The Impact of Family Background and Early Marital Factors on Marital Disruption

Abstract

Data from the National Survey of Families and Households for 1987-1988 are used to explore methodological and substantive issues concerning marital dissolution in the United States. "The analysis finds that marital disruptions are seriously underreported by males, making the analysis of male marital histories problematic. Also, the potential impact of reconciliations on the estimates of recent marital disruption based on separation is explored; no upward bias is likely to result from the inclusion of separations that may subsequently reconcile. The impact of a wide variety of factors on the risk of marital disruption is examined using proportional hazard techniques. Among them are included parental background factors, respondent's characteristics at the time of marriage, differences in spouses' characteristics, and joint activity statuses of marital partners in the first year of marriage. The risk of marital disruption is highest among women with young age at marriage, low education, a cohabitation history, and those whose spouse has been married previously. Parental family disruption affects marital stability primarily through age at marriage and cohabitation. Religious and educational heterogamy and male unemployment reduce marital stability."

How fertility and union stability interact in shaping new family patterns in Italy and Spain

“…We expect cohabitation to affect union instability in Italy in Spain, because this type of union still has a limited spread in these countries (Liefbroer and Dourleijn, 2006), and it was even less spread at the time when the FFS was carried out. We also consider parents union stability: parental separation is likely to lead the offspring to leave home earlier, to enter a union more quickly, to prefer cohabitation to marriage, and eventually to experience more unstable unions (Pope and Mueller 1976;Greenberg and Nay 1982;McLanahan and Bumpass 1988;Bumpass, Martin and Sweet 1991;Amato 1996). Among individual characteristics, we consider age at union formation: we expect that the younger the person is at the time of union formation, the higher the union instability, possibly because the decision to form a union in not thought enough (Morgan and Rindfuss 1985;South and Spitze 1986;Thornton and Rodgers 1987;Martin and Bumpass 1989).…”

A matter of norms: Family background, religion, and generational change in the diffusion of first union breakdown among French-speaking Quebeckers

“…Although they do not limit their study to the effect of religion on divorce, Bumpass, Castro-Martín, and Sweet (1991) find that religious heterogamy reduces marital stability. Lehrer and Chiswick (1993), who focus on the effect of religion, find that with the exception of Mormons and individuals with no religious identification, stability is similar across the various types of homogamous unions, interfaith unions having generally higher rates of dissolution than intrafaith unions.…”

Parental Divorce Among Young and Adult Children: A Long-Term Quantitative Analysis of Mental Health and Family Solidarity

“…Parental divorce might affect a child's future marital status through different mechanisms, depending on the age at which a child experiences parental divorce. For young children, parental divorce can affect the child's own marital success through actions that increase the likelihood of divorce such as early marriage, cohabitation, and marrying another child of divorce (Bumpass, Martin, & Sweet, 1991;Wolfinger, 2000). For adult children, some research has shown that the child's marital status is affected by observations or experiences of marriage saliency, in which the adult child experiences anxiety, mistrust, and fear about the future success of their own marriages (Duran-Aydintug, 1997).…”