This investigation examines whether access to social capital reduces the chance that teens will cohabit or have a nonmaritally conceived birth. Using data from a nationally representative panel study of eighth-grade girls and their parents, we hypothesize that girls who have (and whose families have) dense community ties as well as greater access to primary […]

This study developed a marital typology based on a nonrandom, national sample of 415 African-American couples who took the Enriching Relationship Issues, Communication and Happiness (ENRICH) marital assessment inventory. Five types of African-American marriages were indentified through cluster analysis using the positive couple agreement (PCA) scores in 10 relationship domains. (Author abstract).

This qualitative analysis of 50 couples explored how gender equality is related to the construction of motherhood in their day-to-day interactions. Results identified two models of mothering: (a) mothering as a gendered talent and (b) mothering as conscious collaboration. The first model perpetuated gender inequality through a recursive task-relationship cycle between mothers and children. More […]

The papers in this symposium span quite a wide range of issues. Seltzer (2004) and Le Bourdais and Lapierre-Adamcyk (2004) focus on heterosexual cohabitation, the former on the United States and Great Britain, and the latter on Canada. Spurred by the Administration’s Healthy Marriage Initiative in the United States, Huston and Melz (2004) examine the […]

We evaluated 10 college marriage textbooks for their efficacy in teaching the premarital predictors of marital quality identified in the literature. They also were evaluated on their use of an integrative teaching approach that personalizes the content for readers and assists readers in learning, remembering, and using the information in their own lives. Four evaluators […]

During the summer of 2003, Paula Dressel and Carole Thompson, of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, initiated conversations with Robert M. Franklin about the status of marriage promotion in African-American Christian congregations. Franklin is a scholar on the African-American church and a professor at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. They invited Franklin to initiate […]

Data from a longitudinal study were used to examine differences among couples that cohabited before engagement, after engagement, or not until marriage. Survey data and objectively coded couple interaction data were collected for 136 couples (272 individuals) after engagement (but before marriage) and 10 months into marriage. At both time points, the before-engagement cohabiters (59 […]

In 2003, the Annie E. Casey Foundation convened a series of meetings with faith leaders and marriage promotion/education professionals to explore potential areas of collaboration in low-income communities. While the first session was informative, Casey Foundation staff and consultants remained curious about the extent to which the views of participating pastors were representative of theperspectives […]

A growing consensus confirms that divorce and unmarried childbearing generate high costs to children and taxpayers, including higher rates of poverty, welfare dependency, crime, school failure, Medicaid costs, mental illness, and child abuse. Even small reductions in rates of divorce and unmarried childbearing would carry a big payoff for children and for taxpayers. Research suggests […]

Marriage has become a hot topic in Washington policy circles, stimulated in large part by new Congressional proposals to promote “”healthy”” marriages as part of the reauthorization of welfare. A vigorous debate is underway about the role of government in strengthening marriage. This brief, the first in a new series on Couples and Marriage Research […]