Each other
The Role of Paternity Presumption and Custodial Rights for Understanding Marriage Patterns
Lena Edlund
Economica, October 2013, Pages 650–669
Abstract:
In marriage, men obtain and women surrender parental rights because: (i) by default, an unmarried woman giving birth is the child's only known parent and sole custodian; (ii) a married mother shares custody with her husband and the presumed father; (iii) custody allocation in marriage is fixed; (iv) private contracts on rights over children amount to trade in children and have limited legal validity. As a result: (i) women, not men, marry up; (ii) higher income has opposite effects on men's and women's willingness to marry; (iii) out-of-wedlock fertility results when trade is not feasible.
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Gone to war: Have deployments increased divorces?
Sebastian Negrusa, Brighita Negrusa & James Hosek
Journal of Population Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Owing to the armed conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, members of the US military have experienced very high rates of deployment overseas. Because military personnel have little to no control over their deployments, the military setting offers a unique opportunity to study the causal effect of major disruptions on marital dissolution. In this paper, we use longitudinal individual-level administrative data from 1999 to 2008 and find that an additional month in deployment increases the divorce hazard of military families, with females being more affected. A standard conceptual framework of marital formation and dissolution predicts a differential effect of these types of shocks depending on the degree to which they are anticipated when a couple gets married. Consistent with this prediction, we find a larger effect for couples married before 9/11, who clearly expected a lower risk of deployment than what they faced post 9/11.
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Cohort Trends in Premarital First Births: What Role for the Retreat From Marriage?
Paula England, Lawrence Wu & Emily Fitzgibbons Shafer
Demography, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine cohort trends in premarital first births for U.S. women born between 1920 and 1964. The rise in premarital first births is often argued to be a consequence of the retreat from marriage, with later ages at first marriage resulting in more years of exposure to the risk of a premarital first birth. However, cohort trends in premarital first births may also reflect trends in premarital sexual activity, premarital conceptions, and how premarital conceptions are resolved. We decompose observed cohort trends in premarital first births into components reflecting cohort trends in (1) the age-specific risk of a premarital conception taken to term; (2) the age-specific risk of first marriages not preceded by such a conception, which will influence women’s years of exposure to the risk of a premarital conception; and (3) whether a premarital conception is resolved by entering a first marriage before the resulting first birth (a “shotgun marriage”). For women born between 1920–1924 and 1945–1949, increases in premarital first births were primarily attributable to increases in premarital conceptions. For women born between 1945–1949 and 1960–1964, increases in premarital first births were primarily attributable to declines in responding to premarital conceptions by marrying before the birth. Trends in premarital first births were affected only modestly by the retreat from marriages not preceded by conceptions — a finding that holds for both whites and blacks. These results cast doubt on hypotheses concerning “marriageable” men and instead suggest that increases in premarital first births resulted initially from increases in premarital sex and then later from decreases in responding to a conception by marrying before a first birth.
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Spousal Health Effects - the Role of Selection
James Banks, Elaine Kelly & James Smith
NBER Working Paper, September 2013
Abstract:
In this paper, we investigate the issue of partner selection in the health of individuals who are at least fifty years old in England and the United States. We find a strong and positive association in family background variables including education of partners and their parents. Adult health behaviors such as smoking, drinking, and exercise are more positively associated in England compared to the United States. Childhood health indicators are also positively associated across partners. We also investigated pre and post partnership smoking behavior of couples. There exists strong positive assortative mating in smoking in that smokers are much more likely to partner with smokers and non-smokers with non-smokers. This relationship is far stronger in England compared to the United States. In the United States, we find evidence of asymmetric partner influence in smoking in that men’s pre marriage smoking behavior influences his female partner’s post marriage smoking behavior but there does not appear to be a parallel influence of women’s pre-marriage smoking on their male partner’s post-marital smoking. These relationships are much more parallel across genders in England.
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Effrosyni Adamopoulou
Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
We establish new empirical facts, in line with the recent theoretical literature on infidelity. Infidelity displays seasonality and state dependence. In the U.S. socioeconomic status is not a driver of infidelity and females and males are equally likely to be unfaithful.
