriage itself has a positive impact on happiness and health ( Emery, Horn, and Beam 2012 ). These studies help control for differences that are not easily measured across individuals, including the quality of parenting and other childhood experiences. Amato (2012 : 11–12) summarizes studies which suggest that pre-existing psychological problems make people more prone to divorce, which hardly seems surprising. Marriage scholars seem generally convinced that marriage itself makes a difference in producing the favourable outcomes, but there remains considerable disagreement here.

Evidence has indicated that participating in stable, committed, monogamous relationships contributes to greater happiness and satisfaction for gay and straight couples, whereas couples in sexually open and less committed relationships experience greater tension and less satisfaction in their primary relationship ( Bell and Weinberg 1978 ). 13 The evidence here is contested. 14 More work is needed, especially given that some surveys report that around 4 per cent of the population may participate in consensual non-monogamous relationships—a figure comparable to the size of the LGBT population. 15

And what about marriage’s benefits for children? Here, the evidence seems less equivocal. As a 2007 survey of the scholarly literature put it, ‘On average, children raised in two-parent families obtain more education and exhibit healthier adult behaviors than children from other types of families. These differences, in turn, have consequences for adult health and longevity’ ( Wood, Goesling, and Avellar 2007 : 56). Sara McLanahan and Isabell V. Sawhill similarly affirmed (2015: 4) that, ‘most scholars now agree that children raised by two biological parents in a stable marriage do better than children in other family forms across a wide range of outcomes’; however, ‘there is less consensus about why’.

The percentage of children born to unmarried parents has risen from less than 4 per cent in 1940 to 33 per cent in the 1990s to around 40 per cent today. Much of the recent increase in non-marital childbearing has involved couples who are cohabiting but not married when their child is born ( McLanahan and Garfinkel 2000 : 142; Shattuck and Kreider 2013 ).

Sensitivity here is understandable. Single mothers and other caregivers are among society’s greatest unsung heroes: sacrificing and labouring long hours, often in very difficult and poorly paid jobs, for the sake of their children. Marriage and fatherhood are fragile, especially among the poor, but motherhood remains robust in that the maternal bond is, as Avner Offer puts it, still taken to be lifelong ( Offer 2007 : 339). Single mothers typically work very hard to do their best for their children, often in the face of difficult circumstances and adverse public policies.

McLanahan and Garfinkel suggest that out-of-wedlock births are a matter of public concern for four broad reasons: unmarried parents have fewer resources, their relationships are less stable, their investments—financial and emotional—in children are lower, and their children do less well in a wide variety of respect (2000).

More generous social provision could compensate in part at least, but two parents typically provide more emotional resources as compared with a single parent. In Germany, for example, where social provision is more generous than in the US, adults who were raised by a single mother for the first 15 years of their lives reported ‘significantly lower general life satisfaction than the group reared by both parents’, and this difference persisted across adulthood, and was equally true of men and women ( Richter and Lemola 2017 ). 16

Unmarried cohabiting parents in the US tend to be ‘very optimistic about the future of their relationship’: at the time of their child’s birth more than 90 per cent rate the chances of marrying their partner at ‘fifty/fifty’ or better. However, cohabiting relationships are much less stable than marriages. Five years after the birth of their child, 80 percent of married couples are still living together compared with only about 35 per cent of unmarried couples (and of those only about half are married ( McLanahan and Garfinkel 2000 : 146–7). Unmarried fathers tend not to shoulder parenting responsibilities: half of no-nresident fathers see their child at least monthly in the first year after a child’s birth, but only 35 percent do so after five years. Financial contributions from non-resident fathers are even rarer: a quarter make regular cash payments during the first year, but only 14 per-cent do so by the fifth year ( McLanahan and Garfinkel 2000 : 148).

A high percentage of unmarried American mothers assert that a single mother can raise a child just as well as a married mother, and that is true, but unmarried mothers face special challenges. Single mothers in the United States experience high rates of poverty—five times the rate of married couples 17 —and they also have less time and attention to give to their children, who tend to do less well across a wide range of social indicators. Single mothers in the US often move in and out of new relationships, which is understandable but also often stressful for young children. Greater demands on their time make it harder for single mothers to focus on good parenting: they engage in fewer literacy activities, household routines tend to be less regular, and there is more harsh discipline such as yelling and spanking. 18

As mothers form new relationships, they also often give birth to children with their new partners. For existing children, the entry of these new half-siblings creates additional stresses, and tends to reduce the involvement and contributions of their fathers, and their fathers’ families, increasing children’s behavioural problems ( McLanahan and Garfinkel 2000 : 153–4).

For all these reasons, children of single mothers tend to do less well in terms of physical and psychological health, educational attainment, and economic success, and their own later family lives tend to be less stable ( McLanahan and Garfinkel 2000 : 148–9; see also McLanahan 2004 : 610–11; McLanahan and Sandefur 1994 ). Children whose parents cohabit rather than marry are more like to be physically and sexually abused. Boys raised in single-parent homes may more frequently experience special challenges, 19 and they may benefit from fathers’ general presence in households in the local community ( Chetty et al. 2020 ).

Divorce also puts children at elevated risk of emotional and other problems. Here again, while most children adapt to the changes to their lives subsequent to divorce, about 20–25 per cent experience serious problems as compared with 10 per cent from families with intact marriages ( Galston 2002 ). 20 Young peoples’ rates of suicide and attempted suicide rise with increasing divorce rates and the absence of a biological parent ( Cutler, Glaesar, and Norberg 2001 ; Cash and Bridge 2009 : 613–19). Studies of divorce in Norway, which has a very generous welfare state, finds that divorce is still associated with ‘negative outcomes’ for children ( Breivik and Olweus 2006 ).

Selection effects seem to explain some but not all of the advantages of stable marriages for children: that is, children may do better not because of marriage but because their parents have the qualities that make them ‘marriagable’. Surely there is some of that, but most marriage scholars seem to agree that, for example, ‘When it comes to educational achievement, even after selection effects are taken into account, children living with their own married parents do significantly better than other children’ ( Institute for American Values 2005 ).

We should neither minimize nor exaggerate the magnitude of these effects. Most children who grow up in single-parent homes do fine and many do extraordinarily well, including a man by the name of Barack Obama. A loving extended family can be a great boon, as his maternal grandparents were for Obama ( Obama 2004 ). Being raised by two parents in an intact marriage is no guarantee of success. But, other things being equal, an intact two-parent marriage that is reasonably low in conflict appears to be the best bet for a child’s happiness and success.

40.9 Same-sex marriage

The enormous changes wrought in marriage law and culture by increasing gender equality and the sexual revolution primarily manifested themselves in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. In the last decade, the greatest change is the uneven spread of acceptance of same-sex marriage in much (but by no means all of) the West, and also in countries like India and Taiwan.

Conservative opponents of same-sex marriage relied on several arguments that are now widely discredited in the West, though still espoused by some here and by many in more traditional cultures around the world.

Same-sex sexual relations, in contrast with heterosexual, were long considered ‘unnatural’ and perverse—indeed, psychologically disordered. Part of this seems related to the ignorance—very widespread until recently—that some people experience same-sex orientation from early on as a stable and unalterable feature of their personality. 21

In 1952, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) described homosexuality as a ‘sociopathic personality disturbance’: a mental disorder ( Baughey-Gill 2011 ). A decade later, the Manual pronounced that this disorder resulted ‘from a pathological hidden fear of the opposite sex caused by traumatic parent–child relationships’ ( Boies and Olson 2014 : 33). The APA removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 1973, followed in 1975 by a similar stance taken by the American Psychological Association, which also urged ‘all mental health professionals to help dispel the stigma of mental illness that had long been associated with homosexual orientation’ (1996). 22 Other major medical and psychological professional associations followed suit. In recent decades, the American Psychiatric and Psychological associations, and other major health organizations, have filed ‘friend of the court’ briefs in support of gay men and lesbians in the Supreme Court’s major cases involving discrimination, most recently arguing, in Obergefell , that there is ‘no scientific justification for excluding same-sex couples from marriage’ (2015; and see American Psychological Association et al. 2016).

Some of the most philosophically inclined of the so-called ‘social conservatives’ invoke natural law or ‘New Natural Law’ to argue that sexual activity gains its meaning from its relation to procreative sex acts. When unconnected with procreative-type activity, they argue, sexual activity is valueless and indeed personally and socially destructive. Such arguments—advanced by philosophers such as Germaine Grisez, John Finnis, and Robert George, and frequently echoing or amplifying claims advanced by Popes John Paul II and Benedict, as well as their predecessors, have had little public traction in most Western societies in recent decades. One reason is, obviously, that so many heterosexuals experience good sexual relations that are not procreative. Indeed, the New Natural Law scholars regard contracepted sexual acts as valueless, and indeed as personally and socially destructive ( Macedo 2015 : chs 1 and 2; Girgis, Anderson, and George 2012 ).

Others have opposed same-sex marriage on the ground that the biological and/or psychological complementarity of men and women is essential to marital norms and the good of marriage ( Anderson 2012 ). A psychology-based version of the complementarity argument emphasizes average psychological and behavioural differences between men and women. Evolutionary theory suggests that differences across men’s and women’s sexual behaviour reflect different mating strategies: men seek to maximize their mating opportunities whereas women seek the protection of a loyal spouse during the long period of vulnerability that accompanies the gestation and nurturing of young and helpless offspring. Absent the tendency toward psychological complementarity, marriage is liable to be less successful ( Macedo 2015 : ch. 3).

The obvious problem here is that such arguments rest on crude generalizations. Maggie Gallagher, long a conservative marriage opponent, is particularly blunt:

A gay man does not wish to be a husband in the sense of taking responsibility for a woman and any children their unions create together, a responsibility that necessarily includes eschewing all others sexually. I do not criticize him for this. This is probably a very reasonable decision on a gay man’s part. [ … ] But people who choose not to marry do not therefore have a right to redefine marriage. ( Corvino and Gallager 2012 : 177)

Gallagher here turns the ‘gay man’ into a stereotypical object: the irresponsible narcissist.

It is deeply problematic to make invidious stereotypes the basis for public policy when applied to groups that have long been subject to discrimination, and even violent persecution. Human types and complementarities come in many versions. And even if it is the case that gay males, as compared with heterosexuals, tend on average to have more sexual partners and more sexually ‘open’ relationships, it seems doubtful that that provides an adequate reason for preventing those same-sex couples who wish to marry from participating in the institution. Since when do we punish whole groups for the behaviour of some within the group (assuming, for the sake of argument, that the conduct deserves punishment)?

Other conservatives have emphasized, more reasonably, that we have very little evidence of the consequences of same-sex marriage and, same-sex parenting. There simply is a dearth of evidence, including concerning the effects on children, so we should have waited longer to see the consequences.

Fair enough, but two points. One is that the law of parenting and adoption has diverged in many ways from the law of marriage, the reason being that so many children are born outside of wedlock ( Levine and Levine 2016 ). So access to marriage does not necessarily determine parental and adoption rights.

Another response is that society does not impose any ‘fitness’ test on heterosexuals wishing to marry. Pretty much the only conditions for marrying or remarrying are two people past the age of consent, absent another valid marriage, and avoidance of consanguinity (you can’t marry your immediate family members nor, in many but not all jurisdictions and contexts, your first cousins). Beyond that, pretty much anything goes for heterosexuals. The Supreme Court has extended the right to marry to prisoners, and it has struck down a state law that required a special judicial permission to marry for a father who had an outstanding child support order. 23

The marital escapades of many heterosexual celebrities and politicians are well known. Mickey Rooney, who was married nine times, advised: ‘Always marry early in the morning. That way, if it doesn’t work out, you won’t have wasted a whole day.’ Raising the marital bar for gays but not straights would be the height of hypocrisy.

In fact, however, few Americans marry twice, let alone three or more times. In spite of the fact that marriage, divorce, and remarriage are more frequent in the US than elsewhere, while 52 per cent over the age of 15 are married, only 13 per cent of Americans have been married twice, and 4 per cent have been married three or more times (U.S. Census Bureau 2015).

Importantly, extending marriage law to same-sex couples required little change to the law of marriage. It was observed in the 1990s that contemporary marriage was well suited to same-sex couples ( Chambers 1996 ). Why? Because of the entire elimination of the legal differences that once defined the distinct roles of husband and wife. Formal spousal equality in law was, as mentioned above, a hard-won achievement of the women’s rights movement and liberalism: it was a radical break with our patriarchal traditions that deeply changed the character of marriage. All that was needed was to drop the words ‘husband’ and ‘wife’.

So, the case against same-sex marriage in the US and increasing numbers of other countries has collapsed rather quickly and public opinion has shifted with astonishing rapidity. As recently as 2004, in a Pew Research Center poll, Americans opposed same-sex marriage by a margin of 60 per cent to 31 per cent. The same polling firm finds the positions completely reversed in 2019, with 61 per cent in favour and 31 per cent opposed ( Pew Research Center 2019 ).

Part of the change is generational: young people across the political spectrum are more accepting of same-sex marriage as compared with their elders, but all generational cohorts have shifted in the direction of much greater acceptance. Why the rapid shift? Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell suggest that one factor is declining religiosity: more religious Americans are less likely to support same-sex marriage. Putnam and Campbell also point to the far more positive images of gay, lesbian, and (increasingly) transgender people in entertainment and the media: the ‘Will and Grace’ effect ( Putnam and Campbell 2010 : 402–6; Ayoub and Garretson 2015 ). Yet another reason likely involves the ‘contact hypothesis’: a study suggests that contact has a positive independent effect under many conditions, especially for someone who is otherwise unlikely to have a gay acquaintance ( DellaPosta 2018 ).

Does same-sex marriage change marriage for everyone, as conservatives have long warned? It means, obviously, that anyone can marry someone of the same sex, but what about those not so inclined? Might the behavioural and attitudinal differences of same-sex couples contribute to changes in marriage norms and culture for all? Many scholars have pointed out that same-sex couples share household tasks and paid work more equally than heterosexual couples, for example: this is one reason that feminists have long favoured it. Susan Okin’s call for greater justice in the family pointed specifically to lesbian partners as a model with respect to sharing household and paid work equally ( Okin 1989 ).

Same-sex couples, especially males, seem more likely to engage in sexually open relationships, according to one representative survey ( Levine et al. 2018 ). Importantly, this study’s focus is ‘relationships’, not marriages, so we can draw no firm conclusions about married gays.

40.10 Reform proposals

Having provided an overview of marriage and a few of the main changes over recent decades, I now turn to the critics and reformers. Marriage reform proposals come in a wide variety of forms, and from the political right as well as the left. We begin with proposals to strengthen marital commitment, and then turn to critics of marriage.

40.10.1 Strengthening marital commitment

A few reformers seek to strengthen marital commitment. The current law of marriage, with its ‘no-fault’ and unilateral divorce provisions, has been derisively referred to as ‘marriage lite’. Prior to the divorce reforms of the late 1960s and 1970s, obtaining a legal divorce required a prolonged separation, of perhaps two years, or a showing that one of the spouses had broken the marriage vows and was at fault. It was widely thought that the old regime encouraged married couples who wished to divorce to deceive courts, and that the reliance on fault caused rancour and poisoned future cooperation. The new regime allows for speedy and unilateral divorce when either spouse wishes to end the relationship. With these changes in divorce law, the divorce rate began to rise in the mid-1960s, and increased by over 200 per cent within 15 years ( Gruber 2004 ).

Andrew J. Cherlin argues that Americans’ personal relationships are characterized by far greater churn and flux than citizens elsewhere, and furnishes evidence that this is stressful for adults and children. He makes a well-informed case for encouraging Americans to slow down when it comes to decisions to cohabit, marry, divorce, and remarry ( Cherlin 2010 : ch. 8).

Cherlin is far from alone in suggesting that unhappy spouses are apt to give too little weight to the negative impact that divorce can have on children. Evidence suggests that keeping intact a marriage that is not altogether happy, but in which there is not too much open conflict, can often be best for children ( Wilson 2003 ; Cherlin 2010 ; Galston 2002 ; Offer 2007 : chs 13 and 14).

Arkansas, Louisiana, and Arizona have offered the option of beefed-up marital commitment under the rubric of ‘covenant marriages’. In Arkansas, such marriages require premarital counselling, and a speedy divorce is available only if one or both spouses commit a serious marital transgression, such as adultery or physical abuse. In all other cases, the spouses must wait at least two years for divorce ( Cherlin 2010 : 13). Few Arkansans have availed themselves of the option, and it seems unlikely that there has been any wider impact.

