Alone Together: How Marriage in America Is Changing

630 Pages·2007·1.55 MB·English

by  Amato Paul R

Alone Together
Alone Together
h o w m a r r i a g e i n a m e r i c a
i s c h a n g i n g
Paul R. Amato
Alan Booth
David R. Johnson
Stacy J. Rogers
h a r va r d
u n i v e r s i t y
p r e s s
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
Copyright © 2007 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights
reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2009.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Alone together : how
marriage in America is changing / Paul R. Amato . . .
[et al.].
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-674-02281-2 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-674-03217-0 (pbk.)
1. Marriage—United States. I. Amato, Paul R.
HQ536A538 2007
306.810973Ј09045—dc22
2006043728
Contents
List of Figures
vii
Acknowledgments
ix
1 The Continuing Transformation of Marriage in America
1
2 Stability and Change in Marital Quality
36
3 Rising Individualism and Demographic Change
70
4 Who Benefited from the Rise of Dual-Earner Marriage—
and Who Did Not?
97
5 Changing Gender Relations in Marriage
140
6 Social Integration, Religion, and Attitudes toward Lifelong Marriage
175
7 How Our Most Important Relationships Are Changing
204
8 Implications for Theory, Future Research, and Social Policy
234
Appendix 1: Study Methodology
265
Appendix 2: Tables
277
References
293
Index
309
Figures
1.1
Changes in marital quality and divorce: two models 9
2.1
Mean scores on five dimensions of marital quality 50
2.2
Percentage of people giving the most positive responses to questions on marital
happiness 53
2.3
Percentage of respondents who “almost always” shared activities with their
spouses 54
2.4
Percentage of husbands and wives reporting marital violence 56
2.5
Percentage of respondents reporting particular marital problems 57
2.6
Percentage of respondents reporting low, medium, and high levels of divorce
proneness 59
2.7
Change within and between cohorts: marital conflict 64
3.1
Percentage of couples cohabiting before marriage by race or ethnicity and
decade 72
3.2
Adjusted mean levels of marital conflict, problems, and divorce proneness by
premarital cohabitation and decade 75
3.3
Adjusted mean levels of divorce proneness by age at marriage and decade 79
3.4
Percentage of remarried husbands and wives 80
3.5
Adjusted mean levels of marital quality by presence of stepchildren in the
household and decade 82
3.6
Percentage of respondents and spouses with divorced parents 84
3.7
Adjusted mean levels of marital problems and divorce proneness by parental
divorce, 2000 86
3.8
Three forms of marital heterogamy 88
3.9
Adjusted mean levels of marital happiness and marital problems by heterogamy
index, 2000 90
4.1
Wives’ employment status 101
4.2
Percentage of spouses reporting that jobs interfered with family life 107
viii
Figures
4.3
Adjusted mean level of marital problems by wives’ employment status and
wives’ employment preferences, 2000 114
4.4
Wives’ reasons for working: ratings of importance 116
4.5
Wives’ adjusted mean levels of marital quality by wives’ job satisfaction, 2000
121
4.6
Married couples’ mean earned income (in constant 2000 dollars) 125
4.7
Changes in standard of living between 1980 and 2000 by wives’ employment
status and husbands’ education 129
4.8
Adjusted mean levels of divorce proneness by perceived economic distress 132
4.9
Path model showing direct and indirect associations among wives’ hours of
employment, family income, and dimensions of marital quality 133
5.1
Frequency distribution of wives’ percentage of family income 143
5.2
Husbands’ traditional views of gender roles in marriage 145
5.3
Husbands’ and wives’ mean scores on a scale of conservative gender attitudes
147
5.4
Percentage of housework performed by husbands: reports of husbands and wives
149
5.5
Division of household labor is unfair to me: views of husbands and wives 154
5.6
Percentage of dual-earner couples in which wives did a second shift or had an
egalitarian division of labor 158
5.7
Percentage of husbands and wives reporting on who has the final word 161
5.8
Adjusted mean level of marital happiness by gender and husbands’ share of
housework, 2000 165
5.9
Wives’ adjusted mean level of marital happiness by wives’ employment and
gender attitudes, 2000 168
5.10 Adjusted mean level of marital quality by equal decision making, 2000 171
6.1
Indicators of social integration 179
6.2
Adjusted mean level of marital quality by sharing friends with spouse, 2000 186
6.3
Adjusted mean level of marital quality by membership in clubs and
organizations, 2000 189
6.4
Extent that religion influences daily life 193
6.5
Adjusted mean level of marital quality by attendance at religious services
together, 2000 195
6.6
Attitudes toward marriage 198
7.1
Associations between changes in explanatory variables (EV) and changes in
mean levels of marital quality between 1980 and 2000 214
7.2
Five types of marriage based on cluster analysis 228
7.3
Marital quality profiles by marriage type 230
8.1
Percentage of married people reporting that divorce should be more difficult to
obtain, 1974–2000 243
Acknowledgments
We thank Norval Glenn, Susan Welch, and the anonymous reviewers for
assistance and advice with various aspects of this book. We also thank Glenn
Firebaugh for guidance on data analysis. We are grateful to numerous students
with whom we have discussed our findings and interpretations. In addition, we
are indebted to the respondents who participated so generously in the study. The
data set described in this book is based on the efforts of many people. John
Edwards, Gay Kitson, F. Ivan Nye, and Lynn White helped to design the original
study, and the staff of the Bureau of Sociological Research at the University of
Nebraska–Lincoln carried out the interviews and prepared the computer files for
data analysis. The study was supported by the Pennsylvania State University
Population Research Institute, the University of Nebraska–Lincoln Research
Council, grant number 5R01
AG04146 from the National Institute on Aging, and grant number R24
HD41025 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
We are grateful to Ann Twombly for her excellent copy-editing: not too little and
not too much. Finally, we greatly appreciate the support of Michael Aronson and
Donna Bouvier of Harvard University Press, who guided our book to
completion.