What Does Marriage Mean to Us? Marital Centrality among Newlywed Couples

With marriage now delayed until later in the life course, developmental and young adult scholars have increasingly focused on how relational and marital beliefs of unmarried young adults influence developmental and relational trajectories. Yet little research has explored how these same perceptions and beliefs may alter adult relationships and marriages. Using a national U.S. sample of 1,755 newlywed couples, we explored how beliefs about the centrality of marriage were associated with marital quality and commitment. A common-fate approach that simultaneously allowed for both individual and couple-level analyses was used. Results suggested that higher marital centrality beliefs separately for each partner and jointly as a couple were strongly associated with higher interpersonal commitment to one’s spouse and the general level of commitment in the relationship. Significant indirect effects found for husbands, wives, and at the couple-level suggested that higher marital centrality beliefs had an indirect association through commitment with higher relationship satisfaction, less instability, and higher reports of positive communication. Marital beliefs around the centrality of marriage appear to be strongly connected to the establishment of commitment and relationship quality among married couples. Results call for the expansion of the marital and relational belief literature into the context of adult relationships.

“I’m Scared because Divorce Sucks”: Parental Divorce and the Marital Paradigms of Emerging Adults

Previous studies have suggested that parental divorce influences the relational beliefs and orientation toward marriage of adolescents and emerging adults. Most of this previous work has been limited to links between parental divorce and global attitudes toward marriage or attitudes toward divorce. Using a mixed-method design, the current study explored links between parental divorce and various aspects of emerging adults’ marital paradigms using cross-sectional, longitudinal, and qualitative data among a sample of unmarried emerging adults. Quantitative results suggested that parental divorce was linked to a variety of negative marital beliefs including less overall marital importance, less marital permanence, and less marital centrality. There was no evidence of longitudinal changes in these associations over time. Qualitative results among emerging adults with divorced parents revealed several key themes in how emerging adults viewed the impact of parental divorce, suggesting implications for perceived interpersonal competence and the internalization of negative marital beliefs stemming from parental role modeling.

The Influence of Parents and Families

This chapter begins to explore how parents and families influence emerging adults’ beliefs about marriage. Parents are the primary focus. Two key roles parents play in their children’s lives in terms of future behavior and current orientations are socialization and the intergenerational transmission of values. For emerging adults with happily married parents, many of the marital paradoxes appeared to vanish. The authors discuss how having never-married or divorced parents affects marital beliefs. Observing conflict generally appears to diminish many emerging adults’ view of marriage regardless of the current marital status of their parents. The influence of siblings is also explored. Parents and other family influences appear to be one of the key foundations on which emerging adults have built their internal conceptualization of modern marriage.

Marital Beliefs Among African American Emerging Adults: The Roles of Community Context, Family Background, and Relationship Experiences

The current study explores multiple contexts of development—community, family, and relationship—that predict African American emerging adults’ marital beliefs. Findings suggest that nonmarital relationship experiences and childhood community contexts are robust and independent predictors of marital beliefs. The important role of childhood community context found here suggests that communities may not only be indicative of opportunity structure in local marriage markets but may also be indicative of the virtual structure that shapes marital meaning. By offering a better understanding of the extent to which marital beliefs are embedded in broader community, family, and relationship contexts, the current findings may be used to better specify promising models aiming to understand the causal implications of these beliefs across the transition to adulthood and later in the life course.