Elisabeth S. Scott makes an interesting case for covenant marriage from a broadly liberal point of view. Marriage is supposed to enable couples to signal their serious commitment to each other and to society. The prospective costliness of exit may increase the seriousness with which spouses undertake their mutual commitment, thereby increasing the assurance about each other’s commitment, enabling a deeper investment in the relationship. This is crucial, she emphasizes, to marriage’s commitment function: by agreeing to an arrangement that raises the costs of acting on what may well be a transient dissatisfaction with the relationship, marriage enables couples to weather the inevitable conflicts, disappointments, and temporary malaise. Insofar as divorce ‘no longer carries serious costs’, those who ‘aspire to life-long marriage are less able to signal accurately their own intentions’ by agreeing to marry ( Scott 2010 : 45). As people with shallower commitments are encouraged to marry, and marital norms and expectations weaken, the reinforcing power of social expectations also weakens. ‘Marital failure may result for some couples whose marriages might have weathered hard times if legal enforcement of commitment norms had been available to deter defection’ ( Scott 2010 : 46; Offer 2007 : ch. 13)

No-fault divorce, by lowering the cost of marriage, may deprive couples of the valuable option of entering into a more costly and therefore more robust form of commitment. Drawing on US census figures, Jonathan Gruber finds that unilateral divorce encourages more frequent and more fragile marriages, with worse outcomes for children in terms of their education, income, marital stability, and suicide rates. He further finds that it increases the power of the ‘less attached’ spouse at the expense of the ‘more attached spouse’, in effect depriving women of valuable property rights that resulted from the requirement of mutual consent: shifting resources to the control of men tends to be bad for children as well as women ( Gruber 2004 : 808).

Scott proposes mandatory waiting periods and counselling of the sort contained in the covenant marriage laws to facilitate the making of more serious long-term commitments for those who wish to enter into them. Higher costs for reneging on commitments, including the reinstatement of ‘fault’ considerations in divisions of marital property, may help us overcome the common tendency to favour short-term desires over long-term projects and the satisfactions that go with them. It may help increase the bargaining position of the ‘more attached’ spouse ( Scott 2010 : 48–51).

These proposals do not, however, appear to have much public traction.

40.10.2 The problematic ‘special’ status of marriage?

Many marriage critics argue, as already mentioned, that the ‘special status’ of marriage in our society unfairly elevates one way of life, or ethical ideal, above all others, and is unfair given social and ethical diversity. 24 Sonu Bedi argues that ‘liberal neutrality invalidates both prohibitions on same-sex marriage and marriage itself’ (2013: 240). Preserving marriage and extending it to gays takes sides ‘in a very personal decision about what constitutes the good life’, says Bedi; it amounts to ‘natural law but with a gay spin’. Tamara Metz views civil marriage as an illegitimate public intrusion into the private sphere of personal ethics and spiritual belief: ‘The public that defines, confers, and regulates marital status has the potential to wield unique power and influence over the generation of social norms’ (2010: 111, and see 91). The state has, moreover, a ‘tendency to ‘crowd out’ other sources of authority’, violating ‘freedom of marital expression’ ( Metz 2010 : 129, 145; see also Torcello 2008 ). Andrew March similarly insisted that the ‘liberal state should get out of the “marriage business” by leveling down to a universal status of “civil union” neutral as to the gender and affective purpose of domestic partnerships’ ( March 2011 : 246).

Many join Martha Fineman in criticizing marriage as an under-inclusive and thus unfair public vehicle for recognizing and supporting the broad and basic need for caring and caregiving relationships, irrespective of any romantic or sexual component (2004). Tamara Metz, for example, argues for the creation of a new legal status in place of civil marriage—'Intimate Caregiving Union’ or ‘ICGU’—which ‘would be expressly tailored to protecting intimate care in its various forms’ ( Metz 2010 : 158–61).

Elizabeth Brake, as noted, agrees that monogamous civil marriage unfairly favours ‘amorous dyads’ and denies recognition to non-sexual friendships, ‘polyamorous’ (plural and egalitarian) unions, and other caring relationships of many types (Brake 1012: 144). 25 Brake draws together many of the concerns expressed by others and combines them in her singular proposal: we should retain civil ‘marriage’ in law but re-constitute it on a much broader and more diverse basis to include caring and caregiving relationships of all sorts, of any number and combination of genders, and without regard to reciprocity, romantic love, or sex ( Brake 2012 ). She argues that individuals should be free to pull apart the complex bundle of legal relations, rights, and obligations associated with (and paradigmatically combined in) marriage, and share them with a variety of people: sharing a home with an elderly relative, raising a child with a close friend, having sex with a high-school sweetheart, and giving surrogate decision-making powers in the event of incapacitation to a trusted adviser. Or support of different kinds might be exchanged by a grandmother and grandchild. Brake would call all of these relationships ‘marriages’ and have us extend legal recognition and appropriate public support to them.

So what should we think about this bevy of proposals aimed at demoting the status of marriage in our law and culture, proliferating marital options, and recognizing and supporting a wider variety of caring relations?

In my view, arguments for ‘disestablishing’ civil marriage, in favour of some other less ‘freighted’ label, such as ‘civil unions’, involve several mistakes.

First, they invoke a needlessly controversial conceptions of ‘marriage as special’ ( Metz 2010 : 43; Brake 2012 : 143). The distinctive status aspect of marriage serves straightforward public and private purposes: it allows people to enter into a reasonably well-defined and widely understood form of commitment as a matter of common knowledge. This allows them to participate in a wide array of social norms, expectations, responsibilities, and permissions that are associated with this longstanding and familiar, but also distinctive, social institution and cultural practice. This is something very many couples want to do, and there are reasonable (if not indefeasible) grounds for thinking that it generally serves their interests, the interests of children, and the wider society: greater health, happiness, longevity, mental health, less substance abuse, more successful work lives, and more efficient production of a host of private and public goods. Furthermore, the availability of a pre-bundled package of legal rights and responsibilities, which others have found useful in the past, can be extremely helpful and simplifying for those who wish specifically to commit to marriage.

Fairness certainly requires greater efforts to provide the economic opportunities that many unmarried couples regard as a prerequisite to marriage. And it may require doing more to assist the unmarried. We could revise housing and development policies to encourage denser and more communal forms of housing and community design. Public assistance to the unmarried, and those for whom entry into marriage involves special challenges—whether economically, physically, or emotionally—can and should be undertaken in addition to recognition and appropriate legal support for marriage.

Fineman, Metz, Brake, Chambers, and others are right that public recognition and support for marriage alone is not enough. Recognizing and supporting caring relationships other than marriage in no way requires or gains any obvious advantage from efforts to abolish civil marriage. We should build on the success of civil marriage, not tear it down based on mere hopes of something radically different and better. We should generally not level down unless doing so is required by justice. Greater fairness can be sought by an alternative strategy of ‘marriage plus’, as recommended by legal scholars Linda McClain, Maxine Eichner, and others: we should extend appropriate forms of public recognition and support to non-marital but valuable caring and caregiving relationships ( McClain 2006 ; Eichner 2010 ). 26

With respect to Brake’s proposal to extend the term ‘marriage’ to any relationship that instantiates aspects of marriage as we know it—including the relationship of a grandmother and a grandson who share a household—notice how confusing and unhelpful it would be to call such relations ‘marriages’. As we have seen from the start, the word ‘marriage’ denotes a widely understood social institution and cultural practice: I have suggested that its core is the commitment of two people to build a life in common together. The romantic and sexual elements of the partnership are hardly accidental, even if some married couples do not have a lot of sex. The distinctively marital form of loving commitment is a great good for those who seek and realize it. That is not what is sought by a grandmother and grandson, or two sisters, or three friends who share a household and mutual support, grant one another powers of attorney, etc.

If some people object to the word ‘marriage’ because of its historical association, I certainly have no objection to offering them the option of using ‘civil union’ in their legal documents and marriage ceremony. They are already free to call it whatever they want, and they are not required to publicize their marriage if they don’t want to.

While some marriage critics liken state recognition and support for civil marriage to state establishment of religion, I would suggest that the widespread appeal of marriage, broad participation in the institution, and its flexibility for couples makes it more like federal support for the interstate highway system. Not everyone values it, and people do not value it equally: some people are sedentary and some love to drive. But very many people value it, and on broad enough public grounds to make it eminently defensible.

Appreciation for the meaning and value of civil marriage is not limited to adherents of specific philosophical and religious doctrines. The structure that marital commitment imparts to people’s lives is like a flexible scaffolding that allows for the construction of buildings with many different architectural shapes and styles. It is not the imposition of a specific ideal of life, but one available and widely sought after structure for fashioning a life with another person. Marriage can and should be defended without reference to special philosophical principles or comprehensive ethical ideals: in its defence I have invoked only broadly public goods. 27

Marriage is ‘special’ because it is important to spouses, their children, and many others in society: the ‘specialness’, insofar as it exists, is not mainly the creation of law. And it need not and should not be the only publicly supported option.

40.10.3 Personalizing the marriage ‘contract?’

What about the apparently sensible idea that couples entering into marriage should deliberate on and set specific terms to their marriage vows and agreement, further ‘contractualizing’ marriage by encouraging people to ‘personalize’ it ( Thaler and Sunstein 2009 : ch. 15)? Conversations and mutual pledges, in which prospective spouses set out broad principles, aims, and aspirations for their marriage, would seem useful devices for facilitating clearer mutual understanding. More formal prenuptial agreements are now easy to obtain, but it appears that few are executed. There are no systematic studies of prenuptial legal agreements; some marriage attorneys and counsellors argue that prenups are on the rise due to people marrying later in life ( Huffington Post 2013 ).

Prenuptial agreements can be used to protect the interests of spouses and children from a previous marriage, and that seems proper. Often, however, it appears that prenups reflect the desire of the wealthier spouse to retain assets in the event the marriage dissolves. They can be challenged if there was not full deliberation and disclosure, or if deemed inequitable. 28

Prenups can have downsides. The contract model invites bargaining, and bargaining can disadvantage the weaker or less calculating party. Whatever present or prospective inequalities the parties bring to the table will help shape the bargain they arrive at. Contractual bargaining may be especially problematic under the influence of romantic love, which may blind one party more than the other. The benefits of a ‘status’ relationship whose broad terms are defined in advance by law may be most important for the weaker and less calculating party. One family law attorney reports that prenups are typically a contract to defeat the relative fairness that the law of marriage requires in dividing property in the event of a divorce: ‘the laws were written and interpreted over a long period of time by very knowledgeable people applying fairness and thoughtfulness to real life experiences and situations’ ( Israel 2010 ).

Some argue, and not implausibly, that the broader mindset of contractual bargaining threatens to degrade marriage’s open-ended commitments. The wedding vows—to love and to care for one another ‘for better, for worse, in sickness and in health, till death’—express mutual commitment to building a life in common without preconditions ( Wilcox 2013a ). Elizabeth Anderson worries that trying to specify and fix the terms of marriage in advance ‘undermines the responsiveness of the marriage to the changed needs of the partners, as well as the promise it holds out for deepening their commitment in light of a more articulate’, or simply more sensitive, ‘understanding of their shared project’ ( Anderson 1993 : 157). As Fred Hirsch put it, ‘The more that is in the contracts, the less can be expected without them; the more you write it down, the less is taken—or expected—on trust’ (1978: 88).

The purpose of this discussion is to set out, not to settle, these and other issues surrounding marriage.

40.11 Why not polygamy?

What, finally, about monogamy? Is the rule of two a heterosexual hangover, a Christian fetish destined for the dust-heap of history? Why not partnerships of three or more? Why get hung up on monogamy after same-sex marriage, which severs the link (as conservatives have observed) between marriage and procreation?

Given the importance of marriage in our law and culture, you might suppose that such questions have been studied exhaustively. You would be wrong.

Chief Justice John Roberts, in his Obergefell dissent, argued:

from the standpoint of history and tradition, a leap from opposite-sex marriage to same-sex marriage is much greater than one from a two-person union to plural unions, which have deep roots in some cultures around the world. If the majority is willing to take the big leap, it is hard to see how it can say no to the shorter one. ( Obergefell v. Hodges , Roberts dissenting)

Roberts was right in one respect: ‘plural unions [ … ] have deep roots’ in many ‘cultures around the world.’ Eighty-five per cent of the societies studied by anthropologists have practised polygamy as the preferred marital form for the privileged (Heinrich et al. 2012). It overwhelmingly takes the form of polygyny : one husband with multiple wives.

Polygamy derives from the Greek polygamia , which means the state of being married to many spouses. It is sometimes also referred to as ‘plural marriage’. Strictly speaking, polygamy comes in two different forms. By far the most common form is ‘polygyny’, a marriage in which one husband takes multiple wives. Polygyny is extremely common in the historical and anthropological record as an exalted status to which the most successful males aspire: emperors, sultans, and those with sufficient resources to emulate them. So dominant is this patriarchal form it has become synonymous with the general term ‘polygamy’.

‘Polyandry’, in which one wife has multiple husbands, is much rarer in the historical record. It exists in a few societies in central China and near Tibet today, sometimes taking the form of ‘brother marriage’ that enables male siblings to keep the family farm intact. 29 In conditions of extreme poverty, a small family farm may simply be unable to support more than one family ( Henrich 2010 : 60). Then too, if danger is also great, a wife and children might need the protection of a group of brothers ( Zeitzen 2008 : 111).

Most progressive marriage critics mainly defend polyamory, sometimes referred to as postmodern polygamy ( Den Otter 2015a ). It seems mainly to exist as a practice of fluid adult sexual relationships, but reformers project that it could emerge as a new form of group marriage. Brake’s ‘minimal marriage’ proposal is designed to enable polyamorous relationships among others. We return to polyamory below.

Plural marriage is strongly associated, in historical practice and around the world currently, with patriarchy, and with class and status hierarchies. As such, it is productive of systematically worse outcomes for women, children, and lower-status males ( Macedo 2015 : chs 7–9).

Some suggest that equal recognition of plural unions somehow follows from or is entailed by respect for sexual freedom. Barbara Bennett Woodhouse argued that both same-sex marriage and polygamy gain support from ‘the freedom to define and redefine the self’s most intimate and identifying connections’; many of the marriage critics described above would agree (1996: 570). Polygamists, like homosexuals, have often been subject to hostility and persecution. This has given way to a policy of de facto legal tolerance toward the few remaining Mormon fundamentalist enclaves; polygamy now constitutes grounds for excommunication within the LDS Church ( Simpson 1975 ).

Many are misled by superficial analogies between same-sex marriage and polygamy. Their historical trajectories are completely different, and they stand in diametrically opposed relationships with regard to the fundamental constitutional and moral value of gender equality. The state has several broad interests in recognizing and supporting civil marriages, and these interests are very poorly served by polygamy.

Decriminalization of polygamous cohabitation and ‘legalization’ (or legal recognition) of polygamous marriages are ‘separate policy issues that should be evaluated separately’, as de Marneffe observes (2016: 154–5; Macedo 2015 : chs 7–9).

Let us focus on how the relationships differ structurally and psychologically and then consider briefly the empirical evidence.

Part of the reason why monogamous marriage has advantages for children is that it creates a bond between two adults who aspire to a lifelong and exclusive partnership, and those two adults also take on a special relationship and special responsibilities to one another and to their children. It seems a reasonable principle of moral psychology that people will tend to care more about their own children. Even Peter Singer allows that the special relationships of parents and children must be given due weight by utilitarian ethics, for the good such relationships bring about ( Singer and de Lazari-Radek 2014 ). Parents typically are willing to sacrifice a great deal for the sake of their children’s well-being. Those who can afford it will spend enormous amounts of money on quality daycare, they will uproot and move for the sake of better schools, and then mortgage their home and futures to pay for their children’s education. Poor parents and single mothers often work multiple jobs and crushingly long hours to support their children. Standing behind all these material sacrifices are emotional investments that make it all seem worthwhile.

So, following de Marneffe, imagine a man who has four children with each of three wives vs four children with one wife. The first thing to notice is that his financial resources are now stretched thin, but so are his emotional resources. Moreover, as compared with the monogamous father of four, his situation is structurally fraught with far greater opportunity for conflict: he must divide his attention and concern among twelve children rather than four. And his attention and concern must be mediated by the differing preferences, habits, and aspirations of three different wives and mothers.

Each of his plural wives also face situations structurally far more complex than that of the paradigmatic wife in a monogamous marriage. In all cases her primary sense of attachment and care will be directed to her own children, but in a polygamous household she must negotiate with a husband whose attention and resources she shares with his other wives and the children of her husband and his other wives. As de Marneffe observes, ‘the interests of each mother in the welfare of her children will conflict with the interests of the other mothers in the welfare of their children [ … ] a gain for one mother’s child will mean a loss for another mother’s child’ (2012: 13). Multiple wives who naturally favour their own children will be jealous of any perceived inequalities or unfairness in the allocation of resources or favours: polygamy is thus structurally prone to greater disunity and conflict.

And the children will have, in our example, all of the usual issues of relating to each of their parents and their three siblings. These issues will be compounded by the complexity of sharing a father and household, or extended household, with their father’s two other wives, and their eight half-siblings. Problems of sibling jealously and the suspicion (and reality) of parental favoritism are present in all families; how much more intense and complex they must be when compounded by jealousies associated with spousal favouritism among multiple wives and their children. Note too that in larger monogamous families the mentorship and love of older siblings can compensate for divided parental attention.

Those who advocate equal legal recognition of plural marriages often argue that jealousy can be managed successfully and that, when it is, polygamy can have structural advantages over monogamy. With lots of good will, communication, deliberation, and judicious management, the greater conflict associated with plural marriage can be addressed. If so, the larger number of household helpers could allow for a division of tasks, specialization, a sharing of responsibility, and forms of community that could make participants better off than in monogamous households. In these best-case scenarios, polygamous families combine the virtues of New England town meetings and Adam Smith’s pin factory.

