We used data from Waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households to study high‐ and low‐distress marriages that end in divorce. A cluster analysis of 509 couples who divorced between waves revealed that about half were in high‐distress relationships and the rest in low‐distress relationships. These 2 groups were not artifacts of the timing of the interview or of measurement error. Irrespective of marital quality, couples who divorced shared many risk characteristics, such as having divorced parents. Individuals in high‐distress marriages reported increases in happiness following divorce, whereas those in low‐distress marriages reported declines in happiness. These results suggest two basic motivations to divorce: poor relationship quality and a weak commitment to marriage.

This study focuses on the factors underlying differences in relationship quality between interethnic and same-ethnic couples. Using the National Survey of Families and Households and the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we examine relationship satisfaction, interpartner conflict and subjective assessments of relationship instability in married and cohabiting couples. Partners in interethnic unions generally reported lower levels of relationship quality than did partners in same-ethnic unions. These differences held for women as well as men, and for married as well as cohabiting couples. Differences in relationship quality were largely accounted for by more complex relationship histories, more heterogamous unions, fewer shared values and less support from parents. In contrast, differences in socioeconomic resources did not appear to play an explanatory role.Increasing numbers of couples include partners whose racial or ethnic backgrounds differ from one another. In 2000, these couples represented more than 5 percent of all marriages, or about 3 million married couplesup more than fivefold from 1970 when they made up less than 1 percent of all marriages (Lee and Edmonston 2005). Although much is known about patterns of interethnic marriage, research on the quality of interethnic marriages has been sparse and contradictory. Even less is known about the quality of interethnic cohabitations, despite evidence that cohabiting partners are more likely than married partners to have different racial and ethnic backgrounds (Blackwell and Lichter 2004). With the general increase in the number of cohabiting couples during the past few decades, and the corresponding increase in the number of children born within these unions, it is imperative to understand more clearly how interethnic cohabitations are faring (Smock 2000;Goldstein and Harknett 2006).The focus of this research is unions between individuals with differing racial or ethnic identifications. We use the term "interethnic" to describe these relationships because this term can encompass interracial as well as interethnic pairings. That is, interracial unions can be seen as a subset at University of Connecticut on June 9, 2015 http://sf.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from 826 • Social Forces 87(2)of interethnic unions (O'Neal, Brown and Abadie 1997). Conversely, we refer to couples who share a racial or ethnic identification as "same-ethnic" unions. Our study includes all major racial/ethnic groups, with the most frequently occurring interethnic pairings being Hispanic-white, blackHispanic and black-white.Our study has four aims. First, we document how interethnic and sameethnic unions differ with respect to a variety of couple and contextual factors with the potential to affect relationship quality. Second, we assess whether interethnic unions are of different quality, in general, than same-ethnic unions. Third, we attempt to explain observed differences in relationship quality between interethnic and same-ethnic unions. And fourth, we investigate whether t...

Children of immigrants come from diverse backgrounds and enter school with different family migration experiences and resources. This paper addresses two basic questions: (1) to what extent does generation status exert an independent effect on early school performance net of race/panethnicity, language proficiency, and the family resources available to children as they enter formal schooling? and (2) to what extent do these broad conceptualizations of children in immigrant families mask variation by national origins? We take advantage of longitudinal data on a kindergarten cohort from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study to examine children from diverse backgrounds. Considerable variation in academic performance persists across racial/panethnic groups as well as by country‐of‐origin background and linguistic ability even when adjusting for family background, resources, and previous academic performance. We find some intriguing evidence of early “segmentation” among children from various groups, suggesting some convergence within race and ethnicity for some children. However, this conclusion should not be overstated, because the results also point to the great diversity by national origins that are masked by reliance on racial/panethnic groupings.

Children can benefit from involved fathers and cooperative parents, a benefit which may be particularly important to the growing population of children born to unmarried parents. This study observes father involvement and coparenting in 5,407 married and unmarried cohabiting couples with a 2‐year‐old child in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Birth Cohort (ECLS‐B). A link was found between cooperative coparenting and father involvement for all couples. Compared with married couples, couples who married in response to the pregnancy and couples who remained unmarried showed higher levels of father involvement and more cooperative coparenting, indicating a potentially greater child focus.

The couple context of pregnancy and newborn health is gaining importance with the increase in births to unmarried couples, a disproportionate number of which were not intended. This study investigates the association of early prenatal care, preterm birth, and low birth weight with the couple relationship context, including partners' joint intentions for the pregnancy, their marital status at conception, and the presence of relationship problems during pregnancy. Data are drawn from the first wave of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study--Birth Cohort, a representative study of births in 2001. The sample is composed of parents residing together with their biological child at the time the child is 9 months old, where both the mother and father completed the self-report interview (N = 5,788). Couple-level multivariate logistic regression models, weighted to account for the complex sampling design, were used in the analysis. Risk of inadequate prenatal care and preterm birth was increased when partners did not share intentions or when neither partner intended the pregnancy. Couples were at additional risk of inadequate prenatal care when the pregnancy was conceived nonmaritally and when the mother did not tell the father about the pregnancy, particularly when neither partner intended the pregnancy. The risk of premature birth was particularly high when the partners were unmarried and either or both did not intend the pregnancy. The couple context of pregnancy is important for a healthy pregnancy and birth. When the partner is present, practitioners and programs should maintain a focus on the couple, and researchers should make every effort to include the father's own perspective.