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[Format for printing]
Ten Things Teens
Should Know About
Marriage: Research
Resources
David Popenoe and Barbara
Dafoe Whitehead
Developed for the Dibble
Institute for Marriage Education
The following research sources were developed for the
brochure Ten Things Teens Should Know About Marriage, prepared by the National
Marriage Project and published by the Dibble Institute for Marriage
Education. The brochure can be obtained from the Dibble Institute at
http://www.dibbleinstitute.org/
copyright © 2003
Ten Things Teens Should Know
About Marriage: Sources and
Explanation
1. On the benefits of marriage: Adults who get married are already somewhat
better off than those who don’t, but marriage itself brings many beneficial
consequences. Research findings on the lifelong benefits of marriage are
reviewed in Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People are Happier, Healthier, and
Better Off Financially (New York:
Doubleday, 2000). See also
Norval Glenn, et.al. Why Marriage
Matters: Twenty One Conclusions from the Social Sciences (New York: Institute for American Values,
2002). For men, see Steven L.
Nock, Marriage in Men’s Lives (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)
2.
On relationship and marriage education: Large-scale evaluations of the effectiveness of high school level
relationship education courses are not yet available. But the small-scale studies that have
been done show positive outcomes.
See, for example, Scott Gardner, “Evaluation of the Connections:
Relationships and Marriage Curriculum,” Journal
of Family and Consumer Science Education 19(2001). The evaluation
research that has been done on similar programs for older age groups is also
positive. See, for example, P.
Giblin et al., “Enrichment Outcome Research: A Meta-Analysis of Premarital,
Marital, and Family Interventions,” Journal
of Marriage and Family Therapy 11
(1985): 257-271; Jason S. Carroll and William J. Doherty, “Evaluating the
Effectiveness of Premarital Prevention Programs: A Meta-Analytic Review of
Outcome Research,” Family Relations 52 (2003) 105-118, Scott M. Stanley, “Making a
Case for Premarital Education,” Family
Relations 50 (2001) 272-280; and
Mark H. Butler and Karen S. Wampler, “A Meta-Analytic Update of Research on
the Couple Communication Program,” American
Journal of Family Therapy 27
(1999) 223. The leading
high-school level courses on marriage and relationship education are reviewed
and discussed in Marline Pearson, Can
Kids Get Smart About Marriage?
(New Brunswick, NJ: The National Marriage Project, 2000). (Available on-line at
marriage.rutgers.edu).
3.
On the connection between formal education and marriage: On the relationship between educational level and
marriage chances, see: Joshua R. Goldstein and Catherine T. Kenney, “Marriage
Delayed or Marriage Forgone? New Cohort Forecasts of First Marriage for U. S.
Women,” American Sociological Review 66 (2001):506-519. On the relationship between educational level and divorce
risks, see: Jay D. Teachman, “Stability Across Cohorts in Divorce Risk
Factors,” Demography 39 (2002): 331-351. There is, of course, a strong “kinds of people” effect in
this research: The kinds of people who persist in getting a good education
may also be those who are most likely to marry and to make their marriages
work.
4. On premarital sex: About 65% of young people have had sex by the time
they finish high school. Yet in
recent national surveys 94% of adults and 93% of teens agreed that it was
important “for teens to be given a strong message from society that they
should not have sex until they are at least out of high school.” (See the
National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, “With One Voice 2002: America’s
Adults and Teens Sound Off About Teen Pregnancy,” Washington, DC). The
following research-based conclusion is reported in Office of the Assistant
Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, Trends
in the Well-Being of America’s Children and Youth (Washington, DC: U. S. Department of Health and
Human Services, 1997) 238: “Sexual experience, and particularly age at first
intercourse, represent critical indicators of the risk of pregnancy and
sexually transmitted diseases.
Youth who begin having sex at younger ages are exposed to these risks
over a longer period of time.
Because sexual intercourse during the teen years, especially first
intercourse, is often unplanned, it is also often unprotected by
contraception. In addition,
research has shown that youth who have early sexual experience are more likely
at later ages to have more sexual partners and more frequent intercourse.”
