Introduction

Chapter 1 presents an overview of how the movement for marriage equality was victorious in the U.S. and why public attitudes toward marriage equality changed more than any other public attitude in American history. The chapter offers a brief explanation of the role of individuals coming out of the closet and an explanation for why national movements need to be studied with national survey data as opposed to focusing only on movement leaders. A time line of key events considers the background of public opinion support for gay rights in order to identify when attitudes began to change and which events were proximate to the change in attitudes.

African American Women’s Marital Attitudes: A Qualitative Study on Never Married Women

Over the past few decades, marriage rates in the United States among African Americans continue to decline, yet African American women continue to express a desire to be married. Using a grounded theory qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews ( N = 23), we explored marital attitudes among never married African American women. Participants identified both negative and positive exposures to marriage during childhood and messaging from family and faith communities as major sources influencing their desire to marry. Other themes, such as respectability and child behavioral benefits emerged that influenced women’s attitudes toward marriage. We present a discussion of the findings, limitations of this study, and next steps in the research.

Marital Attitudes and Implicit Associations Tests (IAT) among Young Adults

Attitudes toward marriage have primarily been explored on the direct or explicit level through self-report measures, neglecting the potential influence of implicit attitudes. Using computer-based experimentation, the current investigation focused on employing Implicit Association Test (IAT) procedures, an approach common in some psychological sciences, but yet to be prominent in published marriage and family research. The IAT measures implicit attitudes—those that operate on a spontaneous or more affective level. One-hundred and thirty-three participants completed two forms of the IAT: one that contrasted marriage with singlehood and the other that provided no contrasting concept to marriage. Results indicated that the former correlated positively with corresponding explicit measures of attitudes, though they shared minimal variance. The latter had no correlation with explicit measures. Results suggest that processes account for implicit and explicit attitudes about marriage. Implications of using both IAT measures are discussed.

ATTITUDES TOWARDS MARRIAGE IN MARRIED AND DIVORCED WOMEN

The psychological aspects of attitudes to marriage in women with different marital status in a transitive society, the main characteristics of which are the dynamism of social processes, diversity of positions, value systems, uncertainty of norms, are presented in the article. The work analyzes the specifics of motivation and marital attitudes, as well as peculiarities of interrelation between current attitudes toward marriage and psychological well-being of the study participants at different ages. The results of the study demonstrate that women retain a basic attitude toward the importance and value of marital relations. Emotional and socio-cultural motivations are dominant for respondents in this sample. The attitude of women to egalitarian relations in marriage confirms the priority of individual desires in marriage and strengthening the position of partner type interaction in modern marriage. The study on the relationship between psychological well-being and attitudes toward marriage confirms the general trend of pragmatic attitudes toward marriage and the desire to postpone the birth of children to a later date. The prospect of motherhood for divorced women at different ages is associated with limited life prospects, inability to control their lives and reduced opportunities for development.

“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.

Companionate Marriage across the Century’s Turn

The struggle to realize companionate marriage appears as a central conflict in literary works by Anglo-American, African American, and ethnic American writers, who grapple with the issues raised by new ideologies and cultures of marriage. Drawing from cultural history that includes Lindsey and Evans’s volume, The Companionate Marriage (1927), and responses to it as well as a range of literary marriages that demonstrate the power of the companionate ideal, this piece charts the interaction between changing attitudes toward marriage in life and literature. As the range and complexity of opinions circulating around this issue demonstrate, the ostensibly “modern” question of equality in marriage had been debated as far back as the mid-nineteenth century. By contrast, later, more modern narratives increasingly turn to depictions of non-companionate, patriarchal arrangements, which offer both cautionary tales about the past and counter a trenchant idealism about the companionate model.