Elizabeth Hartmann

" It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy – it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others. "-Sense & Sensibility, by Jane Austen. Sex has always been a topic of interest for the popular media where stories of promiscuous young adults and celebrity pregnancies stimulate tabloid sales. Several recent books on " hook ups " have fueled concern with the rapidity with which relationships become have all expressed concern over various aspects of contemporary relationships. Both the public and private sectors have begun to take measure of current relationship trends. Attempts to strengthen healthy relationships and families range from government-sponsored abstinence-only sexual education to relationship skills classes and self-help books like How to Avoid Marrying a Jerk (Van Epp, 2008) and others on the dangers of casual sex (Stepp, 2007). Many of these programs are funded by the Department of Health and Human Services " Health Marriage Initiative, which has a budget of up to $150 million per year (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2006). According to Dr. John Van Epp, a key component to the avoidance of " marrying a jerk " is pacing the relationship to ward off " premature emotional attachment; " the goal of progressing at a moderate pace is to ensure one really knows one " s partner (Van Epp, 2008). However, the research on the tempo of relationship progression is relatively scarce. Furthermore, though many 3 of the programs designed to assist with building healthy relationships are focused on less-advantaged populations, there is little research specifically on low-income couples. As pointed out in the National Marriage Project " s report " Sex without Strings, Relationships without Rings, " almost all research on the young and not-yet-married and their relationships is focused on those who attend college (Whitehead and Popenoe, 2000). This research gap is particularly meaningful because many publicly funded policies concerning healthy relationships are targeted at populations that have yet to be specifically studied. My paper addresses this gap by examining the factors affecting the tempo of low-income couples " relationship progression. Data come from a recently-collected survey, the Marital and Relationship Survey (MARS) that obtained information from 700 low-income couples who were either married or cohabiting. While a growing number of nationally representative surveys now collect the dates …