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Differential infidelity patterns among the Dark Triad
Daniel Jones & Dana Weiser
Personality and Individual Differences, forthcoming
Abstract:
The Dark Triad traits (Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism) are overlapping but distinctive. Although all three traits have been independently linked to relationship infidelity, differences among the traits may exist when examined simultaneously. Moreover, consequences resulting from infidelity have not been explored. A large retrospective survey found that all three traits correlated with reporting an infidelity at some point in a current (or most recent) relationship. Among women, however, only psychopathy and Machiavellianism were unique predictors of infidelity, whereas only psychopathy uniquely predicted infidelity among men. However, infidelity committed by psychopathic individuals led to relationship dissolution, whereas infidelity committed by Machiavellian individuals did not. These findings suggest mindset and long-term goals impact situations to create differences in Dark Triad destructive relationship behaviors.
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Amy Bilderbeck et al.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
Depression frequently involves disrupted inter-personal relationships, while treatment with serotonergic anti-depressants can interfere with libido and sexual function. However, little is known about how serotonin activity influences appraisals of intimate partnerships. Learning more could help to specify how serotonergic mechanisms mediate social isolation in psychiatric illness. Forty-four healthy heterosexual adults, currently in romantic relationships, received 8 days treatment with the selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor citalopram (N = 21; 10 male) or placebo (N = 23; 12 male). Participants viewed photographs of unknown, heterosexual couples and made a series of judgements about their relationships. Participants also indicated the importance of relationship features in their own close partnerships, and close partnerships generally. Citalopram reduced the rated quality of couples’ physical relationships and the importance attributed to physical and intimate aspects of participants’ own relationships. In contrast, citalopram also enhanced the evaluated worth of mutual trust in relationships. Amongst males, citalopram was associated with judgements of reduced turbulence and bickering in others’ relationships, and increased male dominance. These data constitute preliminary evidence that enhancing serotonin activity modulates cognitions about sexual activity as part of a re-appraisal of sources of value within close intimate relationships, enhancing the judged importance of longer-term benefits of trust and shared experiences.
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The Effect of Endogamous Marriage: Evidence from Exogenous Variation in Immigrant Flows During 1900-1930 in the United States
Ho-Po Crystal Wong
University of Washington Working Paper, September 2013
Abstract:
Positive assortative matching in marriage in terms of traits like ethnicity, race and personality has been prevalent in marital formation. This paper aims to estimate the impact of endogamous marriage on a variety of household outcomes by using the exogenous variation in immigrant flows in the United States during the period 1900-1930 to disentangle the selection effect of partners. The major finding is that marriage of the same ethnic background generates positive effects on the number of children in households, home ownership and reduces the labor supply of wives. The OLS results appear to substantially bias downward. This provides indirect evidence that intermarried couples are compensated by other unobservable traits in mating that generate marital surplus. The positive sorting effect will be severely underestimated without isolating such selection effect. The results also suggest that interracially married couples tend to have worse family outcomes in terms of home ownership and child-rearing. This provides justification for the strong separation in marriage along the European and non-European dividing line.
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Cyclical Cohabitation Among Unmarried Parents in Fragile Families
Lenna Nepomnyaschy & Julien Teitler
Journal of Marriage and Family, October 2013, Pages 1248–1265
Abstract:
Building on past research suggesting that cohabitation is an ambiguous family form, the authors examined an understudied residential pattern among unmarried parents: cyclical cohabitation, in which parents have multiple cohabitation spells with each other. Using 9 years of panel data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 2,084), they found that 10% of all parents with nonmarital births and nearly a quarter of those living together when the child is 9 years old are cyclical cohabitors. Cyclically cohabiting mothers reported more material hardships than mothers in most other relationship patterns but also reported more father involvement with children. On all measures of child well-being except grade retention, children of cyclically cohabiting parents fared no worse than children of stably cohabiting biological parents and did not differ significantly from any other group.
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Education and Cohabitation in Britain: A Return to Traditional Patterns?
Máire Ní Bhrolcháin & Éva Beaujouan
Population and Development Review, September 2013, Pages 441–458
Abstract:
Cohabitation is sometimes thought of as being inversely associated with education, but in Britain a more complex picture emerges. Educational group differences in cohabitation vary by age, time period, cohort, and indicator used. Well-educated women pioneered cohabitation in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s. In the most recent cohorts, however, the less educated have exceeded the best educated in the proportions ever having cohabited at young ages. But the main difference by education currently seems largely a matter of timing — that is, the less educated start cohabiting earlier than the best educated. In Britain, educational differentials in cohabitation appear to be reinstating longstanding social patterns in the level and timing of marriage. Taking partnerships as a whole, social differentials have been fairly stable. Following a period of innovation and diffusion, there is much continuity with the past.
