Both partners from gay and lesbian cohabiting couples without children were compared longitudinally with both partners from heterosexual married couples with children (N at first assessment = 80, 53, and 80 couples, respectively) on variables from 5 domains indicative of relationship health. For 50% of the comparisons, gay and lesbian partners did not differ from heterosexual partners. Seventy‐eight percent of the comparisons on which differences were found indicated that gay or lesbian partners functioned better than heterosexual partners did. Because the variables that predicted concurrent relationship quality and relationship stability for heterosexual parents also did so for gay and lesbian partners, I conclude that the processes that regulate relationship functioning generalize across gay, lesbian, and heterosexual couples.

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Research on gay and lesbian couples is highlighted with regard to household labor, conflict, satisfaction, perceived social support, stability, and the variables that predict relationship quality. Relative to partners from married heterosexual couples, partners from gay and lesbian couples tend to assign household labor more fairly, resolve conflict more constructively, experience similar levels of satisfaction, and perceive less support from family members but more support from friends. The limited data available indicate that gay and lesbian couples may be less stable than married heterosexual couples. The factors that predict relationship quality tend to be the same for gay, lesbian, and heterosexual married couples. Overall, research paints a positive picture of gay and lesbian couples and indicates that they tend to be more similar to than different from heterosexual couples. KEYWORDS-gay couples; lesbian couples; relationship quality; relationship stability In November 2004, Americans in 11 states voted on whether marriage should be legal for only heterosexual couples. The resounding message from the voters in each of these states was that marriage as a legal institution should, indeed, be reserved only for couples consisting of a man and a woman. One interpretation of voters' response to the gay-marriage issue is that most Americans regard gay and lesbian couples as being different from heterosexual couples. But what does research on gay and lesbian couples say on this matter? Does evidence support the view that gay and lesbian couples work in ways that are different from the way that heterosexual couples work? Before I examine aspects of these questions, I will address the question of the number of gay and lesbian couples in America. HOW MANY AMERICAN GAY AND LESBIAN COUPLES ARE THERE?Because of the stigma associated with homosexuality, many gay and lesbian persons are reluctant to disclose their sexual orientation. Consequently, there are no definitive data on the number of gay and lesbian Americans. Perhaps the best available estimates were derived by Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, and Michaels (1994), who interviewed a national sample of 1,511 men and 1,921 women. Of this sample, 4.9% of the men and 4.1% of the women reported having engaged in sexual behavior with a person of their own sex since the age of 18, 6.2% of the men and 4.4% of the women reported having been attracted to a person of their own sex, and 2.8% of the men and 1.4% of the women identified themselves with a label denoting same-sex sexuality (e.g., homosexual). Given the difficulty in estimating the number of gay and lesbian Americans, it is not surprising that there are also no definitive data on the number of gay and lesbian American couples. However, changes in the way information about households is collected in the United States Census have allowed estimates of the number of households headed by a person with a same-sex partner to be obtained. Data from the Census of 2000 (Simons & O'Connell, 2003) indicate that of the 5.5 million co...

We examined the extent of burnout and its correlates in a national sample of 562 licensed, doctoral-level, practicing psychologists employed primarily within human service settings. Their responses to the Maslach Burnout Inventory indicated that more than a third of the sample reported experiencing high levels of both emotional exhaustion and depersonalization. The modal burned-out clinician in this sample was young, had a low income, engaged in little individual psychotherapy, experienced feelings of lack of control in the therapeutic setting, and felt overcommitted to clients. 624 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

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This study examined how well marital dissolution was predicted by husbands' and wives' personal demographic scores, couple demographic scores, husbands' and wives' individual-differences scores, husbands' and wives' interdependence scores, and the size of the discrepancy between spouses' individual-differences scores as well as their interdependence scores. Over 5 annual assessments, 222 newlywed couples remained together and 64 dissolved their marriages. Variables from each of the 4 sets of scores reliably discriminated between stable and unstable couples. For a subsample of couples on whom multiple assessments were available, husbands and wives who would dissolve their marriage showed a greater decline in interdependence scores and had greater increases in discrepancies on interdependence variables than did husbands and wives from stable couples who were assessed at comparable times. Marital dissolution is discussed in terms of interrelated distal and proximal risk factors.I thank the couples who participated in this study. Thanks also go to David Arnold, Glenna Darnell-Goetschel, and Pete McConnell for their assistance in subject recruitment and data entry. Mark Fine and five anonymous reviewers provided constructive comments on a draft of the article.

Four parameters of the trajectory of change in marital quality (initial status as well as linear, quadratic, and cubic patterns of change) were estimated for husbands and wives over the first 10 years of marriage (n = 522 couples at Year 1 and 93 couples at Year 10). Both husbands and wives started their trajectories of change at fairly high levels of marital quality and showed a cubic pattern of change such that marital quality declined fairly rapidly in the early years of marriage, stabilized, and then declined again. Whereas individual-differences variables predicted the initial status of the trajectory, husbands and wives living with only their biological children showed a steeper decline in marital quality than husbands and wives living without children or stepchildren.

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