The available evidence suggests, however, that these ‘best-case’ scenarios are far from being the norm.

The point is not that every polygamous household is dysfunctional and bad for children: as in the fictionalized polygamous families of ‘Big Love’, or the reality TV show polygamists of ‘Sister Wives’, polygamy can make for decent or even healthy environments for children. The point is rather that, given the structure of polygamous families, and reflection on what we seem to know about human nature, the sources of jealousy and conflict seem obviously far greater in polygamous households. And that is precisely what the empirical evidence overwhelmingly suggests.

The most impressive mustering of the historical and social scientific evidence concerning polygamy that I have seen was assembled by Chief Justice Robert J. Bauman, of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, in December 2011, in a 100,000 word opinion upholding the constitutionality of the province’s criminal prohibition on polygamy. He concluded that, ‘The prevention of [the] collective harms associated with polygamy’—to women, children, and society—‘is clearly an objective that is pressing and substantial’ ( Bauman 2011 , and see Bala 2011 ).

40.12 Polygamy and Social Harm

As we have just seen, within families , polygyny creates the problem of how to manage cooperation and control jealousy among plural wives and siblings . Zeitzen observes that ‘studies of polygyny often focus on rivalry, antagonism, and jealousy between co-wives’ (2008: 128). Many studies of polygamy across many contexts report that these jealousies and conflicts are dealt with by participants maintaining distance and remoteness from one another. Zeitzen reports an absence of romantic love in typical polygamous households, and that the cost of this arrangement is the suppression of all ‘strong emotional bonds’ (2008: 117, 120). Indeed, de Marneffe points out that polygamy was endorsed by the founders of the LDS church partly as a reaction against nineteenth-century ideals of love. One historian describes Mormon polygamy as an ‘assault on the romantic love ideology’, an attempt to install an alternative ideal of ‘spiritual love’ (de Maneffe 2016: 146).

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) also affirmed that polygamy required special virtue to manage successfully. It was for that reason reserved to the most virtuous among the Mormon elite. In addition, Mormon leaders argued that it should not be practised outside the LDS church.

In addition, and as noted, polygamy tends to reduce the average parental investment per child. As compared with monogamy, polygamy allows male heads of household to invest surplus resources in securing additional wives, leaving fewer resources for the education of rising generations. Indeed, studies of Mormon polygamy in the nineteenth century have found that the children of poorer Mormon men tended to enjoy greater health and longevity because their fathers couldn’t afford to have multiple wives ( Henrich, Boyd, and Richerson 2012 : 661–2; Zeitzen 2008 : 89–107).

The malign social consequences of polygamy in its typical forms goes beyond its direct effects on families.

Even when practised by a fairly small minority of privileged men, polygyny increases competition among men and the pool of unmarried males, contributing to greater violence and risk-taking in society. Economist Robert Frank has noted that if 10 per cent of men in a given society have three wives, 20 per cent of men will have no wives ( Frank 2006 ). Even ‘a small increase in polygyny’, argue Henrich, Boyd, and Richerson (2010: 661), ‘leads to a substantial increase in men without mates’, and higher proportions of unmarried men are associated with higher rates of violence, drug and alcohol abuse, and crime. Unmarried ‘low-status men’ are more likely to ‘discount the future and more readily engage in risky status-elevating and sex-seeking behaviours’ (p. 661). The competitive tendencies that plural marriage encourages among men leads Frank to describe monogamy as, ‘positional arms control agreements that make life less stressful for men’ ( Frank 2006 : Section C, p. 3).

The problems are not confined to men: the ‘shortage’ of women eligible for marriage in polygamous societies tends to lower the age of women’s marriage and increase men’s efforts to control women (Henrich et al. 2010). 30

Brown University political scientist Rose McDermott, an expert witness in the British Columbia Reference Case, who has surveyed the consequences of plural marriage vs monogamy on a comparative basis in countries around the world, summarizes the effects thus: ‘polygyny’s negative effects are wide-ranging, statistically demonstrated, and independently verified’ using a variety of analytic tools:

Women in polygynous communities get married younger, have more children, have higher rates of HIV infection than men, sustain more domestic violence, succumb to more female genital mutilation and sex trafficking, and are more likely to die in childbirth. Their life expectancy is also shorter than that of their monogamous sisters. In addition, their children, both boys and girls, are less likely to receive both primary and secondary education. ( McDermott 2011 )

Interestingly, while the exact origins of monogamy are unknown, it appears that what Walter Scheidel calls ‘socially imposed universal monogamy’ (applying to even the wealthiest and most powerful males) became the rule in ancient Greece and Rome and spread through Rome’s influence. Monogamy reduces destructive conflict among men within a society and helps lay the groundwork for the more cooperative, inclusive, open, and egalitarian social relations. Indeed, the transition to institutionalized monogamy appears to contribute to greater parental investments in children, overall social progress, and a fairer distribution of the opportunity to enter into family relations ( Scheidel 2008 ; Henrich et al. 2010).

A wealth of evidence thus suggests that central public interests in marriage—including the well-being and happiness of children and spouses—are not well served by polygamy. The state has ample reason not to extend equal recognition to polygamous unions. Whether these reasons are conclusive awaits further and more extended discussion.

Let us note another reason of principle counting against equal legal recognition of plural marriage.

Polygamy is at odds with the core meaning of marriage as we know it, which is exclusive lifelong commitment to build a life together. Same-sex marriage does not obviously change this core meaning. But introducing the legal option of plural marriage—the option of making the partnership a threesome or foursome—introduces a new element of contingency into everyone’s marriage, disrupting marriage’s settling function for everyone. The legal option of plural marriage thus undermines for all marriage’s commitment and settling functions, and the assurance, and sense of psychological repose, that marriage is meant to provide.

If the harms described above justify refusing to extend equal legal recognition to plural marriages, why don’t they justify criminalizing polygamy? Instances of child and spousal abuse should be prosecuted, but not every polygamous marriage includes these abuses. Partly for that reason, enforcement measures in the past that forcibly removed children from their parents led to a public outcry and backlash. Active criminalization in the past also helped make polygamous enclaves inaccessible to public authorities. Non-recognition in law, coupled with active discouragement by the LDS (or Mormon) Church, seem sufficient to keep the numbers of people in polygamous communities tiny ( Macedo 2015 : chs 8 and 9).

40.13 What about polyamory or egalitarian plural marriage?

There is abundant evidence—from across human history and around the world—for the negative effects of polygamy in its traditional forms. This is often conceded, implicitly or explicitly, by progressive marriage reformers, such as Ronald Den Otter (2015) and Elizabeth Brake. They argue that in our far more egalitarian culture we have no good reason to expect that plural marriages in the future will resemble the malign, patriarchal form they have generally taken in the past.

According to some studies, as we saw, around 4 per cent of respondents report being involved in one or another sort of non-monogamous relationship. What is very unclear is how many of these non-monogamous relationships are plausible candidates for plural marital commitment . In general, polyamorous relationships seem strikingly unlike marriages: they are mainly fluid and open adult sexual relationships, lacking in marital commitment ( Macedo 2015 : ch. 9). Think ‘swingers’.

In the future, new forms of commitment may arise, such as ‘group marriage’ in which each spouse is ‘married’ to every other spouse: a threesome or moresome of bisexuals. Given greater recognition of the many forms of human sexuality, the possibilities are limitless.

The great mistake of progressive reformers who have called for extending marriage to plural relationships is the presumption that they know what those relationships will look like. My view is that we should wait and let new and valuable social forms develop before we attempt to create law for them. Progressive marriage reformer Laurie Shrage has recently endorsed this position: ‘We really don’t know what legal polygamy under conditions of gender and sexual equality, in a liberal, secular state would be like, because we don’t have many examples’ ( Shrage 2018 ). 31

We should await the emergence of new forms of valuable plural sexual relationships before presuming to create legal templates for them. The extension of marriage to same-sex couples was simple because formal spousal equality was already realized in law. Plural marriages, on the other hand, raise a host of novel complexities regarding paternity of children, property divisions, and conflicts in the home: we cannot simply extend the rules of monogamy to threesomes and moresomes. We should discourage the stigmatizing of people’s consensual and valuable relationships, and await the emergence of novel and valuable social forms. A policy of tolerant openness to social learning should respond sympathetically to people’s valuable but non-standard relationships. We should facilitate and support arrangements whereby people allocate legal powers often associated with marriage to persons other than spouses where this makes sense for them—including powers of attorney, hospital visitation rights, next of kin privileges, etc.

40.14 The decline of gender binaries and the future of marriage

Anyone who teaches on a college campus and has any contact with gender and sexuality studies programs will be well aware of the proliferation of options concerning sexual identity. ‘LGBT’ has expanded to ‘LGBTQQIA,’ and there are new calls for recognition of ‘P’ and ‘D’ for ‘pansexual’ and ‘demisexual’ ( Drescher 2016 ). 32

It seems likely that marriage will face new stresses in the future due to the breakdown of gender binaries.

Young people are marrying later in life and doing more sexual experimentation in their teens and 20s. Marriage scholar Andrew J. Cherlin, describes ‘millennials’ as aspiring to ‘capstone marriages’: ‘The capstone is the last brick you put in place to build an arch,’ Cherlin has said. ‘Marriage used to be the first step into adulthood. Now it is often the last’ (cited in Rabin 2018 ). An eHarmony report found that ‘American couples aged 25 to 34 knew each other for an average of six and a half years before marrying, compared with an average of five years for all other age groups’ ( Rabin 2018 ). People often seem to be postponing marriage not because it is less significant too them, but because it is more significant and they want to get it right.

But what about the increase in gender diversity and fluidity? There is a great deal that we simply do not know. A recent study, published in July 2018, testifies: ‘People in open and other consensually nonmonogamous partnerships have been historically underserved by researchers and providers’ ( Levine et al 2018 : 1). UCLA’s Williams Institute reported in 2017 that 0.7 per cent of 13–17-year-olds identified as transgender ( Herman et al. 2017 ). A 2016 Minnesota State survey of 81,000 students in the 9th and 11th grades found that 2.7 per cent of respondents identify as transgender or gender non-conforming (‘TGNC’). However, that included all those 9th- and 11th-graders who answered ‘yes’ to the question, ‘Do you consider yourself transgender, genderqueer, genderfluid, or unsure about your gender identity ?’ ( Rider, McMorris, Gower 2018 , emphasis added). Uncertainty about sexual identity among adolescents is hardly surprising. Researchers have only begun to explore fluid sexual identities which are in any case (and by definition!) a moving target.

Many are taking time to explore and critically examine the gendered assumptions of the past. Just how many will reject, and how many will creatively reinterpret and revise, inherited gender roles remains to be seen. It is all to the good that marriage will continue to evolve in conditions of greater freedom and equality. That so many young adults are committing to marriage and childbirth only after long deliberation and preparation seems good: every young adult should be enabled to do so.

40.15 Conclusion

This chapter has considered the meaning of marriage in law and culture, some of the main changes wrought in the institution over the last half century or so, and a variety of reform proposals. I would make two brief points in closing.

I applaud the intellectual creativity and moral seriousness of the many proposals to abolish or radically reform marriage. Just as Plato sought to imagine an ideal Republic, founded in part on a radical rejection of marriage, parenthood, and monogamy, today’s academic and activist reform proposals can illumine shortcomings in existing social structures.

Yet we should also remember that marriage is a broad-based social institution around which most American adults (and citizens of most other countries) have built their lives, and formed their aspirations, ethical ideals, and moral attitudes toward self and others. Marriage is an ancient institution that has adapted and persisted across millennia of human history, and we should expect it to continue to do so.

With the admission of same-sex couples, increasing rates of racial intermarriage, and greater gender equality in marriage, the institution has become far more consistent with the most basic requirements of liberal justice than was the case a few decades ago. Given how many people in our society ‘buy into’ marriage, reforms to marriage should proceed with respect for ‘bottom-up’ social and political processes, at least in the absence of clear injustices. Philosophers and other social reformers should recall what Aristotle observed long ago: that ordinary people have some authority when it comes to the question of what works and does not in their own lives.

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I draw throughout on Macedo (2015) .

For parallel discussions in the context of political constitutions, see Holmes (1995) and Eisgruber (2007) .

On the history of marriage, see Westermarck (1891) , Goody (1983) , and Coontz (2006) .

This is the Google entry for monogamy, but the dual shades of meaning run through other dictionaries and common usage.

Maxine Eichner pointed out in 2010 that while five states outlawed fornication and cohabitation outside marriage, the constitutionality of these laws was rendered dubious by Lawrence v. Texas , in which the Supreme Court voided Texas’s prohibition on sodomy: see Eichner (2010 : 104).

This paragraph and several below draw on Macedo (2015 : 60–65).

See Cherlin (2010) , McLanahan (2004) , Murray (2012) , Putnam (2015) , and Cahn and Carbone (2011) . See Macedo (2015 : 109–15) for a discussion and summary of evidence.

‘[M]en with a high school diploma earn around $1.54 million over a lifetime, whereas those with a bachelor’s degree and a graduate degree earn $2.43 million and $3.05 million, respectively.’ See Tamborini, Kim, and Sakamoto (2015) . See also Putnam (2015) .

For summaries of the evidence, see Wood, Goesling, and Avellar (2007) . See also Emery, Horn, and Beam (2012 : 126). The various benefits are summarized in Institute for American Values (2011) and Macedo (2015 : ch. 5).

‘Significant differences between cohabitation and marriage are only evident in the U.S. and the U.K., but controlling for childhood background, union duration, and prior union dissolution eliminates partnership differentials’ ( Perelli-Harris et al. 2018 , online abstract). On the importance of social context for marital happiness, see Lee and Ono (2012).

See the sources cited and discussed in Eskridge (1996 : 237, nn. 87–8). For a study based on nationally representative samples, see Levine et al. (2018) .

  Rubel and Bogaert (2015) argue that the evidence is inconclusive.

  Levine et al. (2018) .

  Richter and Lemola (2017 : 7) report: ‘Participants who spent their first 15 years with a single mother further showed a lower degree of social integration during adulthood, including a smaller number of friends and fewer visits to/from family as well as less success in romantic relationships, including a lower probability of living with a partner and a higher probability of having been divorced, controlling for childhood SES’. Ribar (2015) provides evidence suggesting that public policy cannot fully substitute for the effects of marriage. See also McLanahan (1997) .

See Patrick (2017) : ‘The poverty rate for female-headed families with children was 35.6 percent, compared to 17.3 percent for male-headed families with children and 6.6 percent of families with children headed by married couples.’

McLanahan and Garfinkel report that ‘more than half of the mothers who are unmarried at their child’s birth go on to date or live with a new partner by the time their child is age five’ (2000: 157).

Children raised by married parents are 44% more likely to go to college, according to Wilcox (2014) .

  McLanahan and Garfinkel (2000) find that children raised in cohabiting families experience higher rates of emotional problems than children being raised by married biological or adoptive parents. See also McLanahan (1997) .

This and the next few paragraphs draw on Fleming et al. (2016 : ch. 2).

And see D’Emilio and Freedman (2012: 320).

See Turner v. Safley 1987 , which ruled that prisoners have a right, under the U.S. Constitution, to marry; and Zablocki v. Redhail 1978 .

This paragraph and the next few draw on Macedo (2015 : ch. 4).

On the left, several hundred ‘LGBT and allied’ scholars signed a statement a decade ago entitled ‘Beyond Gay Marriage’, calling for the legal recognition of poly relationships.

  Kevin Mintz (2019) argues for a positive right to sex, which includes pro-active government measures to facilitate and promote fair access to sex.

While political liberalism precludes public institutions from imposing a marital regime reflecting a ‘particular comprehensive conception of the good’, such as that of the New Natural Law, ‘[i]t does not preclude government from pursuing moral goods or public values that are common to a number of competing comprehensive conceptions’ ( Fleming and McClain 2013 : 190).

See the website of the Wisconsin law firm Schott, Bublitz & Engel .

Numerous accounts confirm the rarity of polyandry ( Henrich 2010 ). Also see Henrich, Boyd, and Richerson (2012) , Bala (2009) , and Jones (2012) . Even Judith Stacey, who advocates acceptance and recognition of a wide range of family forms, says ‘modern polyandry is scarcely thinkable’ ( Stacey 2012 : 150).

See also Bauman (2011) , Reference Case, para. 14: ‘Polygamy’s harm to society includes the critical fact that a great many of its individual harms are not specific to any particular religious, cultural or regional context. They can be generalized and expected to occur wherever polygamy exists.’

She adds: ‘I agree with Macedo that lasting and stable change in a democratic society comes from the bottom up.’ See Shrage (2018) .

In this context, I can’t help but recall Donald Trump’s verbal stumble: ‘L.G. … B.L.T.’