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The Effect of Self-control on Willingness to Sacrifice in Close Relationships
Matthew Findley, Mauricio Carvallo & Christopher Bartak
Self and Identity, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous research has identified that willingness to sacrifice promotes romantic relationship maintenance. In addition, research has identified relationship-specific factors that promote sacrifice. However, research has neglected to examine the importance of non-relationship-specific factors (e.g., self-control) in sacrifice. The current research examined the possibility (and found evidence) that self-control underlies sacrifice. In Study 1, trait self-control was associated with willingness to sacrifice in a series of hypothetical scenarios, even after controlling for established relationship-specific correlates of sacrifice. In Study 2, romantically involved individuals, who had previously been depleted of self-control resources, were less able to make major sacrifices. Thus, self-control is important for romantic individuals' ability to sacrifice.
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Widowhood Effects in Voter Participation
William Hobbs, Nicholas Christakis & James Fowler
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Past research suggests that spouses influence one another to vote, but it relies almost exclusively on correlation in turnout. It is therefore difficult to establish whether spouses mobilize each other or tend to marry similar others. Here, we test the dependency hypothesis by examining voting behavior before and after the death of a spouse. We link nearly six million California voter records to Social Security death records and use both coarsened exact matching and multiple cohort comparison to estimate the effects of spousal loss. The results show that after turnout rates stabilize, widowed individuals vote nine percentage points fewer than they would had their spouse still been living; the results also suggest that this change may persist indefinitely. Variations in this “widowhood effect” on voting support a social-isolation explanation for the drop in turnout.
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Ivana Anusic & Richard Lucas
Journal of Personality, forthcoming
Objective: The idea that strong social relationships can buffer the negative effects of stress on well-being has received much attention in existing literature. However, previous studies have used less than ideal research designs to test this hypothesis, making it difficult to draw firm conclusions regarding these buffering effects. In this study we examined the buffering hypothesis in the context of reaction and adaptation to widowhood in three large longitudinal datasets.
Method: We tested whether social relationships moderated reaction and adaptation to widowhood in samples of people who experienced loss of spouse from three longitudinal datasets of nationally representative samples from Germany (N = 1,195), Britain (N = 562), and Australia (N = 298).
Results: We found no evidence that social relationships established before widowhood buffered either reaction or adaptation to death of one's spouse. Similarly, social relationships that were in place during the first year of widowhood did not help widows and widowers recover from this difficult event.
Conclusions: Social relationships acquired prior to widowhood, or those available in early stages of widowhood do not appear to explain individual differences in adaptation to loss.
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Lee Gettler et al.
Hormones and Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Testosterone (T) is thought to help facilitate trade-offs between mating and parenting in humans. Across diverse cultural settings married men and fathers have lower T than other men and couples’ sexual activity often declines during the first years of marriage and after having children. It is unknown whether these behavioral and hormonal changes are related. Here we use longitudinal data from a large study in the Philippines (n = 433) to test this model. We show that among unmarried non-fathers at baseline (n = 153; age: 21.5 ± 0.3 y) who became newly married new fathers by follow-up (4.5 y later), those who experienced less pronounced longitudinal declines in T reported more frequent intercourse with their partners at follow-up (p < 0.01) compared to men with larger declines in T. Controlling for duration of marriage, findings were similar for men transitioning from unmarried to married (without children) (p < 0.05). Men who remained unmarried and childless throughout the study period did not show similar T-sexual activity outcomes. Among newly married new fathers, subjects who had frequent intercourse both before and after the transition to married fatherhood had more modest declines in T compared to peers who had less frequent sex (p < 0.001). Our findings are generally consistent with theoretical expectations and cross-species empirical observations regarding the role of T in male life history trade-offs, particularly in species with bi-parental care, and add to evidence that T and sexual activity have bidirectional relationships in human males.
