This study tested whether a short term, therapeutic intervention could be used to strengthen rural, southern marriages. In a group private practice in South Georgia, twenty-two couples were taught Relationship Enhancement skills in a group format. They were an all clinical sample of distressed couples and were led by experienced male/female co-therapy teams. Statistical analyses […]

In this study we investigate the longitudinal relation between maintenance behaviors and marital satisfaction. Forty married couples completed measures of maintenance behaviors and marital satisfaction at time 1. The couples again completed the measure and marital satisfaction 1 year later. Analyses revealed that the use of maintenance behaviors at Time 1 was related to perceptions […]

Ideas about the nature of marital conflict and approaches to its treatment are conceived within existing clinical theories. As a result, marital conflict is defined in accord with the epistemological assumptions of the clinical framework rather than more far reaching assumptions about the nature of power and conflict. Without a formulation of marital conflict that […]

The purpose of this study is to assess differences between husbands and wives (N = 526 couples at the first assessment) on (a) growth curves over the first 4 years of marriage for psychological distress, marriage-specific appraisals, spousal interactions, social support, and marital satisfaction; (b) the strength of intraspouse links and cross-spouse links involving the […]

From a stress and coping perspective, this qualitative study examined the impact of Hong Kong’s sociocultural context on divorce experience of 35 women. Under the bind of traditional Chinese values and Western ideals, divorce was experienced as a threat to normal life and an oppression leading to economic hardship and a loss of self-identity. However, […]

Studies have suggested that parental divorce has a negative impact on their children’s views of marriage and family life. However, much research has focused upon younger children, and few studies have compared young people from divorced and intact families. This paper reports an in-depth analysis of the views of young people with divorced and still-married […]

This paper uses detailed case analysis to illustrate the intergenerational concepts of loyalty, legacy, and relational stagnation described by Boszormenyi-Nagy in his Contextual Therapy approach. Special emphasis is given to how the therapist assesses the ethical dimension of a couple’s interactions and links this to reported symptoms and relationship difficulties among all family members. (Author […]

Who thinks of divorce and why? Who actually gets a divorce after thinking about it? What is the influence of race in this process? These questions are addressed in this paper. Data from a national sample of the American population are used. The basic findings are as follows. People who are younger are more likely […]

Using data from the General Social Survey (GSS), we examine mean differences in measures of well-being, family attitudes, and socioeconomic status for individuals divorced, remarried, or in a first marriage. We sample individuals first married between 1965 and 1975, of which 48 percent reported being divorced or separated from their spouses. Overall, our comparisons support […]

Family functioning is influenced by socioeconomic status, culture, family structure, and developmental stage, and is assessed primarily using instruments developed for middle-income European American two-parent families. These instruments may not validly assess low-income African American single-parent families. This qualitative study was conducted to provide rich descriptions of families and family functioning in order to inform […]