Research on marriage has been dominated by an untested assumption that individualism reigns supreme in marriage. An individualistic perspective of marriage focuses on the benefits that partners derive from the relationship, and views the contributions that partners make to a relationship as investments that will provide a return of satisfaction, intimacy, support, and reward. Professional researchers by and large present the individualistic perspective as a comprehensive and sufficient description of marriage rather than one interpretive framework among many. To the degree that the social science of marriage is focused on the personal satisfaction of the spouses, researchers may find themselves in the problematic position of perpetuating this cultural view of marriage rather than providing a more reflective perspective on it. Moreover, researchers’ insistence that rewards are spouses’ primary motive might actually encourage individuals to operate primarily from self- interest, concerned with maximizing their personal fulfillment bottom line. A potential alternative model is that what one gives in marriage is more important than what one receives in terms of understanding the stability and quality of the relationship. Within this model, character strengths and virtues take center stage. Yet research has paid little attention to these dimensions of marriage. In order to give more attention, measurement tools are needed. We present an initial attempt to measure the construct of marital virtues with a sample of 155 couples transitioning to parenthood. While more work is needed, our pilot test of this instrument should encourage other researchers to include the construct of virtues in their marriage research. And our new measure raises the possibility of comparing the dominant, individualistic rewards model of marriage with a marital- virtues model. (Author abstract).