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250 Outstanding Marriage and Family Research Topics

Looking for the best marriage and family research topics for your sociology paper? With the changing dynamics of family and marriage, there is always scope for more research. This leaves you with endless options for a suitable title for your paper. To make the process simpler, here is a list of the best topics on marriage and family to help you narrow down the choices. It is good to remember that some of these topics may evoke conflicting emotions and opinions. therefore, they are best handled with sensitivity and objectivity. They present ample scope for classroom discussion and debates. However, pick a topic that also presents sufficient scope for research to showcase your understanding of the subject and writing skills as well. 

Trending Marriage and Family Research Topics

Here is a list of some of the most commonly used topics on marriage and family that will help you get ample supporting data and content.

• The evolution of the concept of marriage
• The changing role of spouses in a modern marriage
• Changes in the values around marriage and family over the last decade.
• The effect of social media on marriages
• Types of marriages in Nigeria
• Cultural differences and its effect on the sociology of marriages
• The influence of media on marriage and family
• Change in marriages in your country
• Does gen X think that marriage is an outdated concept
• The sociology of inter-racial marriages
• A traditional role that men could perform better than women and vice versa.
• The social benefits of a marriage
• The financial benefits of a marriage
• How does mental health affect marriages?
• The important role of stress in modern marriages.
• Getting married but not choosing to have children. The benefits and risks.
• How long should a couple know each other before getting married?
• Should gender roles within a marriage be maintained strictly? What are the benefits and risks?
• Does society benefit from prioritizing marriage
• Living with an unmarried partner or marriage. Which has a higher level of relationship satisfaction?
• Your thoughts on an egalitarian marriage
• Marriage is a public performance in the age of social media. Your understanding of this statement.
• Is financial instability one of the most common reasons for not getting married.
• The steady decline in marriage among individuals without a college degree.
• Marriage rate for women with good education is higher.
• People who want children should get married. Your thoughts on this.
• The common causes for decline in marriage rate in modern society
• The concept of arranged marriages across the world.
• The role of matrimonial sites in modern marriages.
• Are dating apps a reliable option to meet a suitable partner for marriage?
• Is marriage rate affected by ethnicity?
• The effect of substance abuse on a marriage
• Physical acts of aggression in a marriage. When does one go too far?
• Financial independence of women and its effects on marriage.
• Increasing rate of infidelity in marriages. What are the common causes?

Best Research Topics on Family

Here is a list of some of the best family research topics that explore the changing dynamics on family structures in the recent times.

• How can you define the term ‘family’?
• Family background determines your rate of success in career and life. Comment.
• What are the consequences of divorce on children?
• Overcoming trauma of a dysfunctional family
• Is it possible to always live up to family expectations?
• The effects of parental neglect on children.
• How to minimize negative effect of divorce on a family
• War veterans and their families. Do they really need help?
• Family and its impact on teenage delinquency
• Stages of grief in children after the loss of a family member
• Stages of grief in an adult after the loss of a family member
• How should families cope with the loss of a family member?
• The increasing problem of work-life balance and its impact on families
• Joint family versus a nuclear family
• Family members who should have a say in the upbringing of a child
• Fostering children and the issues that arise
• Substance abuse within a family. How to save yourself and the rest of your family?
• Sexual abuse within a family. Strategies to escape it.
• Family violence in the last decade. Has it increased?
• The effect of setting very high expectations for members of the family.
• Family values: Should they be strict or flexible?
• Different types of relationships within a family.
• Putting life together after a natural disaster.
• Accepting children from a previous marriage into your family.
• How to meet a crisis as a family
• The issue of gender discrimination within a family.
• Gender roles and expectations of the family
• Coping with unpleasant secrets of your family
• The pressure of inheriting a family business and the impact on children and younger members of the family.
• Balancing between family support and allowing young adults to live their lives on their own.
• How involved should the family be in one’s career?
• The absence of love within a family
• Helping a family member in distress.
• Unwanted activities that modern families engage in
• Accepting the transition of children into adult lives.

Family Life Education Topics for Research

Among the many family and marriage topics for discussion, family life education is an important concept that presents a huge scope for research.

• The objectives of family life education
• The importance of family life education
• The primary principles of family life education
• The practices of family life education and their importance in effective outreach.
• How family life education can improve moral codes in young adults
• The importance of family life education in developing a good personality in adolescents
• Complementing parent education with family life education.
• How family life education can fill the gap when parents abdicate responsibilities.
• The three behavioural needs for family planning.
• Importance of setting priorities when planning a family.
• Resources that teen parents need for effective parenting.
• Tools to build resilience in teen parents
• Family life education and psychology
• Family life education and social work.
• The 10 contents of family life education.
• Family life education is one of the most flexible fields of sociology. Your comments.
• Family life education to help problem teens cope in college or school.
• The role of family life education in decision making among family members.
• Write in detail about a decision making model that youth can benefit from when it comes to family planning decisions.
• Skill application in family planning.
• Parenting classes: A modern trend or a necessity for new parents?
• Identifying personal attitude and belief in teen parenting.
• How family life education contributes to overall well being and growth of a family.
• Assessing knowledge levels of adolescent girls with respect to issues in family life education.
• The key areas of study of family life education.
• Differences in rural and urban approach to family life education.
• How to set up an effective intervention plan when dealing with family life education crisis
• The challenges of parents with adolescent parents.
• Using family life education to teach teens about balancing between responsibility and freedom.
• Critical interests of preschool children
• Stimulating growth and development of preschool children.
• The right time to plan for a second child.
• Adjusting to the ‘Empty Nest Syndrome’.
• Importance of family life education in reproductive health.
• Population education versus family life education.

Sociology of Family Research Topics

Family structures are an important part of studying sociology. Here are trending sociology research topics on family to help you ace your papers.

• Unconventional family structures in the modern world.
• Child behaviour and the impact of parents on it.
• Child abuse and its long term effects
• The impact of cross-racial adoption
• The challenges of cross-racial adoption
• Differences in family structures across ethnic groups and races
• How single parenting impacts the life of children.
• The impact on children when couples live apart.
• The impact on family structure when couples live apart.
• Family and its involvement in community
• The role of the community in changing family structures.
• Different household structures within families
• The earner-carer family model
• The need for dual earner couples
• The evolution of household structures within families
• The importance of dividing household labour within a family.
• What is family demography?
• Effective ways of dealing with family conflicts
• What is maternalism?
• The changing approach to filial responsibility
• Effective family migration planning
• The challenges faced by immigrant families.
• Examples of matriarchal family structures across the globe.
• The changing roles of a woman in a family.
• The changing roles of a man in a family.
• Effective ways to manage money within a family
• The important parental roles in deciding the outcomes for children.
• Sibling relationships at different ages.
• Dealing with stepfamilies.
• Challenges faced by stepmothers and how to overcome them?
• Challenges faced by stepfathers and how to overcome them?
• The concept of sibling ties.
• Causes for increase in female householders
• Deteriorating economic circumstances of men and the impact on family structures.
• Cohabitation and a decline in marriage.

Popular Research Topics on Gay Marriage

With the legalization of same sex marriage in many countries while some still remain in conflict, there are several gay marriage topics that you can write about.

• Should the government have a say in marital decisions?
• Why is gay marriage illegal in some countries?
• The importance of legalizing same sex marriages.
• The social challenges faced by same sex couples.
• How to help a member of the family who has come out of the closet.
• Accepting same sex marriage with a family.
• How to support family members who belong the LGBTQ community?
• The effect of same gender parents on the social life of a child.
• Challenges faced by gay couples with adoption.
• Can gay couples provide the same parenting structure as straight couples?
• Common marriage and family issues for gay people.
• Differences between a heterosexual marriage and same sex marriage.
• Do same gender couples make fit partners? The common consensus.
• The limitations imposed by the law on same sex couples.
• The importance of marriage for gay couples
• Divorce among gay couples. Is it harder to get professional assistance?
• Legalising same sex marriage and the impact on psychological well-being.
• Impact of same sex marriage on the society.
• Are changing contours of family making it easier to accept gay and lesbian marriages?
• Legal decisions affecting children of same sex parents.
• Anticipatory minority as a stressor among same sex couples.
• Civil Union versus same sex marriage.
• Defining household structures in same sex homes.
• Potential differences in the political attitude between heterosexual and homosexual couples.
• Child development and homosexual parenthood.
• The differences in social challenges of a gay marriage and lesbian marriage.
• Emotion work in gay, lesbian and heterosexual relationships.
• Same sex civil partnership and its impact of health.
• How same sex marriage impacts the understanding of same sex relationship.
• A sociological perspective on the legal recognition of same sex marriages.
• Perspectives of gay and lesbian marriages across the globe.
• Czech lesbian activism. Explain some of the significant events.
• Safety concerns for same sex couples in the society.
• The psychology of children of same sex couples.
• Domestic violence in same sex marriages.

Marriage and Family Therapy Research Topics

Whether it is research paper on relationships, marriage or family structure, therapy and counselling plays an important role in today’s world. Here are some topics that are trending and relevant.

• Stress and its impact on family or marriage counselling.
• Qualities of a good family therapist.
• The role of pre-marriage counselling in strengthening relationships.
• Techniques of family therapy
• The key concepts of family therapy
• Objectives of marriage and family therapy
• Living with a family member who has mental health issues
• Providing family support to members with mental health issues.
• Importance of family therapy in the sociology of family.
• The emergence of family therapy as an identifiable field of psychology.
• Family therapy and its importance in social work.
• Child guidance and mental health
• Family systems model of therapy.
• Improving communication patterns within family through counselling.
• The concept of function and purpose of symptoms.
• The circular causation model of family therapy.
• Recognizing structural characteristics of families through therapy
• The increasing need for family and marriage therapy.
• How family therapy can help cope with members who are addicted to substances.
• Family therapy and child sexual abuse.
• Family therapy versus marriage counselling.
• Non systemic postmodernist models of family therapy.
• The challenges faced by family therapists.
• Factors that limit the scope of family therapy.
• History of professional marriage and family therapy.
• The evolving treatment of gender in family therapy.
• The evolving treatment of sexual orientation in family therapy.
• The perspective of family and marriage therapy among various ethnic groups.
• The need for counselling for children of divorce.
• Family therapy to help deal with loss of family members.
• Family therapy to cope with terminally ill family members.
• Significant models of family therapy in the modern world.
• Important research papers on family therapy.
• The pioneers of family and marriage counselling.
• Changes in psychiatry and its role in the development of family therapy.
• The contributions of Harry Stack Sullivan to family therapy.
• Factors that contribute the positive mental health among family members.
• The impact of cultural systems on the understanding of family dynamics.
• Family therapy and its integration into family medicine.
• Common treatment protocols in family therapy.

Divorce Topics For Research Paper

Because of the social and emotional impact that it has, divorce is among the most important marriage topics for discussion.

• Study of abusive and toxic relationships within a family.
• The causes for increasing divorce rates.
• Perception of divorce among different ethnicities.
• The impact of culture on the perception of divorce.
• Marriage counselling as an effective way of preventing divorce
• The trauma of child custody battles
• The impact of child custody battles on the child.
• The social perspective of divorced couples.
• Raising children as a divorced couple.
• A study on family violence
• The changing perspective of marriage among children of divorce.
• The impact of divorce on the social lives of children.
• Sociological consequences of divorce.
• Changing patterns and trends of divorce
• Is divorce a social problem?
• The negative consequences of divorce
• The positive consequences of divorce
• The economical consequences of divorce
• How divorce impacts your social circle.
• The impact of increasing divorce rates on society.
• Ideological considerations of divorce
• The process of marital breakdown.

Family Law Topics for Research

Here is a list of family law topics that have a good scope for data collection so that you can present an impressive paper.

• Shared residence orders versus single residence orders.
• The need for reform and alteration in family laws in your country.
• Relationships, family and the law
• Reform in the cohabitation law.
• The Children Act of 1989 and its importance in Family Law.
• Extending civil marriage availability to same sex couples. Write your views for and against this topic.
• Laws regarding non-conjugal relationships.
• The role of family law in determining the boundaries of marriage.
• Child relocation and the laws associated with it
• Divorce decisions based on the Principles of Fairness
• The matrimonial cause act of 1973. Discuss its importance and the evolution.
• Discuss three family laws that may be irrelevant in the modern world.
• Why is it necessary to establish family laws?
• The Piglowska versus Piglowski case of 1999 and its impact on divorce law decisions.
• The role of religion on divorce laws.
• Providing legal support to make victims of domestic abuse.
• Why are child protection laws important?
• The legal aspects of family welfare and social work.
• Intervention of the State or authorities in families where children are abused or neglected.
• Termination of parental rights in case of neglect or abuse. Is it the right approach?
• Family laws about inheritance.
• The changing laws of adoption.
• A comparison of family laws in the West and the East.
• Are family laws more liberal in the West?
• Is the concept of alimony redundant in today’s world?
• The need for legal validation of relationships.
• Should women receive child support even if they are financially stable?
• Is it correct for one parent to withhold visitation rights of the other?
• Challenges faced by family lawyers.

Family Bible Study Topics of Research

Religion is a primary construct in the family structure. Here are some best rated family bible study topics that you can choose from:

• Family bible study and its role in establishing values with a family.
• How to use family bible study to improve the personality of adolescents.
• The role of family bible study in increasing bonding between family members.
• Is family bible study necessary in the modern world?
• How the church positively influences the family structure.
• Some family theories and concepts from the bible that are relevant even today?
• Some outdated concepts of family that are mentioned in the bible that do not fit into modern society.
• How family bible study impacts marriages and relationships.
• Family bible study and why it is important for children to start young.
• Family bible study and its role in improving behaviour of family members.
• Interesting ideas to make family bible study relevant and interesting.

It is common for students to often get busy with other subjects and not find ample time to either shortlist the topics or write the research paper . In such scenarios it is best to take help from a reliable writing service like ours. Whether it is topic selection or writing help with the essay, we can offer it all. Don’t be afraid to get research paper help from our professional writers! Our team is experienced in handling an array of writing works for students of different educational backgrounds. We offer plagiarism free and well written submissions that suit every budget. For any help with a research paper about marriage and family, get in touch with our professional writers today. Contact us with a “ do my research paper for me ” request for quality assistance. Get high quality and affordable papers written by experts in the field to increase your grades and present an informative and interesting paper on the subject.  

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Articles on Marriage research

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What Is Marriage Psychology? +5 Relationship Theories

In the United States and parts of England, for instance, divorce rates are dropping (Wood, 2018).

Younger people are delaying marriage, not avoiding it. They’re waiting until they finish school and have money to support a marriage.

One key benefit is that marriage positively affects your health and longevity (Eaker et al., 2007). If you’re looking for interesting insights from the field of marriage psychology, we’ve got you covered. Keep reading.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Positive Relationships Exercises for free . These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients build healthy, life-enriching relationships.

This Article Contains:

What is marriage psychology, psychological theories of marriage, what are the different marriage types, 6 interesting marriage psychology facts, a look at the psychology of incompatible couples, a take-home message.

The definition of marriage is usually from a legal perspective. Marriage occurs in every status and at various educational levels.

Why do humans pursue this arrangement? Why is it important? Why not live like our relatives the bonobo or chimpanzee? What is it about marriage that garners so much attention?

Researchers from diverse disciplines are exploring this. From an evolutionary perspective, marriage is viewed as strengthening and perpetuating the species. From a sociological vantage, marriage creates bonds between and among groups. These bonds facilitate the success of the group.

Marriage psychology focuses on the couple. Researchers question every conceivable situation around marriage. For example:

• What brings two people together?
• What keeps them together?
• What breaks them apart?
• How does their union affect their wellbeing, health, and happiness?
• Are we supposed to be monogamous?
• How does having children affect the marriage bond?
• How can government actions influence the health of marriage?
• How does stress affect the relationship?
• How does a lack of intimacy affect the relationship?
• How does the person’s upbringing affect their romantic relationships?

What is the purpose of marriage psychology?

Relationships can be tricky. Within a married relationship, this is especially true. Aside from ourselves, no single person in our adult lives has as much influence on our health and wellbeing as our spouse (Robles et al., 2014).

Our partner knows us better than anyone else because of their daily proximity to us. They know our idiosyncrasies. Over time, as we get closer, we can lift each other up and bask in that warmth. The support in our married relationship isn’t easily replaced by social support (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2008).

But when things aren’t clicking, the situation can take a dive. Squabbles or all-out battles can make it difficult to let go of the hurt.

Marriage psychology offers an examination of many of the behaviors and norms that we take for granted. It also provides a solid scientific basis for addressing problems in marriage with counseling or therapy.

Among several psychological theories on marriage we’ve provides a short summary of a few prominent theories of marriage.

Social exchange theory

Social exchange theory posits that there are costs and benefits in potential interactions. People analyze each situation to determine the risks and benefits.

Within a marital relationship, these are “ the cyclical patterns of transactions of valued resources, tangible or intangible, between partners and the rewards and costs associated with such transactions ” (Nakonezny & Denton, 2008, p. 403).

8 Elements of intimacy

When asking questions about the psychology of marriage, researchers are often curious about how couples build and maintain intimacy. But what constitutes “intimacy”?

Waring (1988) defined intimacy along eight dimensions.

