Are cohabiting couples more likely than married couples to break up in response to perceptions that their relationship is not fair? Based on social psychological perspectives on intimate relationship stability, in addition to empirical research contrasting cohabitation with marriage, I hypothesize that cohabiting couples will be more likely than…

The authors examine whether young adults who experienced their parents' divorce and new relationships have different relationship trajectories than those who spent their childhoods living with biological parents in married-couple families. The analysis is based on longitudinal reports from more than 1,500 children from Wave 1 of the 1987-1988…

We examine affective closeness, contact, and helping among adult siblings using data for over 1,500 respondents in 2-child families from the National Survey of Families and Households. Using this subsample allows us to investigate differences by gender of respondent and of individual siblings using a nationally representative sample. We find that…

Cohabiting couples and couples who cohabit prior to marriage have less stable relationships than married couples who did not cohabit, and these differences in stability may be linked to different processes within the relationships. This research examines the similarity of partners' beliefs about the division of household labor using the National…

Using the 1987-88 National Survey of Families and Households, this research examines normative beliefs about marriage and cohabitation among non-Latino whites, Mexican Americans, and mainland Puerto Ricans. Results indicate Mexican Americans tend to be more pronuptial than non-Latino whites. They evaluate marriage more positively relative to…