A common claim in the literature is that higher-educated persons are more likely to marry outside their ethnic/racial group than lower-educated persons. We re-examine this "educational gradient" with a multilevel analysis of 46 immigrant groups in the Current Population Survey. We find that there are positive effects not only of individual…

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, a nationally representative cohort of young adults, the authors analyzed relationship type at the time of a first birth (N = 4,044). More than 10% of births were to a postconception cohabiting household (cohabitations that were initiated between conception and birth), a higher…

This article addresses open questions about the nature and meaning of the positive association between marriage and well-being, namely, the extent to which it is causal, shared with cohabitation, and stable over time. We relied on data from the National Survey of Families and Households (N = 2,737) and a modeling approach that controls for fixed…

Educational expansion has led to greater diversity in the social backgrounds of college students. We ask how schooling interacts with this diversity to influence marriage formation among men and women. Relying on data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (N = 3,208), we use a propensity score approach to group men and women into…

As evidence of the benefits of marriage preparation continues to mount, so does the importance of investigating the characteristics of the interventions that are most helpful and for whom. In a sample of 1,409 individuals, this study compares perceived helpfulness of four marriage preparation interventions: class, community/church sponsored…

It is not often that Supreme Court watchers agree; however, right now, it seems that most agree on one thing: the Supreme Court term that started in October 2013 is going to be a blockbuster. The docket over the last couple of years has had more than its fair share of headline-grabbing cases, from gay marriage to Obamacare to the Voting Rights…

This brief report responds to the relative dearth of information available about MFT doctoral dissertations. A preliminary analysis of one COAMFTE [Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education] program is detailed. Suggestions for future action are offered. (Contains 1 table.)

In this article, Cris Mayo examines the relationship among anti-LGBTQ policies, gay marriage, and sexuality education. Her concern is that because gay marriage is insufficiently different from heterosexual marriage, adding it as an issue to curriculum or broader culture debate elides rather than addresses sexual difference. In other words,…

This study examines how gendered household bargaining occurs in non-nuclear family households. We employ two South African data sets and use linear regression and household fixed effects to investigate the relationship between women's income shares and household expenditures. In married couple households, when women garner larger shares of income,…

Although voluminous research has linked nonresident fatherhood to riskier sexual behavior in adolescence, including earlier sexual debut, neither the causality of that link nor the mechanism accounting for it has been well-established. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979--the Young Adult Survey (CNLSY-YA), the present…

The authors elaborate on the role of playfulness as a preferred characteristic in potential long-term partners recently espoused by Garry Chick and others. They aim to replicate the findings of such research by studying a different culture (that of German-speaking countries) and to develop them further by taking into account the participants'…

The past two decades have witnessed a dramatic increase in cross-border marriage in Southeast and East Asia largely as a result of increased population mobility as people move for work, study, lifestyle or even marital reasons. Japan is no exception with a substantial increase in the number of cross-border or "international marriages"…

The Hakka people, the largest ethno-linguistic minority group in Taiwan, have found their ethnic language retention diminishing. Using the data collected by the Taiwan Education Panel Survey and Beyond in 2010, we are the first to study its reason for decrease. Results indicate that out-marriage amongst Hakka people and losing ethnic concentration…

This study examined how the division of household labor changed as a function of marital duration and whether within-couple variation in spouses' relative power and availability were linked to within-couple variation in the division of labor. On 4 occasions over 7 years, 188 stably married couples reported on their housework activities using daily…

Rapid sexual involvement may have adverse long-term implications for relationship quality. This study examined the tempo of sexual intimacy and subsequent relationship quality in a sample of married and cohabiting men and women. Data come from the Marital and Relationship Survey, which provides information on nearly 600 low- to moderate-income…