• Conflict resolution: how easily couples can resolve differences of opinion.
• Affection: the degree of emotional closeness the couple expresses.
• Cohesion: the feeling that both couples are committed to the marriage.
• Sexuality: how much sexual needs are communicated and fulfilled in the marriage.
• Identity: the couple’s level of self-confidence and self-esteem.
• Compatibility: the degree couples can work and play together.
• Autonomy: how couples become independent from their families of origin and their offspring.
• Expressiveness: the degree that thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and feelings are shared between the partners.

Duplex theory of love

Developed by Robert J. Sternberg (n.d.), this theory combines two theories together known as the duplex theory of love.

The first is a combination of three elements, intimacy, passion, and decision/commitment. The center of intimacy is the closeness, connectedness, and bond in the relationship. Think of this as the warm fuzzy feeling you have for a romantic partner. Romance, physical attraction, and sex make up the passion element of the theory.

The final part of the equation – decision/commitment – doesn’t have to happen along with the others. For example, a person could decide to love someone, but not pursue a long-term commitment. One could also commit to a relationship without admitting their love.

Sternberg’s (n.d.) use of triangles represents different balances of the three kinds of love. When balanced, an equilateral triangle represents the love relationship.

The Gottman Method

John Gottman (2015) created the s ound relationship house theory . He and his wife have studied a variety of relationships for 30 years.

The theory posits that every couple’s house consists of seven levels surrounded by trust and commitment (the insulation). The levels are:

• Build love maps – Show genuine interest in the internal and external world of your partner. Know your partner’s dreams, values, and goals. Ask open-ended questions.
• Share fondness and admiration – Communicate affection and respect in small ways, often.
• Turn toward instead of away – Partners tend to make small bids for each other’s attention. For example, one might notice something and point it out. If the other partner acknowledges this and responds, then this is turning toward. If the partner continues doing what they’re doing then this is an example of turning away.
• The positive perspective – This sentiment overrides moments when negative things are happening. This only occurs when 1-3 are working well in the relationship. Gottman (2015) calls this a buffer to irritability and emotional distance.
• Manage conflict – Friendship is the basis for regulating conflict. Couples who have the first three ingredients tend to use humor and affection during conflict. Sixty-nine percent of conflicts are never solved. They’re perpetual problems that exist in every relationship.
• Master couples learn how to cope with this over time through discussions. They don’t allow them to turn into a gridlock for their relationship.
• Make life dreams come true – Master couples figure out the dreams that are the subtext for the conflict. They honor those dreams.
• Create shared meaning – The couple feels like they’re building something together. Their roles within and without the relationship have meaning that supports them.

The Five Love Languages

Dr. Gary Chapman (1992) developed the five love languages after providing years of marriage counseling. Focusing on how to have healthy romantic relationships, Chapman points out that these languages apply to other types of relationships, too.

He determined that five behaviors are essential to a healthy, happy, long-term marriage:

• Love and affirmation
• Learning how to deal with your failures through forgiveness and apology
• Learning how to handle anger
• Learning how to listen
• Accept and laugh about the minor irritations.

The five love languages are:

• Words of affirmation – Remember how your parents taught you to say, “please” and “thank you”? Sometimes we forget this simple tip in our relationships. The bottom line is we all love positive words from the people we respect and love.
• Gifts – This is what tells the other person that you’re thinking about them. They don’t need to be expensive. They do need to be thoughtful.
• Acts of service – Doing things for your spouse like household chores fall into this category. Doing them without being asked is even better if this is your partner’s love language.
• Quality time – Spending uninterrupted time together listening and talking creates stronger bonds. The TV/computer/phone is off. Your attention is on each other and nothing else.
• Physical touch – Holding hands, kissing, sex, hugging, and playfulness all are ways to express love.

According to Chapman (1992), everyone has a primary love language. If you’re interested in finding out more, The 5 Love Languages site offers a free quiz. It also includes an app so that you can take the quiz then connect with your partner.

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There are several ways to look at marriage types. One way is to break marriage down into civil or religious partnerships. Many civil unions include a religious element, though this isn’t necessary. And various religions typically recognize civil marriages. States often recognize religious marriages, though licensing still might be necessary. This is the easiest distinction between marriage types.

Other definitions of marriage types exist. These include either a description of the marriage style, or the couple’s interaction within the marriage.

In sociological terms, there are four basic styles or approaches to marriage:

Polygyny – One male, more than one wife; this is further broken down into sororal and non-sororal. The former involves sisters, the latter doesn’t.

Polyandry – One wife, more than one husband; this also includes fraternal and non-fraternal marriage. The former involves several brothers with the same wife; the latter doesn’t. Depending on the cultural traditions, the children choose their father, or a ritual determines this.

The above are forms of polygamy.

Group marriage – Two or more people join together as common spouses; children belong to the group.

Monogamy – There are two types of monogamy: straight and serial. Straight monogamy doesn’t allow for remarriage due to death or divorce. Serial monogamy does.

Open marriage – This type may or may not include both spouses. It allows either party to engage in some sort of relationship with someone other than their spouse. This isn’t considered infidelity by the couple. They might also do this as a couple; for example, “swinging” is a type of open marriage.

One could argue that other categories or types exist, but these are the most common. Same-sex marriages fit into these marriage types much like heterosexual marriages do.

Psychologists also describe marriage based on how the couples interact within the marriage. This varies based on the predominant theory employed by the psychologist or therapist. For example, Gottman Institute (n.d.) describes five types. The first three are happy types. There are pros and cons to each.

• Conflict avoiders – These couples have common areas of agreement where they’re interdependent. They don’t spend much time persuading or negotiating with each other. They’ve got established boundaries and are otherwise independent with separate interests.
• Volatile couples – This relationship is emotional. They tend to engage in persuasion and debate but are respectful of each other. When this type of couple debates, they use humor.
• Validating couples – This couple is a cross between the previous two. They engage in perspective-taking more than the others and are empathetic. They choose their battles, and after one, they tend to compromise. These couples aren’t overly emotionally expressive.
• Hostile couples – This relationship type has high levels of defensiveness and criticism. There is little-to-no perspective-taking and a lot of contempt.
• Hostile-detached couples – This couple is down to their kings on the board. It’s a constant state of stalemate. They don’t nit-pick at each other and are emotionally aloof. This couple eventually divorces.

How do people decide to get married? What factors are most important? The Pew Research Center (Geiger & Livingston, 2019) has asked Americans this and other questions since at least 1990. Here are some of their findings.

• 64% of Americans said that having shared interests helps people stay married.
• 61% believe a satisfying sexual relationship is very important to a successful marriage.
• Cohabitation is on the rise in the United States. It’s rising quickest among ages 50 and older.
• Fewer previously married women than men remarry. In 2014, 54% of women said they didn’t want to remarry.
• In 2015, 17% of newlyweds were married to someone of a different race or ethnicity. In 1967 it was 3%.
• While many marriages are between people of different religions, this isn’t true for politics. Most (77%) Republicans and Democrats marry someone who shares their political views.

17 Exercises for Positive, Fulfilling Relationships

Empower others with the skills to cultivate fulfilling, rewarding relationships and enhance their social wellbeing with these 17 Positive Relationships Exercises [PDF].

Created by experts. 100% Science-based.

We’ve all met couples who seem incompatible. For some of these couples it seems that opposites attract, but for many more, opposition leads to constant conflict.

Compatibility isn’t simply what we have in common on the surface. It’s also the values, beliefs, and personality traits we share.

What makes us more or less compatible? How important is it anyway? Most couples fight about money, sex, and kids if they have them. Gottman says compatibility comes down to how the relationship supports your life’s mission. He believes we must connect emotionally and be responsive to each other’s bids for attention (Estroff Marano & Flora, 2004).

The dating website and matchmaking service eHarmony (n.d.) asserts that there are 32 compatibility areas. Some of them are:

• How you reason and make decisions
• Feelings about gender roles
• Level of introversion/extraversion
• Adaptability
• How you deal with frustration
• How you communicate

People married 7-10 years who met through eHarmony have a 3.86% divorce rate (Cacioppo et al., 2013). People who met online have “slightly higher marital satisfaction and lower rates of marital breakup than meeting a spouse through traditional (off-line) venues” (Cacioppo et al., 2013, p. 10139). Online services broaden your dating pool. This leads to an increased opportunity of finding a compatible partner.

Two key ingredients to the success of incompatible couples are generosity and adaptability. Become more generous with your time, attention and words. Understand that like you might be changing, your partner can, too.

Here’s how Warren explains compatibility.

If you’re curious about how compatible you and your partner are, and you didn’t meet through eHarmony, check out Instant Chemistry . They developed a DNA-based test to determine your compatibility with your partner.

The test covers three areas: biocompatibility, neuro-compatibility, and psychological compatibility. You spit into a tube, send it to their lab, and log into their site for a psychological assessment and your results.

If you’ve never investigated the VIA ‘s character strengths, you might find it helpful. You’ll discover your top five “go-to” strengths. There are 24 in all, and everyone uses each one to varying degrees. Humor is one of them. Since I’m learning to flex it more often, I’ll end with this :

Q: Why is marriage like a nice suit?

A: At first it’s a perfect fit, but after a while you need alterations.

Adaptability, flexibility, humor, and commitment do wonders for relationship building.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Positive Relationships Exercises for free .

• Cacioppo, J. T., Cacioppo, S. Gonzaga, G. C., Ogburn, E. L., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2013). Marital satisfaction and break-ups differ across on-line and off-line meeting venues. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America , 110(25), 10135–10140.
• Chapman, G. (1992). The five love languages: How to express heartfelt commitment to your mate . Northfield Publishing.
• Eaker, E. D., Sullivan, L. M., Kelly-Hayes, M., D’Agostino, R. B., Sr., & Benjamin, E. J. (2007). Marital status, marital strain, and risk of coronary heart disease or total mortality: The Framingham Offspring Study. Psychosomatic Medicine , 69(6), 509–513.
• eHarmony (n.d.). eHarmony’s 32 dimensions of compatibility explained. Retrieved November 29, 2022, from https://www.eharmony.co.uk/tour/tips/32-dimensions-compatibility-explained/.
• Estroff Marano, H., & Flora, C. (2004, September 1). The truth about compatibility. Psychology Today. Retrieved April 10, 2019, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/200409/the-truth-about-compatibility.
• Geiger, A. W., & Livingston, G. (2019, February 13). 8 Facts about love and marriage in America . Pew Research Center. Retrieved November 29, 2022, from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/13/8-facts-about-love-and-marriage/.
• Gottman, J. (n.d.). The 5 types of couples. The Gottman Institute.
• Gottman, J. (2015). The seven principles for making marriage work . Harmony/Rodale.
• Holt-Lunstad, J., Birmingham, W., & Jones, B. Q. (2008). Is there something unique about marriage? The relative impact of marital status, relationship quality, and network social support on ambulatory blood pressure and mental health. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 35 (2), 239-244.
• Nakonezny, P.A., & Denton W. H. (2008). Marital relationships: A social exchange theory perspective. The American Journal of Family Therapy, 36 , p. 402-412.
• Robles, T. F., Slatcher, R. B., Trombello, J. M., & McGinn, M. M. (2014). Marital quality and health: A meta-analysis review. Psychological Bulletin, 140 (1), 140-187.
• Sternberg, R. J. (n.d.). Duplex Theory of Love: Triangular Theory of Love and Theory of Love as a Story. Retrieved April 3, 2019, from http://www.robertjsternberg.com/love
• Waring, E. M. (1988). Enhancing Marital Intimacy Through Facilitating Cognitive Self-Disclosure . New York: Brunner/Mazel.
• Wood, J. (2018 October 5). The United States divorce rate is dropping, thanks to millennials . World Economic Forum. Retrieved April 11, 2019, from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/divorce-united-states-dropping-because-millennials/

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When couples decide to have children, we say that both have to want to have them, or we can’t go forward. Your son who lives with you needs to be launched. He may remain out of an unconscious belief that he needs to protect you, stay by your side, & not abandon you. You may feel you’re abandoning him by encouraging him to leave the nest. His leaving will help everyone.

Loved your article; lots of great information.

My husband is a blamer and a complainer..not about me (at least not most of the time); he complains about my son (age 25, ADHD) who is a working and contributing member to our household. He is bright, loving, and family-oriented. Unfortunately, my husband can only see what my son does not do. Husband comes from a military background. Son is working on launching from home…but financially (as it has become the norm regarding today’s economic scene) it has been prohibitive. I will also mention that my son is mine from a previous relationship. I have been in the relationship for 5 1/2 years and have been totally committed to making things work. Husband seems to always have 1 foot in and 1 foot out. I am a clinical therapist, husband is retired military and is currently employed in the blue-collar industry. We are both older; I am 67, he is 60. I am semi-retired.

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Home > Family, Home, and Social Sciences > Family Life > Marriage and Family Therapy > Theses and Dissertations

Marriage and Family Therapy Theses and Dissertations

Theses/dissertations from 2019 2019.

Attachment and Relationship Quality: A Longitudinal Cross-Lagged Panel Model Examining the Association of Attachment Styles and Relationship Quality in Married Couples , Meagan Cahoon Alder

Coding Rupture Indicators in Couple Therapy (CRICT): An Observational Coding Scheme , AnnaLisa Ward Carr

We Shall Overcome: The Association Between Family of Origin Adversity, Coming to Terms, and Relationship Quality for African Americans , Kylee Marshall

Sri Lankan Widows' Mental Health: Does Type of Spousal Loss Matter? , Katrina Nicole Nelson

The Role of the Autonomic Nervous System in the Relationship Between Emotion Regulation and Conflict Tactics in Couples , Natalie Gold Orr

A Content Analysis of Ethnic Minorities in the Professional Discipline of Clinical Psychology , Pedro L. Perez Aquino

Sleep, Stress, and Sweat: Implications for Client Physiology Prior to Couple Therapy , Christina Michelle Rosa

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

A Content Analysis of the Journal of Adolescent Health: Using Past Literature to Guide Healthcare Research of US Ethnic Minority Adolescents , Kate Amanda Handy

Stress of Trying Daily Therapy Interventions , Emily Kathryn Hansen

U.S. Racial/Ethnic/Cultural Groups in Counseling Psychology Literature: A Content Analysis , Jared Mark Hawkins

Can Attachment Behaviors Moderate the Influence of Conflict Styles on Relationship Quality? , Cameron W. Hee

Therapist Behaviors That Predict the Therapeutic Alliance in Couple Therapy , Bryan C. Kubricht

Insider Perspectives of Mate Selection in Modern Chinese Society , Szu-Yu Lin

The Development of a Reliable Change Index and Cutoff for the SCORE-15 , Cara Ann Nebeker Adams

Difference in Therapeutic Alliance: High-Conflict Co-Parents vs Regular Couples , Andrea Mae Parady

Effects of Exercise on Clinical Couple Interactions , Samantha Karma-Jean Simpson

The Effect of Common Factor Therapist Behaviors on Change in Marital Satisfaction , Li Ping Su

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

Physiological Attunement and Influence in Couples Therapy: Examining the Roots of Therapeutic Presence , Julia Campbell Bernards

Youth Disclosure: Examining Measurement Invariance Across Time and Reporter , Robb E. Clawson

A Pilot Study Examining the Role of Treatment Type and Gender in Cortisol Functioning , Stephanie Young Davis

Longitudinal Relations Between Interparental Conflict and Adolescent Self-Regulation: The Moderating Role of Attachment to Parents , Lisa Tensmeyer Hansen

Cost Outcomes for Major Depressive Disorder and Bipolar Disorder Across Professional License Types and Modalities , Julia H. Jones

The Relationship Between Relational Aggression and Sexual Satisfaction: Investigating the Mediating Role of Attachment Behaviors , Melece Vida Meservy

The Effects of Family Stressors on Depression in Latino Adolescents as Mediated by Interparental Conflict , Jenny Carolina Mondragon

A Longitudinal Examination of Parental Psychological Control and Externalizing Behavior in Adolescents with Adolescent Internalized Shame as a Mediating Variable , Iesha Renee Nuttall

Multiculturalism and Social Work: A Content Analysis of the Past 25 Years of Research , Lauren Christine Smithee

Implicit Family Process Rules Specific to Eating-Disordered Families , Mallory Rebecca Wolfgramm

The Impact of Timing of Pornography Exposure on Mental Health, Life Satisfaction, and Sexual Behavior , Bonnie Young

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

The Relationship Between the Poor Parenting in Childhood and Current Adult Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression: Attachment as a Mediator , Kayla Lynn Burningham

Longitudinal Examination of Observed Family Hostility and Adolescent Anxiety and Depression as Mediated by Adolescent Perspective Taking and Empathic Concern , Trevor Dennis Dahle

The Influence of Client General Anxiety and Attachment Anxiety onAlliance Development in Couple Therapy , Erica Leigh Delgado

U.S. Ethnic Groups in the Journal of Family Psychology : A Content Analysis , Jessica Croft Gilliland

Passion and Sexuality in Committed Relationships , Emilie Iliff

Does Self-Esteem Mediate the Effect of Attachment on Relationship Quality , Alexis Lee

A Content Analysis and Status Report of Adolescent Development Journals: How Are We Doing in terms of Ethnicity and Diversity? , Jason Bernard Lefrandt

