In this paper, we examine the question of whether religion—affiliation, beliefs, and practice—provides a source of marital strength and stability in the lives of American couples. Unlike most previous studies, we focus on religion and marital quality among 433 lowincome married couples with co-residential minor children, using recently collected survey data on both spouses sampled in the Marita...

To test the social learning-based hypothesis that marital conflict resolution patterns are learned in the family of origin, longitudinal, observational data were used to assess prospective associations between family conflict interaction patterns during adolescence and offspring's later marital conflict interaction patterns. At age 14 years, 47 participants completed an observed family conflict...

The cognitions of 63 couples were examined to explicate the link between marital conflict and depression. Following a laboratory-based marital problem solving discussion, spouses listed cognitions about these discussions and thoughts about the future of their relationship. Cognitions also were assessed using the Automatic Thoughts Questionnaire and Marital Attitude Survey. Self-reported assessm...

Personality and marital satisfaction may help to account for the likelihood of marital infidelity. We hypothesized that people with particularly disagreeable spouses (i.e., those low on Agreeableness) and particularly unreliable spouses (i.e., those low on Conscientiousness) will be less satisfied with their marriage, leading them to estimate a higher probability of becoming extramaritally invo...

This study explored how daily changes in workday pace and end-of-the-workday mood were related to nightly variations in withdrawn and angry marital behavior. For 3 days, 82 husbands and wives from 42 couples completed questionnaires at the end of the workday and at bedtime. More negatively arousing workdays were linked with angrier marital behavior for women and less angry and more withdrawn be...

Building the Family Nest: Pre-Marital Investments, Marriage Markets and Spousal Allocations We develop a model of the household in which spousal incomes are determined by premarital investments, the marriage market is characterized by assortative matching, and endogenously-determined sharing rules form the basis of intra-household allocations. By incorporating pre-marital investments and spousa...

Marriage is the central relationship for most adults and has beneficial effects for health. At the same time, troubled marriages have negative health consequences. This review outlines the physiological pathways through which marital relationships influence health based on a stress/social support model. In addition, we review recent findings suggesting that unhappy marriages are associated with...

An ongoing question remains for family researchers: Why does a positive association between cohabitation and marital dissolution exist when one of the primary reasons to cohabit is to test relationship compatibility? Drawing on recently collected data from the 2006 - 2008 National Survey of Family Growth, the authors examined whether premarital cohabitation experiences were associated with mari...

This study explored a path to marital satisfaction based on attachment theory. For this purpose, a sample of 208 Korean married teachers completed a survey on adult attachment, rumination, empathy, forgiveness, and marital satisfaction. Through structural equation modeling (SEM), a path in which adult attachment leads to marital satisfaction, mediated by dispositional forgiveness, was found. I ...

The relation of marital complaints to family history was examined in a sample of 1,624 psychiatric outpatients. Marital complaints were recognized to be an aspect of a broader "depressive spectrum disorder" with distinctive age, gender, alcohol, and neurotic depressive symptom characteristics; however, holding constant the depressive spectrum characteristics, a specific independent relation of ...