One recent study of women found that having more than one sexual relationship
prior to marriage is associated with an elevated risk of divorce. Jay
Teachman, “Premarital Sex, Premarital Cohabitation, and the Risk of
Subsequent Marital Dissolution Among Women,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 65 (2003): 444-455. See also: When
Teens Have Sex: Issues and Trends
(Baltimore, MD: The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1998)
5. On age at first marriage: Depending on how the age categories are delineated
and how long a time period after marriage is covered, teenage marriages have
been found to be from two to three times more likely to end in divorce
compared to marriages at older ages.
See T. C. Martin and L. Bumpass “Recent Trends in Marital Disruption” Demography 26 (1989): 37-51. A recent government study found
that about 59% of marriages for women under age 18 end in divorce or
separation within 15 years, compared with 36% of those married at age 20 or
older. See M. D. Bramlett and W. D. Mosher, Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce, and Remarriage in the United States, Vital Health Statistics 23 (Hyattsville, MD: National Center for
Health Statistics Department of Health and Human Services, 2002).
6.
On age at having first child: The
effects of unmarried teen pregnancy, including poverty, lower educational
accomplishment, and health problems, are reviewed in R. A. Maynard (ed.) Kids Having Kids: Economic Costs and
Social Consequences of Teen Pregnancy (Washington, DC: The Urban Institute Press, 1997). According to one
calculation, of those women who finished high school, married before having a
child, and had the child after age 20, only 8% ended up being poor. Of those who failed to do each of
these things, 79% became poor. See the Center for the Study of Social Policy,
Kids Count Data Book (Baltimore, MD: Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1993).
For men, see: Steven L. Nock, “The Consequences of Premarital Fatherhood,” American Sociological Review 63 (1998): 250-263.
The likelihood that a woman
will eventually marry is significantly lower for those who first had a child
out of wedlock. By age 35, only
70% of all unwed mothers are married in contrast to 88% of women who have not
had a child out of wedlock. See Daniel T. Lichter and Deborah Roempke Graefe,
“Finding a Mate? The Marital and Cohabitation Histories of Unwed Mothers,” in
Lawrence L. Wu and Barbara Wolfe (eds.) Out
of Wedlock: Trends, Causes and Consequences of Nonmarital Fertility (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001).
On the consequences for
children of growing up in single-parent and never-married parent families,
see Sara McLanahan and G. Sandefur, Growing
Up With a Single Parent
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), and G. J. Duncan and J.
Brooks-Gunn, Consequences of Growing Up
Poor (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997). Children born out-of-wedlock are more
likely to be poor, to have lower educational attainment, and to have a higher
risk of teen and nonmarital childbearing themselves. See also J. Seltzer,
“Families Formed Outside of Marriage,” Journal
of Marriage and the Family 62
(2000): 1247-1268; W. S. Aquilino, “The Life Course of Children Born to
Unmarried Mothers: Childhood Living Arrangements and Young Adult Outcomes,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 58 (1996): 293-310).
7.
On choosing a marriage partner: Research
on mate selection and marital success is reviewed in Jeffry H. Larson and
Thomas B. Holman, “Premarital Predictors of Marital Quality and Stability” Family Relations 43 (1994): 228-237. Children from divorced homes
should be particularly mindful when selecting a marriage partner. They have a higher risk of divorce
when they marry, and higher still if the person they marry also comes from a
divorced home. One study found that when the wife alone had experienced a
parental divorce, the odds of divorce increased by more than half (59%), and
when both spouses experienced parental divorce, the odds of divorce nearly
tripled (189%). See Paul R. Amato, “Explaining the Intergenerational
Transmission of Divorce,” Journal of
Marriage and the Family 58 (1996):
628-640.
8.
On the effects of premarital cohabitation: The available research on the effects of
premarital cohabitation is reviewed in David Popenoe and Barbara Dafoe
Whitehead, Should We Live Together?:
What Young Adults Need to Know about Cohabitation before Marriage. 2nd Ed., (New Brunswick, NJ: The
National Marriage Project, 2002.