The Effect of Marital Therapy on Physical Affection , Tiffany Ann Migdat

Predicting Externalizing Behaviors in Latino Adolescents Using Parenting and EducationalFactors , Sergio Benjamin Pereyra

Pathways to Marriage: Relationship History and Emotional Health as Individual Predictors of Romantic Relationship Formation , Garret Tyler Roundy

Examining the Link Between Exercise and Marital Arguments in Clinical Couples , Bailey Alexandra Selland

Cost-Effectiveness of Psychotherapy and Dementia: A Comparison by Treatment Modality and Healthcare Provider , Megan Ruth Story

Childhood Abuse Types and Adult Relational Violence Mediated by Adult Attachment Behaviors and Romantic Relational Aggression in Couples , Tabitha Nicole Webster

Theses/Dissertations from 2015 2015

The Effects of Marital Attachment and Family-of-Origin Stressors on Body Mass Index , Merle Natasha Bates

Shame, Relational Aggression, and Sexual Satisfaction: A Longitudinal Study , Austin Ray Beck

Parent and Adolescent Attachment and Adolescent Shame and Hope with Psychological Control as a Mediator , Natasha K. Bell

The Relationship Among Male Pornography Use, Attachment, and Aggression in Romantic Relationships , Andrew P. Brown

The Moderating Effect of Attachment Behaviors on the Association Between Video Game Use, Time Together as a Problem, and Relationship Quality , Stella Christine Dobry

Attachment Behaviors as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Disapproval and Relationship Satisfaction , Lauren Drean

Effects of Interparental Conflict on Taiwanese Adolescents’ Depression and Externalizing Problem Behavior: A Longitudinal Study , Chih Han Hsieh

The Cost Effectiveness of Psychotherapy for Treating Adults with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder , Micah LaVar Ingalls

Effects of Positive and Negative Events on Daily Relationship Effect for Clinical Couples: A Daily Diary Study , Kayla Dawn Mennenga

A Longitudinal Study of Therapist Emotion Focused Therapy Interventions Predicting In-Session Positive Couple Behavior , Josh Novak

Facilitative Implicit Rules and Adolescent Emotional Regulation , Lexie Y. Pfeifer

Avoidant Parental and Self Conflict-Resolution Styles and Marital Relationship Self-Regulation: Do Perceived Partner Attachment BehaviorsPlay a Moderating Role? , Erin L. Rackham

Individual Personality and Emotional Readiness Characteristics Associated with Marriage Preparation Outcomes of Perceived Helpfulness and Change , Megan Ann Rogers

Interactions Between Race, Gender, and Income in Relationship Education Outcomes , Andrew K. Thompson

Theses/Dissertations from 2014 2014

Partner Attachment and the Parental Alliance , Ashley B. Bell

A Glimmer of Hope? Assessing Hope as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Parenting and Adolescent Depressive Symptoms , Lisa D. Bishop

Father Influence on Adolescent Sexual Debut , Daniel Joseph Blocker

Stable Conflict Resolution Styles and Commitment: Their Roles in Marital Relationship Self-Regulation , Rebecca Suzanne Boyd

Me, You, and Porn: A Common-Fate Analysis of Pornography Use and Sexual Satisfaction Among Married Couples , Cameron C. Brown

The Relationship Between Partner Perceptions of Marital Power and Sexual Satisfaction as Mediated by Observed Hostile Interaction , Amanda Claire Christenson

The Impact of Parentification on Depression Moderated by Self-Care: A Multiple Group Analysis by Gender for South Korea and the U.S. , Sunnie Giles

Romantic Relational Aggression in Parents and Adolescent Child Outcomes , Jennifer Nicole Hawkley

Cost-Effectiveness of Treating Oppositional Defiant Disorder: A Comparison by Treatment Modality and Mental Health Provider Type , Julie Denise Malloy

Constructive vs. Destructive Anger: A Model and Three Pathways for the Expression of Anger , Kierea Chanelle Meloy

Treatment Outcomes for Mood Disorders with Concurrent Partner Relational Distress: A Comparison by Treatment Modality and Profession , Holly Pack

Cost Effectiveness of Treating Generalized Anxiety Disorder in Adolescence: A Comparison by Provider Type and Therapy Modality , Kathryn Evelyn Reynolds

Commitment, Forgiveness, and Relationship Self-Regulation: An Actor-Partner Interdependence Model , Heather Michele Smith

A Comparison of Contemporary Filial Piety in Rural and Non-Rural China and Taiwan , Li Ping Su

A Dyadic Analysis of Couple Attachment Behaviors as Predictors of Dietary Habits and Physical Activity Levels , Stephanie Young

Theses/Dissertations from 2013 2013

Cost-Effectiveness of Treating Pervasive Developmental Disorders: A Comparison by Treatment Modality , Jaime Elizabeth Ballard

Couples' Experience of Attachment-Related Change in Context of Couple-Centered, Enactment-Based Therapy Process and Therapist-Centered Therapy Process: A Qualitative Study , James Waid Ballard

Links between High Economic Distress and School Engagement as Mediated through Negative Marital Interaction and Parental Involvement , Lauren Alyssa Bone Barnes

The Relationship Between Frequency of Incest and Relational Outcomes with Family-of-Origin Characteristics as a Potential Moderating Variable , Kathleen Diane Baxter

Parental Involvement, Parent-Child Warmth and School Engagement as Mediated by Self-Regulation , Jeffrey James Bentley

The Effect of Attachment on the Therapeutic Alliance in Couples Therapy , Shawn A. Bills

Intrinsic Religiosity and Adolescent Depression and Anxiety: The Mediating Role of Components of Self-Regulation , Brent Charles Black

The Relationship Between Romantic Relationship Initiation Processes of Single LDS Emerging Adults and Change in Attachment Working Models with Implications for Practice , Matthew Lloyd Call

Attachment and Covert Relational Aggression in Marriagewith Shame as a Potential Moderating Variable: A Two Wave Panel Study , Charity Elaine Clifford

Family Implicit Rules, Shame, and Adolescent Prosocial and Antisocial Behaviors , Jeffrey Paul Crane

Infidelity and Forgiveness: Therapists' Views on Reconciliation and Restoration of Trust Following Disclosure of Infidelity , Miranda Mae Goldie

Power of Shame: The Moderating Effects of Parental and Peer Connection on the Relationship Between Adolescent Shame and Depression, Self-Esteem, and Hope , Alexander L. Hsieh

Couple Attachment and Sexual Desire Discrepancy: A Longitudinal Study of Non-Clinical Married Couples at Mid-Life , Anthony Allen Hughes

Factors Relating to Romantic Relationship Experiences for Emerging Adults , Sabra Elyse Johnson

Attachment Behaviors as Mediators Between Family-of-Origin Quality and Couple Communication Quality in Marriage: Implications for Couples Therapy , Darin Justin Knapp

Division of Labor and Marital Satisfaction in China and Taiwan , Bryan C. Kubricht

Stability and Change in Women's Personality Across the Life Course , Carly D. LeBaron

The Cost Effectiveness of Collaborative Mental Health Services In Outpatient Psychotherapy Care , Ashley Ann Maag

The Relationship Between Insecure Attachment and Premarital Sexual Timing , Carly Ostler

A Longitudinal View of the Association Between Therapist Behaviors and Couples' In-Session Process: An Observational Pilot Study of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy , Lori Kay Schade

Conflict Resolution Styles as Mediators of Female Childhood Sexual Abuse Experience and Couple Relationship Satisfaction and Stability in Adulthood , Ashlee Elizabeth Sloan

The Relationship Between Video Game Use and Couple Attachment Behaviors in Committed Romantic Relationships , Jamie McClellan Smith

Psychological Control, Parental Support, Adolescent Grades and School Engagement , David Brian Thompson

Shame Not the Same for Different Styles of Blame: Shame as a Mediating Variable for Severity of Childhood Sexual Abuse and Trauma Symptoms in Three Attribution of Blame Groups , Tabitha Nicole Webster

Theses/Dissertations from 2012 2012

The Mediating Influence of Child Self-Regulation on the Relationship Between Couple Attachment Security in Parents and Anxiety in Their Children , David P. Adamusko

Couple Communication as a Mediator Between Work-Family Conflict and Marital Satisfaction , Sarah J. Carroll

The Role of Trait Forgiveness in Moderating the Relationship between Materialism and Relationship Instability in Couples , Lance J. Dome

Relationship Between Observed Parental Optimism and Adolescent Optimism with Parental Involvement as a Mediating Variable: Two Wave Panel Study , Allison Ellsworth

Mental Health Treatment for Children and Adolescents: Cost Effectiveness, Dropout, and Recidivism by Presenting Diagnosis and Therapy Modality , David Fawcett

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Why Divorce Rates Can Spike in Spring

Tax season is also divorce season. here's why..

Posted April 14, 2024 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

• The Challenges of Divorce
• Find a therapist to heal from a divorce

While you might assume that Spring–the season associated with new beginnings–is the time of year when couples are most likely to renew their commitment to marriage , research shows the opposite is true. Divorce rates spike in the spring and then again in late summer, according to research by the University of Washington.

What's the relationship between longer days, warmer weather, and the end of relationships? Several factors may link this time of year to the statistical uptick in divorce.

Spring Feels More Socially Appropriate for Divorce

It’s likely that individuals are thinking about divorce long before they file. But it may seem inappropriate to file for divorce during the winter holidays. And individual may also want to “get through one more Christmas” before dissolving the marriage, perhaps for the sake of the children or to not create any extra distress during that time of year.

And it may also feel wrong to file for divorce around Valentine's Day, since it's supposed to be a romantic time of year. But once the winter holidays are over, some people might feel like it's finally the right time to get things in order and file for divorce.

There's another spike in divorce in late August, and researchers think this spike may occur for same reason: timing. Once a family's summer vacation has ended and the school year is about to begin, a couple may feel like it's the socially appropriate time to file for divorce.

Finances Create Increased Financial Strain

Invariably, the holiday season, a period of social and familial pressure, ends with its own set of stressors, often financial. For some couples, the festive cheer becomes a cruel reminder of their strained budgets. As the bills roll in during the new year, tensions may be amplified.

Financial strain is a common reason for divorce. And the credit card bills and added debt stemming from the holidays may lead to disagreements and disappointment that hasten a split.

It’s also not a coincidence that tax season coincides with divorce season. For practical reasons, many couples postpone divorce proceedings until after the New Year, so they can keep taxes for the preceding year simple.

Filing taxes also gives people a clearer view of their financial picture. The hopeful promise of tax returns and the practicality of financial planning come head-to-head with the decision to separate, making this a strategic time to do so, particularly for those with children or significant assets.

Spring Brings New Energy

The months leading up to spring are not only dark and cold, but they can also be emotionally trying. Reduced daylight triggers Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) in many individuals, which can exacerbate any underlying symptoms of depression or lead to new mental health symptoms

As the calendar turns to March and daylight savings time begins, many people experience increased energy and motivation . As they feel better, they may feel inspired to create change, which may involve ending a relationship, moving to a new city, or making a career shift.

How to Keep Your Relationship Healthy

Keeping a relationship healthy requires more than just weekly date nights and using each other’s presumed love language—and you're not off the hook if you keep your marriage going through the spring. As I share in my book, 13 Things Mentally Strong Couples Don’t Do , it’s equally important to avoid the unhealthy habits that can tear couples apart at any time of the year.

If you have concerns about your relationship or fear you may be headed for divorce, seek professional help. You don't have to wait until your relationship is broken to talk to a therapist. You also don't need to wait for your partner to agree to couples therapy . If your partner isn't interested in getting help, talk to someone yourself. Often, one person can make a huge difference in a relationship.

To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory .

University of Washington: Is divorce seasonal? UW research shows biannual spike in divorce filings.

Amy Morin, LCSW, is a licensed clinical social worker, psychotherapist, and the author of 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do .

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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 ten years has undermined three assumptions that were formerly accepted as conventional wisdom. First, research exploiting methods like 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 last ten 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.

Despite what you may have heard, the institution of marriage is alive and well. It is true that marriage is no longer a requirement for social acceptance and advancement ( Cherlin, 2004 ). It is also true that more of the population of the United States is currently unmarried than ever before ( United States Census Bureau, 2017 ), because people have been cohabiting more frequently ( Rosenfeld & Roesler, 2019 ), entering marriage later ( Kreider & Ellis, 2011 ), and yet divorcing at similar rates ( Cohen, 2016 ). Notwithstanding these trends, however, the vast majority of people across levels of socioeconomic status still aspire to marry ( Kuo & Raley, 2016 ; McDonald, Pini, Bailey, & Price, 2011 ), and well over 90% of people do marry at some point in their lives ( Kiersz, 2017 ; Yau, 2015 ).

The persistence of marriage makes sense considering that the intimate relationship enshrined by marriage continues to be vital to well-being. When marriages are stable and fulfilling, spouses are healthier ( Robles, Slatcher, Trombello, & McGinn, 2014 ), happier ( Be, Whisman, & Uebelacker, 2013 ), and live longer ( Whisman, Gilmour, & Salinger, 2018 ); when the relationship falters, other pillars of well-being are also at risk ( Holt-Lunstad, Smith, Baker, Harris, & Stephenson, 2015 ). The evidence is stronger than ever that the critical driver of these effects is the quality and longevity of the connection between the partners ( Musick & Bumpass, 2012 ). Spouses themselves understand this: across the socioeconomic spectrum, people do not merely want to get married, they want to marry someone they love, and to remain in love together for the rest of their lives ( Geiger & Livingston, 2019 ; Kefalas, Furstenberg, Carr, & Napolitano, 2011 ; Trail & Karney, 2012 ; Van Hooff, 2013 ).

Yet, as the goals and benefits of a happy marriage endure, so do the challenges, reflected in the fact that nearly 50% of first marriages will end in divorce ( Kreider & Ellis, 2011 ). How do people sustain close intimate connections within marriage over time? Why is this so difficult for so many well-intentioned couples? When we first reviewed the accumulated literature addressing these questions twenty-five years ago ( Karney & Bradbury, 1995 ), research on how marriages remain stable or change over time was relatively young, and methods for addressing change were still being developed. The subsequent decades have seen an explosion of research and the blossoming of new methods for conducting that research. In this review, we focus on efforts within the last ten years to account for stability and change in marriage, in hopes of setting the stage for the decade ahead. Further, because the bulk of research on marriage continues to focus on different-sex couples (despite the legalization of same-sex marriage halfway through the decade), this review will likewise focus primarily on research on different-sex couples. Yet even within those restrictions, we cannot do justice to the breadth and depth of contemporary research on the determinants of marital quality and stability (for recent reviews that complement this one, see Finkel, Simpson, & Eastwick, 2017 ; McNulty, 2016 ; Proulx, Ermer, & Kanter, 2017 ; Robles et al., 2014 ). Instead, our current goal is more narrow: to identify specific areas where research over the last ten years has overturned, or at least called into question, long-standing and widely-held ideas about marital quality and stability. In particular, this review will focus on how the research of the last decade has undermined previous assumptions about how marriages change, how that change comes about, and to what extent our conclusions about these issues generalize across populations.

Trajectories of Marital Satisfaction: Most Couples Don’t Decline Much

No one marries intending to get divorced. The frequency of divorce therefore suggests that the initial connection and optimism that characterizes spouses on their wedding day is hard for many couples to maintain. Indeed, one of the most consistent results in longitudinal research on marriage is that, on average, marital satisfaction declines significantly over time (e.g., Kurdek, 1999 ; Umberson, Williams, Powers, Chen, & Campbell, 2005 ). This dispiriting pattern, which has been described as a “typical honeymoon then years of blandness” ( Aron, Norman, Aron, & Lewandowski, 2002 , p. 182), is as close to a truism as exists in marital research: marital satisfaction declines on average in nearly every longitudinal study of marriage ever conducted, and in newer and older marriages alike ( VanLaningham, Johnson, & Amato, 2001 ). Given that couples uniformly wish to preserve their initial happiness, the ubiquity of these declines is the mystery that most longitudinal studies of marriage are designed to explain.

Empirical Advances

Over the last decade, an accumulating body of research indicates that this truism may not be as true as previously thought. The insight guiding this new work is that emphasizing the average trend in marital satisfaction has masked theoretically interesting variability across people. Even the more sophisticated approaches to addressing multiwave longitudinal data on marriage (e.g., growth curve modeling; T. E. Duncan, Duncan, & Strycker, 2013 ) estimate average parameters of change (i.e., intercepts and slopes of marital satisfaction over time), and then use other predictors to account for variability around those average parameters. In contrast, alternative approaches to analyzing longitudinal data treat the variability itself as something worth describing in detail. Whereas procedures like growth curve modeling are variable-centered, the newer approaches are person-centered, seeking to identify distinct groups or clusters of people that are more similar to each other than to members of other groups ( Jobe-Shields, Andrews, Parra, & Williams, 2015 ). Techniques like semi-parametric mixture modeling ( Nagin, 1999 ) and latent class growth analysis ( Jung & Wickrama, 2008 ) are among several allowing researchers to move beyond characterizing average trajectories toward describing different types of trajectories more or less prevalent within a sample or population.

