Assessed marital relationship quality of newlyweds: first-married husbands (N=308), first-married wives (N=290), remarried husbands (N=150), and remarried wives (N=168). Examined liking of partner, trustworthiness of partner, intrinsic reasons for relationship, shared decision making, and global appraisal of relationship. Found no evidence that…

This study examined the link between conflict resolution styles (conflict engagement, withdrawal, and compliance) and each spouse's marital satisfaction for 155 couples. Overall, husbands' marital satisfaction was more frequently affected by how their wives resolved conflicts than wives' marital satisfaction was affected by how their husbands…

Investigated relationship between child age (1-5 years, 6-12 years, and 13-20 years) and both marital quality and psychological distress in 66 mother and stepfather 1-child families. Both mothers' and stepfathers' appraisals of marital quality were unrelated to age level of child. Reports of psychological distress were related to child age level…

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…

Predictors of increases in marital distress in the first 3 years of marriage were identified for 310 couples. Predictors for wives were low income, living with stepchildren, many rewards, few costs, and high emotional investment. Predictors for husbands were few months of living together. For both husbands and wives, few years of education and not…

Estimated parameters of the trajectory of change in marital quality over first 10 years of marriage. Found that both spouses started trajectories of change at fairly high levels of marital quality, with quality declining rapidly in the early years, stabilizing, and then declining again. Individual-differences variables predicted initial status of…