Marriages are often characterized by their positive and negative features in terms of whether they elicit feelings of satisfaction and happiness or conflict and negativity. Although research has examined the development of marital happiness, less is known about the development of negativity among married couples. We examined how marital tension…

Objective: This study describes the development and validation of the Sorokin Psychosocial Love Inventory (SPSLI) measuring love actions toward a former spouse. Method: Classical measurement theory and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were utilized with an a priori theory and factor model to validate the SPSLI. Results: A 15-item scale…

Although marital satisfaction starts high and declines for the average newlywed, some spouses may follow qualitatively distinct trajectories. Using 8 self-reports of satisfaction collected over 4 years from 464 newlywed spouses, we identified 5 trajectory groups, including patterns defined by high intercepts and no declines in satisfaction,…

Divorce or separation is one route towards addressing high conflict in marriages and may be a key route out of situations of significant domestic violence for women and children. However, divorce has been associated with feminisation of poverty and other negative outcomes which can be further exacerbated for victimised women. While there has been…

This article replicated and extended Harriet Presser's (2000) investigation of the linkages between nonstandard work and marital instability. We reexplored this question using data from a sample of 2,893 newlywed couples from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) and using different analytic techniques. In contrast to Presser, we found…

This report examines whether the presence of children in marriage differentially influences the risk of wives or husbands initiating separation. The analytic sample consists of 9,118 first marriages from the Households, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey (2001). Using event history and competing risks analysis, I find weak evidence…

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…