When these approaches were applied to longitudinal data on marriage for the first time, the existing literature supported the strong prediction that, even if distinct classes of change in marital satisfaction could be identified, most people would fall into groups characterized by varying degrees of decline. That’s not what happened. Analyses of 20 years of data from couples in the Marital Instability over the Life Course study did indeed reveal five distinct classes of change in marital satisfaction, for example, but 67.6% of the sample were grouped into the two classes characterized by insignificant change in marital satisfaction over the entire duration of the study ( Anderson, Van Ryzin, & Doherty, 2010 ). The same year, a study examining four years of data from initially newlywed couples also found five distinct classes of marital satisfaction trajectories ( Lavner & Bradbury, 2010 ). In this study, over 80% of the sample were grouped into classes that experienced insignificant or minimal changes in satisfaction over time. In both studies, the average trajectory was the familiar high beginning followed by gradual decline, but this average turned out to result from the small minority of couples that start with low levels of satisfaction and decline rapidly from there.

Once the techniques to identify them became available, other datasets were also found to contain large groups of couples who experienced negligible changes in marital satisfaction over time. In the Early Years of Marriage project, over 50% of wives and over 90% of husbands experienced insignificant or minimal declines in their marital happiness across the first 16 years of marriage ( Birditt, Hope, Brown, & Orbuch, 2012 ). In one study of German parents followed over four years, high marital adjustment with slopes that did not differ significantly from zero characterized 90% of couples ( Foran, Hahlweg, Kliem, & O’Leary, 2013 ). Additional newlywed studies found that between 60% and 85% of spouses experienced insignificant or minimal declines in their marital satisfaction across intervals ranging from 2.5 to 4 years ( Lavner, Bradbury, & Karney, 2012 ; Lorber, Erlanger, Heyman, & O’Leary, 2014 ).

By the time that Proulx, Ermer, and Canter (2017) reviewed this literature, 14 studies had applied these procedures to longitudinal data on marital satisfaction. Given their diverse samples, study durations, and operationalizations of marital satisfaction, it is not surprising that different studies arrived at different ways of classifying marital satisfaction trajectories. Nonetheless, all of the studies undermined the idea that time spent being married leads to declines in marital satisfaction. Across studies, couples experiencing significant declines tended to be couples undergoing stressful life transitions (e.g., new parents) and couples reporting lower satisfaction initially. Yet the dominant pattern across studies was stability, with the most stability experienced by couples reporting the highest initial satisfaction. In other words, the average trend in marital satisfaction has supported a misleading account of how most spouses experience their marriages. Just as no family has ever had 2.5 children, only a minority of couples actually experience high initial marital satisfaction that declines steadily and significantly over the course of their marriage. Instead, most couples who start their marriage happy stay happy for long periods of time.

Priorities for the Next Decade

This is a drastically different account of our dependent variable than the one that has guided longitudinal research to date, and fully embracing it has several important implications for marital research going forward. First, the fact that it has taken this long to recognize the overall stability of marital satisfaction implies that the field has not devoted sufficient attention to describing how marriages change. The welcome progress of the last ten years continues a decades-long trend toward gathering more detailed data from married couples, moving beyond cross-sectional snapshots to exploit the potential of multiwave longitudinal designs and experience sampling methods (e.g., Walsh, Neff, & Gleason, 2017 ). Psychometrically sound and theoretically coherent instruments for assessing marital satisfaction are in wide use (e.g., Funk & Rogge, 2007 ). Nevertheless, the field continues to lack an empirical foundation to guide many of the most basic decisions about how to assess and describe trajectories of marital satisfaction. How often and over what length of time should marital satisfaction be measured to capture meaningful change? What interval between assessments represents the optimal balance between seeking higher resolution and avoiding respondent burnout? Without data addressing these questions, marital researchers have been left to design their studies guided by convenience alone. Research that examined these issues directly would provide a stronger foundation for the longitudinal studies of the future.

Second, if stability is indeed the modal experience in marriage, then by the time a couple gets married, many of the factors that ultimately determine the trajectory of the relationship may already be in place. Where couples start, in other words, appears to reveal a lot about where they will end up ( Lavner et al., 2012 ). And yet, because research on marriage begins with couples who are already married, we know very little about relationship satisfaction across the transition into marriage. Collecting data from couples prior to marriage, and even prior to their engagement, holds great promise for illuminating the paths into marriage that result in more or less satisfied newlyweds.

Third, if couples can be reliably distinguished by the trajectory of their marital satisfaction, then it is time to consider the entire trajectory more precisely. The availability of latent class approaches to analyzing trajectories does not preclude the refinement of variable-centered approaches like growth curve modelling; the two approaches are complementary. To date, growth curve analyses of marital trajectories have almost exclusively estimated levels of marital satisfaction (intercepts) and rates of linear change (slopes), often limited by the availability of relatively few longitudinal assessments. Yet longitudinal changes can be described with many more parameters (see Butler, 2011 for a discussion). For example, with sufficient longutudinal assessments, researchers can estimate not only linear change but curvilinear change, i.e., changes that accelerate or decelerate over time. Even among couples with flat linear slopes, fluctuations around the trend line may reveal hidden turbulence. A starting point for refining theories of marriage would be to develop distinct hypotheses about each of these parameters (see Eastwick, Finkel, & Simpson, 2019 , for a perspective that moves relationship research in this direction). Time-invariant variables, such as spouses’ personalities and personal histories, may be more strongly associated with levels of satisfaction, whereas time-varying variables, such as couples’ communication and experiences of acute stress, may more strongly account for rates of change and fluctuations in satisfaction over time. In this way, greater precision about our dependent variable highlights directions for developing more precise theory about the effects of our independent variables. To the extent that the results of latent class analyses depend on the variables are entered into the analysis, a more refined assessment of the individual trajectories might lead to different latent classes of trajectories as well.

Fourth, the observation that marital satisfaction remains stable for most couples raises pressing questions about the decision to divorce. For many decades, classical marital research has assumed that deteriorating marital satisfaction is the most proximal reason why marriages dissolve ( Gottman & Levenson, 1992 ; Lewis & Spanier, 1982 ). Research adopting the latent class approach confirms that couples in which marital satisfaction declines most steeply are indeed much more likely to divorce. Yet these studies also report that couples in stably happy marriages divorce at non-negligble rates (e.g., 14% over ten years, Lavner & Bradbury, 2010 ), similar to earlier work on national datasets that observed substantial numbers of couples divorcing without preceding signs of marital distress ( Amato & Hohmann-Marriott, 2007 ). One possible explanation for such results is that long intervals between assessments in longitudinal studies fail to measure declines in satisfaction that are in fact occurring shortly before couples make the decision to dissolve. A second possibility is that the explicit measures used in most research on marital satisfaction are not sensitive to changes in spouses’ experience. As McNulty and his colleagues have demonstrated in the last decade ( McNulty & Olson, 2015 ; McNulty, Olson, Meltzer, & Shaffer, 2013 ), automatic attitudes toward the marriage assessed with the Implicit Associations Test can predict later marital outcomes even when standard self-report measures cannot. Still a third possibility is that some couples may be motivated to end their marriages even when they are relatively satisfied. For example, as social exchange perspectives have long argued (e.g., Levinger, 1976 ), couples who hold each other in high esteem may still dissolve if they: a) experience few barriers to leaving the relationship, or b) perceive superior alternatives outside of the relationship. Evaluating the evidence for these diverse possibilities will require higher-resolution assessments of the dynamics of this highly significant life transition.

Finally, the relatively high degree of stability that characterizes most marriages has implications for interventions that are devised to prevent relationship distress. Psychoeducational programs for couples have proliferated over the past decade, under the assumption that the average relationship will gradually decline in quality, and with the goal of maintaining the high degree of satisfaction that couples report early in marriage (for a review, see Bradbury & Bodenmann, in press ). These initiatives, while well-intentioned, may be misguided to the extent that they are focusing on unselected couples from the general population. Many of these couples will not experience a decline in relationship satisfaction even in the absence of intervention, rendering primary prevention strategies inert and diverting resources away from the subpopulation of couples who will experience relationship distress and perhaps dissolution. Thus secondary prevention—in this case, disseminating interventions specifically to couples who display early indications of risk for distress, whether by virtue of their personal, interpersonal, or environmental vulnerabilities—holds greater potential for promoting healthy marriage (e.g., Barton et al., 2018 ; also see Heyman et al., 2019 ).

Marital Interaction: Poor Communication May Not Cause Distress

In 1974, Raush and colleagues argued that self-report methods were inadequate for understanding marital communication and, as a consequence, “theories about interaction between intimates are neither sufficiently firm nor sufficiently specific at present to provide us with other than rough lines of guidance” ( Raush, Barry, Hertel, & Swain, 1974 , p. 4). Raush et al.’s admonition to observe couples directly has since produced rich insights into couples’ overt patterns of behavioral interdependence (for a critical review, see Heyman, 2001 ). Five decades later, clarifying the interpersonal behaviors that support healthy relationships remains a crucial task for several reasons. First, prominent models emphasize couple interaction as a fundamental source of the many advantages associated with marriage (e.g., health and well-being for adults and children). Second, research-based efforts to treat and prevent marital distress are enhanced by understanding basic processes of communication. Third, the uptake of social policies intended to benefit families likely pivots on how well they disrupt or enable relationship-promoting patterns of behavior. Yet despite persisting as a vibrant topic of inquiry for family scholars, fundamental questions remain about the nature of ‘interaction between intimates.’ Indeed, empirical findings reported in just this past decade offer a fresh perspective on three enduring assumptions about couple communication.

Perhaps the most basic assumption underlying research on marital interaction is that specific behaviors, and specific patterns of interaction, reliably predict relationship distress and dissolution for most couples (e.g., Jacobson & Margolin, 1979 ). Early success at differentiating satisfied from distressed couples cross-sectionally held out promise that a distinct behavioral profile might characterize at-risk couples, as evidenced by distressed couples’ higher rates of negative behaviors, heightened reactivity to and reciprocation of negative behaviors, and sustained cycles of negativity (e.g., Margolin & Wampold, 1981 ; see Woodin, 2011 for a review), particularly during problem-solving conversations. In longitudinal studies, however, these same behavioral patterns have not emerged consistently as predictors of declines in relationship satisfaction (for a review, see Bradbury & Lavner, 2012 ). One possible explanation for the inconsistent findings is that the behavioral differences identified in cross-sectional studies may be a consequence rather than a cause of relationship distress. Another possibility is that the behaviors displayed by clinically distressed couples provide a misleading starting point for understanding how well-functioning relationships are maintained and how they change.

Counter-intuitive longitudinal findings that might have been dismissed as statistical artifacts in prior decades have emerged ever more frequently in the past decade, casting doubt on the assumption that positive exchanges are uniformly good for relationships, and that negative exchanges are uniformly costly. For example, observed positive communication early in marriage does not routinely predict levels of marital adjustment or declines over time, while observed negative communication early in marriage sometimes predicts slower declines in satisfaction ( Markman, Rhoades, Stanley, Ragan, & Whitton, 2010 ). Studies also show that negative communication strategies can be beneficial to relationships over the longer term (despite being perceived by partners as unsuccessful in the short term; Overall, Fletcher, Simpson, & Sibley, 2009 ), with negative thoughts and behaviors proving to benefit couples with more frequent and more severe problems ( McNulty, 2010 ; McNulty & Russell, 2010 ). When repeated assessments of couple behavior and relationship satisfaction are conducted, predictive effects in either direction tend to be weak, and higher levels of satisfaction predict improvements in observed communication more consistently over 27 months than communication predicts improved satisfaction ( Lavner, Karney, & Bradbury, 2016 ). While more extreme forms of negative behavior, such as verbal hostility and physical aggression, tend to show expected effects on relationship satisfaction and dissolution (e.g., Hammett, Karney, & Bradbury, 2018 ; Shortt, Capaldi, Kim, & Laurent, 2013 ), behaviors coded during more ordinary conversations appear to have a more complex and uncertain association with relationship outcomes over time. In sum, cross-sectional characterizations of distressed versus satisfied couples has proven to be easier to achieve than identification of behavioral antecedents of relationship distress, and longstanding assumptions about the predictive effects of positive and negative exchanges on relationship satisfaction have proven to be difficult to corroborate.

A second guiding assumption, following closely upon the first, is that couples can learn to improve their communication behaviors. At the foundation of virtually all preventive and tertiary interventions for couples, this premise has been subjected to numerous randomized controlled tests. Relying heavily on data from well-educated, middle-class samples, an earlier meta-analysis of interventions aimed at preventing relationship distress and dissolution indicated that group-based educational programs did produce intended changes in observed couple communication ( Blanchard, Hawkins, Baldwin, & Fawcett, 2009 ). At the same time, a large-scale multisite government effort to extend communication-based interventions to couples living with lower incomes, known as the Strengthening Healthy Marriages initiative, yielded negligible improvements overall in observed communication, relative to couples receiving no intervention, despite intensive training ( Lundquist et al., 2014 ). Further analyses of these data showed that interventions improved effectiveness and reduced negativity (but failed to increase positivity) only among couples who were at risk by virtue of their younger age at marriage, lower incomes, and fewer years of formal education ( Williamson, Altman, Hsueh, & Bradbury, 2016 ). Thus improvements in communication are certainly possible, though questions remain about the durability and display of learned skills outside the context of formal observational assessments.

When distressed couples participate in empirically-supported forms of therapy, and thus are presumably motivated to grapple with and repair interpersonal deficits, a different understanding of couple communication emerges: from pre-treatment to two years following completion of treatment, observed rates of negativity and withdrawal decline by nearly half, but rates of unilateral positivity decline as well, to levels below those observed prior to the start of treatment ( Baucom, Sevier, Eldridge, Doss, & Christensen, 2011 ). Whereas conventional behavioral models held that well-functioning marriages were characterized by less negativity and more positivity, some scholars now argue that positivity during problem-solving discussions can sometimes reflect avoidance and a reluctance to engage difficult issues. As Baucom et al. (2011) elaborate, “If one partner is upset with the other it is not necessarily helpful to hide these feelings and exclusively express positivity …. Although researchers often make assumptions about the functions of these behaviors, these assumptions are based solely on the topography of the behavior rather than the functional role they actually play in the relationship” (p. 575). In short, with sufficient resources and motivation it does appear that couples can improve their communication, yet the nature of those improvements may well depend upon the quality of the relationship, the specific problem at hand, and both partners’ ability to balance their individual needs with the needs of the larger partnership (see also Baucom, Baucom, & Christensen, 2015 ). More critically, by essentially requiring couples to discuss relationship problems, standard observational paradigms likely fail to sample how couples naturally engage or avoid potentially divisive issues, and therefore may not provide all of the information needed to understand how communcation changes.

A third major assumption in observational studies of couple interaction is that improved communication, once achieved, will enhance the quality and stability of the relationship. Once again, experimental tests of interventions, and the distinction between preventive and therapeutic interventions, prove to be informative. In the aforementioned Strengthening Healthy Marriages project, the small effects that the communication-based interventions produced on relationship satisfaction 18 months later were not mediated by observed communication ( Williamson et al., 2016 ). This indicates that learning to communicate more effectively and with less negativity does not necessarily translate into better functioning relationships and, conversely, that relationships can improve without overt improvements in communication (cf. Barton et al., 2017 ; Cordova et al., 2014 ). Indeed, a brief intervention focused only on enhancing relationship awareness, with no emphasis on skills training, performed as well as 15-hour intensive skill-based workshops, possibly because heavy emphasis on behavioral skills can inadvertently sensitize couples to shortcomings in their communication ( Rogge, Cobb, Lawrence, Johnson, & Bradbury, 2013 ).

Other work reveals interesting disjunctions and continuities between behavior change and changes in satisfaction. According to the largest and longest couple therapy outcome study undertaken to date, changes in observed positivity and negativity from before to after couples therapy are entirely unrelated to spouses’ reports of relationship quality and stability two years later ( Baucom et al., 2011 ). Thus, while empirically-supported couples therapy can change the communication behaviors long emphasized in interpersonal models of marriage, at least some of these changes may have little bearing on subsequent perceptions of the relationship. Observed pre-to-post treatment increases in problem-solving, and decreases in withdrawal, however, do predict better relationships over this span ( Baucom et al., 2011 ). Thus, at least for couples in an acute state of distress, acknowledging and addressing specific deficits or shortcomings in a relationship can enhance evaluations of the relationship, and apparently more so than reductions in negative behavior.

This past decade has witnessed notable progress toward clarifying how communication between spouses is associated with their evaluations of their relationship. Research on couple interaction appears to be in a transitional stage—yielding too few clear empirical results to justify complete adherence to what has been an unusually generative set of models and paradigms, while still casting about for concepts and tools that promise novel insights into how couples conduct their intimate lives. Marked heterogeneity in how researchers define and code specific behaviors no doubt underlies some of this confusion, and important steps are being taken to rectify this problem (e.g., Overall & McNulty, 2017 ). However, the critical uncertainties that remain likely reflect theoretical imprecision regarding exactly when and how specific elements of couple communication come to affect judgements of relationship quality and longevity, a problem compounded by reliance on observational paradigms that provide a rich, compelling, but ultimately constrained appreciation for how intimate partners co-create a dynamically complex behavioral repertoire. While we cannot fully anticipate how this transitional stage will be resolved, several of the findings reviewed here point to gaps in knowledge that, if addressed, might advance understanding in the decade ahead.

