Humans are inexorably driven to search for order and meaning in their own and others' lives; accounts are a major avenue for sociologists to depict and understand the ways in which individuals experience and identify with that meaning and their social world. The accounts concept has a solid foundation and history in early sociological analysis and research. The current work on accounts focuses on “story-like” interpretations or explanations and their functions and consequences to a social actor's life. The concept is useful for gaining insight into the human experience and arriving at meanings or culturally embedded normative explanations. This concept deserves greater explicit attention in sociology and is in need of further theoretical development and stimulation. I argue that sociologists should embrace the concept of accounts; the foundation is set for a resurgence of work on accounts in sociology.

This study examined self-reported marital conflict behaviors and their implications for divorce. Husbands and wives (N = 373 couples; 47% White American, 53% Black American) reported conflict behaviors in years 1, 3, 7, and 16 of their marriages. Individual behaviors (e.g., destructive behaviors) and patterns of behaviors between partners (e.g., withdrawal-constructive) in Year 1 predicted higher divorce rates. Wives’ destructive and withdrawal behaviors decreased over time, whereas husbands’ conflict behaviors remained stable. Husbands reported more constructive and less destructive behaviors than wives and Black American couples reported more withdrawal than White American couples. Findings support behavioral theories of marriage demonstrating that conflict behaviors predict divorce and accommodation theories indicating that conflict behaviors become less negative over time.

This article uses a panel study of children and mothers to examine how parents and children conceptualize, perceive, and report on their relationships with each other during the children's transition to adulthood years. The article provides strong support for the reliability and validity of reports of parent-child relationships. The article documents generally positive and supportive relationships between parents and children, more positive relationships with mothers than with fathers, and an improvement in relationships as children mature from age 18 to 23. Further, parent-child relationships are perceived differently by parents and children in that there is not just one perception of the relationship between child and parent, but a relationship as perceived by the child and a relationship as perceived by the parent.

The present study examines the early development of marriage for a representative sample of urban white couples and black couples. We are interested in predicting the stability of these marriages over the first 14 years of marriage. First, we assess whether objective social and economic conditions account for divorce over time. These factors focus on oppressive social conditions, lower status positions in society, and challenges of parenthood and family responsibilities. Next, we concentrate on perceived interactive processes between spouses that are critical for maintaining a relationship over time. We postulate that race, gender, and time act as contexts in which to understand the quality and impact of structure and the perceptions of interaction in predicting divorce. Results indicate that both race and education are critical to the risk of divorce over 14 years. Perceived interactional processes are also important to divorce, but often depend on the contexts of race and gender.

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We examine the effects of subjective and organizational religious participation on marital stability over time for urban Black American couples and White American couples who participated in a longitudinal project. Our findings indicated that the role religiosity plays in the stability of marriage over time varied by gender and race. Black husbands and wives reported that religion was more important to them and that they attended religious services more frequently than White husbands and wives. Greater service attendance was predictive of decreased odds of divorce, only when reported by wives. Interaction effects revealed that the effect was more notable among White wives. Practitioners should consider the diversity between and within couples and the sociohistorical contexts in which marriages are embedded.

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