(Available on-line at marriage.rutgers.edu) Marriages preceded by cohabitation are as much as 50% more
likely to end in divorce. The
higher divorce risk is due in part to the fact that people who cohabit tend
to be more unconventional and already less committed to the institution of
marriage. But the results of
several studies suggest that the act of living together itself may change
partners’ attitudes toward marriage, contributing to making marriage less
likely, or if marriage takes place, less successful. There is no higher
divorce risk, however, if you live with someone to whom you already are
engaged, which means “a ring and a wedding date,” or if cohabitation is
limited to one’s future spouse.
Some of the major research sources on this topic are: Jay Teachman,
“Premarital Sex, Premarital Cohabitation, and the Risk of Subsequent Marital
Dissolution Among Women,” Journal of
Marriage and the Family 65 (2003):
444-455; Alfred DeMaris and K. Vaninadha Rao, “Premarital Cohabitation and
Marital Instability in the United States: A Reassessment,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 54 (1992):178-190; Pamela J. Smock, “Cohabitation in the United States,” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000); William G. Axinn and Jennifer S.
Barber, “Living Arrangements and Family Formation Attitudes in Early
Adulthood,” Journal of Marriage and the
Family 59 (1997): 595-611; Susan L. Brown, “The Effect of Union
Type on Psychological Well-Being: Depression Among Cohabitors Versus
Marrieds,” Journal of Health and Social
Behavior 41 (2000): 241-55; Catherine L. Cohan and Stacey
Kleinbaum, “Toward a Greater Understanding of the Cohabitation Effect:
Premarital Cohabitation and Marital Communication,” Journal of Marriage and the Family, 64 (2002): 180-192.
9. On relationships with parents and
other adults: The National
Longitudinal Study on Adolescent Health, which includes data on 90,118
American adolescents, found that when adolescents feel connected to their
parents (e.g., feelings of warmth, love and caring from parents) they are
less likely than other adolescents to: suffer from emotional distress, have
suicidal thoughts and behaviors, use violence, smoke cigarettes, drink
alcohol or smoke marijuana. They
also have their first sexual experience later than adolescents who are not
connected to their parents. See Michael D. Resnick, et. al. “Protecting
Adolescents from Harm,” Journal of the
American Medical Association
(Sept. 10, 1997). On the importance of parent substitutes, see: Emmy E.
Werner and Ruth S. Smith, Overcoming
the Odds: High-Risk Children from Birth to Adulthood (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992).
10. On premarital education: Research on the effectiveness of premarital education programs,
although limited, shows quite positive results. See Jason S. Carroll and William J. Doherty, “Evaluating
the Effectiveness of Premarital Prevention Programs: A Meta-Analytic Review
of Outcome Research,” Family Relations 52 (2003) 105-118; Scott M. Stanley, “Making a
Case for Premarital Education,” Family
Relations 50 (2001) 272-280; and L.
Knutson, et al., “Effectiveness of the PREPARE Program with Premarital
Couples,” publication forthcoming.
The
Divorce Rate: Some primary sources
for the risk factors associated with divorce are: Jay D. Teachman, “Stability
Across Cohorts in Divorce Risk Factors,” Demography
39 (2002): 331-351; and Tim B.
Heaton, “Factors Contributing to Increasing Marital Stability in the United
States,” Journal of Family Issues 23 (2002): 392-409
The National Marriage Project’s mission is to
strengthen the institution of marriage by providing research and analysis
that informs public policy, educates the American public, and focuses
attention on the consequences of marriage decline for millions of American
children.
The
project is co-directed by two nationally prominent family experts: David
Popenoe, PhD, a professor and former social and behavioral sciences dean at
Rutgers, and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, PhD, an author and social critic.
http://www.rutgers.edu/
The National Marriage
Project
Rutgers University
54 Joyce Kilmer Ave., B217
LSH
Piscataway, NJ 08854
Phone: (732) 445 7922
Fax: (732) 445 6110
marriage@rci.rutgers.edu
The Dibble Institute for
Marriage Education is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping young people
learn skills which enable successful relationships and marriages. We serve as
a nationwide advocate and resource for youth marriage education and publish
materials which help teach relationship skills.
The Dibble Institute
P. O. Box 7881
Berkeley, CA 94707-08810
Phone: 1-800-695-7975
Fax: 510-528-1956
www.dibbleinstitute.org
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