First, although we have no strong empirical rationale for doubting that behaviors can have rewarding and punishing properties, and that these properties contribute to variability in judgments of marital satisfaction, evidence is accumulating that what makes a specific behavior rewarding or punishing differs across spouses and couples. Behaviors do not ‘speak for themselves,’ in that the effects of specific behaviors on satisfaction likely vary as a function of immediate but unobservable dyadic and relational microcontexts (e.g., power imbalances in the relationship, the severity and controllability of the problem under discussion, the capacity and willingess of partners to change, partners’ commitment to the relationship; see Overall, 2017 ; Overall & McNulty, 2017 ). Careful parsing of potential moderators would shed needed light on when specific classes of behaviors do and do not predict changes in satisfaction.

Second, the temporal dimension of couple interaction, including behavioral sequences and patterns that unfold over time, is growing less visible in the field, depriving us of access to critical features of how partners communicate with each other. As a result we are left with decontextualized behaviors displayed by, and inadvertently attributed to, just one partner, thus grossly oversimplying the emergent and dyadic character of couple interaction ( S. Duncan, Kanki, Mokros, & Fiske, 1984 ). Sequential analysis has proven to be difficult to implement—in part because repeated instances of behavioral sequences are necessary for reliable estimates of those sequences—but this problem can be overcome, e.g., by collecting continous ratings of behavior (e.g., Ross et al., 2017 ), by studying how behaviors unfold over the entire span of conversations (e.g., Kuster et al., 2015 ; Leuchtmann et al., 2019 ), and by undertaking intensive analysis of specific behavioral sequences hypothesized to be critical for problem-solving or relationship maintenance. For example, in a methodologically elegant study, Bloch, Haase and Levenson (2014) focused intensely on how spouses mutually downregulate negative emotions and experiences during a problem-solving conversation, with results suggesting that ineffective attempts to contain negative emotions, moreso than the mere presence of negative affect, are most likely to compromise wives’ relationship satisfaction. Thus it may be premature to abandon the traditional observational paradigm entirely, provided that specific and temporal patterns are the focus of inquiry.

Third, although studies of couple communication now routinely exploit longitudinal data, they are only beginning to adopt a developmental focus, and thus they do not yet address how behavioral exchanges affect other domains of couples’ relationships and, in turn, various relationship outcomes. Observations of newlywed couples do indicate that behaviors displayed in a social support task predict displays of negative emotion during a problem-solving task one year later, whereas the opposite effect is far weaker, and that negative emotions during problem-solving mediate the effects of social support behaviors on satisfaction and dissolution ten years later ( Sullivan, Pasch, Johnson, & Bradbury, 2010 ). Again, the behavioral paradigm appears to be capturing important facets of couple communication, but that information may be of limited value unless we connnect those behaviors with other behavioral domains and other emotionally engaging experiences in couples’ lives. Finer-grained analyses of the sort made possible by intensive and extensive daily studies, when they are embedded in longitudinal designs, are likely necessary for understanding dyadic interdependence in a more complete way (for a review, see Repetti, Reynolds, & Sears, 2015 ). Such an approach would permit greater access to important but fleeting moments in couples’ daily lives, such as how verbal intimacy following sexual intimacy enhances relationships (e.g., Muise, Giang, & Impett, 2014 ), or how couples enter and exit psychologically meaningful moments, including the specific sorts of exchanges that make it more or less likely for partners to devote time to the relationship or to avoid one another following conflict.

We conclude here by raising the possibility that long-standing efforts to identify and alter specific patterns of behavior, however they might be assessed, are framing the problem incorrectly. In addition to considering the unconditional main effects of couple interaction on couple outcomes (which, as we have seen, may be somewhat elusive), it may be fruitful to conceptualize dyadic processes primarily as the means by which events arising outside a relationship come to affect relationship appraisals. Thus, a couple with ostensibly poorer communication could have a better relationship than an otherwise identical couple with better communication, if fewer outside demands were placed on the quality of their communciation or if they were especially good at rising to these demands (e.g., providing symmpathy to an upset partner, or teaming up in the face of an unexpected event such as a sick child or job loss). Stress, and partners’ perceptions of one another’s stress, may influence whether specific behaviors are registered as aversive, suggesting that continued efforts to join behavioral analyses with an appreciation of the stressors that couples face (e.g., Bodenmann et al., 2015 ; Kuhn, Bradbury, Nussbeck, & Bodenmann, 2018 ; Neff & Broady, 2011 ) may go far in providing the theoretical specificity that Raush and colleages were seeking five decades ago.

Do Conclusions about Marriage Generalize? Income as a Moderator

Twenty-five years ago, the vast majority of research on marriage had been conducted on samples composed primarily of middle-class, college-educated, mostly white couples ( Karney & Bradbury, 1995 ). In the intervening years, the profile of the typical sample in marital research has expanded, but samples of convenience continue to dominate, reflecting a widespread assumption about the dynamics of marriage: that what is true for the narrow slice of couples that have been studied extensively is likely to be true for the more diverse couples that lie outside the sampling frame of most studies.

Over the past decade, this assumption has been questioned by burgeoning lines of research on Hispanic marriages (e.g., Orengo-Aguayo, 2015 ), African American marriages (e.g., Cutrona, Russell, Burzette, Wesner, & Bryant, 2011 ; Stanik, McHale, & Crouter, 2013 ), and most recently same-sex marriages (e.g., Chen & van Ours, 2018 ), to mention only a few dimensions of diversity that the field has explored. To illustrate the consequences of broader sampling for deepening our understanding of marriage, we devote this section to reviewing one dimension of diversity that was examined at length over the past ten years: income.

The possibility that marital process may vary at different levels of income is worth highlighting because, a decade ago, this possibility was distinctly overlooked. When the federal government launched the Healthy Marriage Initiative (HMI) in the early 2000s, the goal of the program was to promote stronger, more stable relationships among lower-income couples ( Office of Family Assistance, 2012 ). Yet at the time data on the relationships of lower-income couples were scarce. Nevertheless, the development and implementation of skills-based relationship education programs proceeded apace, guided by the assumption that the conclusions of prior research on relationship processes among relatively affluent, mostly white couples would generalize to the lower-income, more diverse communities targeted by the new initiative. Within the past decade, the results of nationwide, multisite, longitudinal evaluations of these programs were released, and they were not encouraging. Despite their great cost and the sincere efforts of well-intentioned administrators and educators across the country, the impact of relationship education on the well-being and stability of lower-income couples proved to be negligible ( Lundquist et al., 2014 ; Wood, Moore, Clarkwest, & Killewald, 2014 ). Abandoning the assumption that the foundations of satisfying and stable marriage are common across income groups, leading observers called for research directly examining how basic processes contributing to successful intimacy may in fact vary among different segments of society ( Johnson, 2012 ; McNulty, 2016 ).

Research heeding this call over the last decade has revealed numerous ways that basic marital processes vary across levels of socioeconomic status. What does not vary is the value of marriage itself. Although rates of marriage are substantially lower in lower-income communities than in more affluent ones, marriage remains a cherished goal across income groups ( Garrett-Peters & Burton, 2015 ; Scott, Schelar, Manlove, & Cui, 2009 ; Trail & Karney, 2012 ). Instead, income groups can be distinguished by the sorts of challenges couples face in attempting to reach that goal. Lower-income couples, like lower-income individuals, report greater mental health problems, higher stress, and, not surprisingly, more financial strain than their higher-income peers ( Maisel & Karney, 2012 ). When asked directly about challenges in their marriages, lower-income couples are more likely to identify finances and substance abuse, rather than communication and household chores, as their most salient sources of conflict ( Jackson et al., 2016 ; Trail & Karney, 2012 ). To the extent that the problems of lower-income couples are more severe, their marital interactions are likely to be more difficult as well ( Williamson, Hanna, Lavner, Bradbury, & Karney, 2013 ). Indeed, Cutrona and her colleagues, drawing upon observer ratings of videotaped interactions between spouses, have shown that couples living in more disadvantaged neighborhoods express less warmth with each other than couples living in higher income neighborhoods ( Cutrona et al., 2003 ).

Do their greater challenges mean that lower-income couples are less satisfied with their relationships than more affluent couples? In fact, lower-income couples are not less satisfied with their relationships on average, despite their higher divorce rates and the more severe difficulties they encounter. Although perceptions of greater financial strain have been consistently associated with lower relationship satisfaction (e.g., Conger & Conger, 2008 ), household income and relationship satisfaction are unrelated ( Hardie & Lucas, 2010 ; Maisel & Karney, 2012 ). Yet poorer couples do experience their marriages differently than wealthier ones. Longitudinal research tracking marital satisfaction across the first years of marriage reveals that, although levels and slopes of marital satisfaction do not differ between more and less wealthy couples, poorer couples report significantly greater variability in their marital satisfaction across time ( Jackson, Krull, Bradbury, & Karney, 2017 ). In other words, lower-income couples experience their relationships as more turbulent than affluent couples, whose greater resources presumably buffer them from stressful events and crises (cf. Henry, Sheffield Morris, & Harrist, 2015 ).

To the extent that income has direct associations with constructs central to influential models of successful marriage, like mental health, stress, marital interaction, and trajectories of marital satisfaction, then the associations among these constructs are likely to vary across levels of income as well. Over the past decade, analyses of diverse samples that directly compare patterns of associations among more or less affluent couples confirm this prediction. For example, analyses of survey data from Florida, Texas, California, and New York reveal that stress and mental health account for significantly more variance in the relationship satisfaction of poorer couples than wealthier ones ( Maisel & Karney, 2012 ). When couples with more access to resources confront stress or struggle with mental health problems, they have options for protecting their relationships (e.g., by paying for assistance or counseling) that poorer couples facing the same challenges do not.

Ross et al. (2019) went further, showing that even basic marital processes considered fundamental to successful marriage can have categorically different implications for more or less affluent couples. Their focus was the demand/withdraw pattern of marital interaction, in which one partner, seeking change, makes a request, while the other, favoring the status quo, deflects or avoids. The ensuing cycle has been consistently associated with declines in marital satisfaction in numerous studies (e.g., Eldridge, Sevier, Jones, Atkins, & Christensen, 2007 ) and across multiple cultures ( Christensen, Eldridge, Catta-Preta, Lim, & Santagata, 2006 ). Yet the negative implications of the demand/withdraw pattern rest on the assumption that, when this pattern arises, the change at issue is possible. What makes the pattern so aversive for both sides is the idea that the partner requesting change can reasonably expect the other partner to give in, and that the partner resisting change could accede to the other partner’s request but chooses not to. But what if the requested change is impossible, as it may be for lower-income couples with less control over their circumstances? A response (withdrawal) that is maladaptive for the middle-class couples that comprise most of the samples in research on marital satisfaction may be be adaptive for lower-income couples with fewer options and resources. Indeed, across two longitudinal studies that included observational assessments of marital interactions, Ross et al. (2019) found that, whereas engaging in the demand/withdraw pattern predicts lower marital satisfaction for wealthier couples, the same pattern predicts more stable marital satisfaction for poorer couples.

Such findings begin to make sense of the failure of programs guided by research on upper-income couples to improve the outcomes of the lower-income couples to which they were targeted: the specific challenges and constraints that confront lower-income couples may moderate or negate the impact of interventions that might be helpful in other circumstances. Analyses of data from the Building Strong Families study, an evaluation of interventions designed to encourage marriage among unmarried lower-income parents, support this perspective. Although the evaluation showed that the programs had no effects on relationship quality or rates of transitioning into marriage ( Wood, McConnell, Moore, Clarkwest, & Hsueh, 2012 ; Wood et al., 2014 ), Williamson et al. (2017) reasoned that programs that included job training and professional education, in addition to relationship education, might have benefitted couples, as these programs targeted the specific problems that lower-income couples name as obstacles to marriage (e.g., Edin & Reed, 2005 ). In fact, programs that included these elements did have unique effects, but in the opposite direction: men who received professional education were less likely to transition into marriage. Further analyses revealed that men receiving additional hours of education from these programs spent less time at home with their children and contributed less money to their households, accounting for their lower marriage rates. Such unexpected findings highlight the need to understand couples’ experiences – the demands they are facing, the constraints on their time and resources, and the particular dynamics that are adaptive or maladaptive in their specific context– before attempting to develop policy or implement interventions to improve their lives.

Although the results of large-scale evaluations of programs aimed at lower-income couples were disappointing, they succeeded in raising crucial questions about how marriages succeed or fail in diverse contexts. By taking up these questions, research on marriage over the past ten years has shed light on ways that macro-level socioeconomic conditions can facilitate, constrain, and even alter marital process previously thought to be fundamentally similar across couples. As federal and local policy-makers continue their efforts to support marriages and families, it is crucial that research on marriage capitalize on the progress of the last decade, partly to continue the process of refining theory and partly to ensure that the next generation of programs has more impact than the previous one. In particular, the studies reviewed here suggest three important recommendations for further developing research on marriage that is sensitive to context.

First, in light of a decade’s worth of research demonstrating how different marriages can be at varying levels of socioeconomic status, a preliminary task for the next decade is for scholars of marriage to be more precise and intentional about sampling. Large-scale studies, usually informed by sociology and demography, generally do an excellent job developing explicit sampling frames and ensuring adequate representation from all levels of income. Smaller-scale studies, usually informed by clinical and social psychology, fare less well, often relying on samples of convenience that overlook harder to reach lower-income and diverse couples. By describing samples in greater detail, and by devoting more effort to sampling couples that vary not only in socioeconomic status but in other relevant dimensions of diversity as well (e.g., race/ethnicity, religion, gender identity), future research on couples will be better able to examine and articulate limits to the generalizability of our findings.

Second, to the extent that socioeconomic contexts affect how couples pursue and maintain intimacy, research on the effects of context and research on dyadic processes within couples can no longer proceed on parallel tracks. On the contrary, research on micro-level cognitions and behaviors must account for the macro-level contexts in which those cognitions and behaviors take place. Prominent scholars are already moving in this direction, combining detailed assessments of partners’ experiences in the relationship with census data on neighborhood conditions ( Bryant et al., 2010 ) and national and local economic indicators ( Murray, Lamarche, & Seery, 2018 ). Detailed self-report interviews that assess couples’ perceptions of the concrete features of their own environments (e.g., Hammen, 2005 ) may be required to identify the proximal contexts that mediate between distal conditions and dyadic processes within couples’ relationships.

Third, in advance of the more refined models to come, the research of recent years already points out novel avenues for intervention with vulnerable couples. In particular, as evidence accumulates that disadvantaged environments can inhibit couples’ ability to interact effectively, policy-makers and scholars may consider exploring interventions that target those environments directly. Whereas relationship-education and skills-based training has proven ineffective at promoting stable unions among lower-income couples, policies that improve the circumstances of those couples, e.g., through poverty reduction, may be more successful at achieving the same ends ( Gassman-Pines & Yoshikawa, 2006 ; Mamun, 2008 ). The promise of local efforts to improve the lives of struggling couples suggests that federal policies also be reviewed for their direct and influence on marriage and families, and some have already called for such analyses to be conducted routinely ( Bogenschneider, 2013 ). The research of the past decade suggests that any program that improves the conditions of couples is likely to improve their relationships; such programs may affect a broad range of couples more efficiently than programs that target individual couples directly.

The last ten years of research on marital satisfaction and stability revealed that long-standing assumptions about marriage are either incomplete, misleading, or wrong. For most couples, satisfaction does not decline over time but in fact remains relatively stable for long periods. Contrary to the 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. Dyadic processes that are reliably adaptive for middle-class and more affluent couples may operate differently in lower-income couples, raising serious questions about how well current models of marriage generalize to couples living in diverse environments. By the end of the decade, then, the assembled research of the last ten years has revealed that the tasks of understanding and promoting marital satisfaction and stability are more complicated than we appreciated at the start of the decade, raising important questions that beg to be answered in the years ahead.

The tools that led to these theoretical refinements will be the tools that continue to move this field forward. Novel approaches to data analysis hold the power to reveal new insights lying buried in current and archival data sets. Well-funded, well-powered, large-scale studies (like the Strengthening Healthy Marriage evaluation) have provided invaluable information, even when the predictions guiding those studies could not be confirmed. Progress in understanding complex, multidetermined processes of marital development require support for additional studies of similar scale and breadth. Finally, as the social psychologist Kurt Lewin (1951) observed, our basic theories of how couples succeed or fail are likely to be refined by continued efforts to develop new and more effective interventions, as doing so requires program developers to be explicit about moderators and mechanisms of their desired effects. Advances on these fronts will deepen understanding of marriage and thereby enable many more couples, regardless of their social standing, to reap the many benefits provided by our closest social bonds.

Acknowledgement:

Preparation of this manuscript was supported by Research Grant HD091832, awarded to the first author by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

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