Religious Homogamy and Marital Happiness

Abstract

Data from a representative sample of 1,070 married Protestants and Catholics were used to examine the relationship between religious homogamy and marital happiness. Although couples may vary in the extent to which they share religious views (e.g., beliefs, values), previous research has treated religious homogamy as a dichotomy; a couple is either homogamous or it is not. A partial explanation for this is that few studies have gone beyond the broad divisions of Protestant, Catholic, and Jew. In the present study religious bodies were classified on the basis of doctrine and ritual, yielding six categories: Baptist, Calvinist, Catholic, fundamentalist, Lutheran, and Methodist. These categories were then used to develop a measure of estimated “religious distance” or degrees of heterogamy. This measure was used to test the hypothesis that the larger the religious distance or disparity, the greater the likelihood of unhappiness with the marriage. The hypothesis was supported by the data.

Marital Satisfaction and Religious Heterogamy

“…This suggests there is no relationship between religious heterogamy and marital satisfaction when religious heterogamy is operationalized using denominational affiliation. These findings are consistent with other studies that included only Protestants and Catholics in their samples (Ortega et al, 1988;Sheehan et al, 1990). Studies that have found a relationship between religious heterogamy and marital satisfaction have included Jews and/or those with no religious affiliation (Chi & Houseknecht, 1985;Glenn, 1982;Heaton, 1984;Heaton & Pratt, 1990).…”

Extramarital Affairs, Marital Satisfaction, and Divorce: Evidence from Hong Kong

“…Call and Heaton (1997) suggest that regular church attendance of both husbands and wives reduces the likelihood of divorce (see also, Schumm, 1985, andWhite, 1990). However, a big difference in attendance between husbands and wives increases the risk of divorce (see Ortega et al, 1988). Moreover, religion often emphasizes the sanctity of marriage and the prohibitions against adultery, both of which serve as barriers to extramarital affairs.…”

Preference effects on friendship choice: Evidence from an online field experiment

“…For example, in marriage studies, researchers found that religious homogamy promoted marital stability, satisfaction, and happiness (Albrecht et al, 1983;Glenn, 1982;Heaton, 1984;Heaton et al, 1985;Lehrer and Chiswick, 1993;Ortega et al, 1988;Heaton and Pratt, 1990). …”