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Inna Schneiderman et al.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
Empathic communication between couples plays an important role in relationship quality and individual well-being and research has pointed to the role of oxytocin in providing the neurobiological substrate for pair-bonding and empathy. Here we examined links between genetic variability on the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) and empathic behavior at the initiation of romantic love. Allelic variations on five OXTR single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) previously associated with susceptibility to disorders of social functioning were genotyped in 120 new lovers: OXTRrs13316193, rs2254298, rs1042778, rs2268494, and rs2268490. Cumulative genetic risk was computed by summing risk alleles on each SNP. Couples were observed in support-giving interaction and behavior was coded for empathic communication, including affective congruence, maintaining focus on partner, acknowledging partner's distress, reciprocal exchange, and non-verbal empathy. Hierarchical Linear Modeling indicated that individuals with high OXTR risk exhibited difficulties in empathic communication. OXTR risk predicted empathic difficulties above and beyond the couple level, relationship duration, and anxiety and depressive symptoms. Findings underscore the involvement of oxytocin in empathic behavior during the early stages of social affiliation, and suggest the utility of cumulative risk and plasticity indices on the OXTR as potential biomarkers for research on disorders of social dysfunction and the neurobiology of empathy.
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Sex differences in jealousy over Facebook activity
Francis McAndrew & Sahil Shah
Computers in Human Behavior, November 2013, Pages 2603–2606
Abstract:
Forty heterosexual undergraduate students (24 females, 16 males) who were currently in a romantic relationship filled out a modified version of The Facebook Jealousy questionnaire (Muise, Christofides, & Desmarais, 2009). The questionnaire was filled out twice, once with the participant’s own personal responses, and a second time with what each participant imagined that his/her romantic partner’s responses would be like. The data indicated that females were more prone to Facebook-evoked feelings of jealousy and to jealousy-motivated behavior than males. Males accurately predicted these sex differences in response to the jealousy scale, but females seemed unaware that their male partners would be less jealous than themselves.
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Sarah Gomillion & Sandra Murray
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
High and low self-esteem people typically have divergent responses to interpersonal risk. Highs draw closer to their partner, whereas lows self-protectively distance. However, these responses should be more likely when people are dependent on the rewards their partner offers. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that structural changes in the situation of interdependence lead high and low self-esteem people to reverse their typical responses to risk. When partners were instrumental to a current goal pursuit (and participants were more dependent on the rewards partners could offer), highs drew closer and lows distanced when risk was primed. However, when partners were not instrumental to an active goal (and participants were less dependent on the rewards partners could offer), these responses were reversed. Reducing one’s dependence on a partner to attain one’s personal goals appears to reduce highs’ incentive to connect, whereas it appears to increase lows’ incentive to connect.
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“Tell me I'm sexy...and otherwise valuable”: Body valuation and relationship satisfaction
Andrea Meltzer & James McNulty
Personal Relationships, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although extant research demonstrates that body valuation by strangers has negative implications for women, Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that body valuation by a committed male partner is positively associated with women's relationship satisfaction when that partner also values them for their nonphysical qualities, but negatively associated with women's relationship satisfaction when that partner is not committed or does not value them for their nonphysical qualities. Study 3 demonstrates that body valuation by a committed female partner is negatively associated with men's relationship satisfaction when that partner does not also value them for their nonphysical qualities but unassociated with men's satisfaction otherwise. These findings join others demonstrating that fully understanding the implications of interpersonal processes requires considering the interpersonal context.
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Kathryn Olson
Quarterly Journal of Speech, forthcoming
Abstract:
This criticism analyzes one epideictic dimension of Disney's Beauty and the Beast to demonstrate how the film's combination of sophisticated rhetorical strategies might cultivate a romanticized understanding of and tolerance toward intimate partner violence among inter-generational audiences. The film departs from earlier legend versions by focusing exclusively on the romantic arc and introducing various kinds of violence and new characters to exercise, interpret, and accommodate that violence. Pivotal to this particular epideictic dimension's operation are Beast's violent acts toward Belle relative to Gaston's violence toward her, adult characters minimizing, justifying, or romanticizing in the presence of a child character the repeated signs of intimate partner violence, and those adults' efforts to facilitate a romance in spite of Beast's violence and Belle's reluctance. Disney featuring child character Chip, with his questions about romance and front-row seat to the title characters' relationship (including violent episodes that resonate with the phases of Walker's Cycle Theory of Violence), underscores a coherent ideology explaining, on the approving community's behalf, the troubling intersection of violence and romance and (unintentionally, yet powerfully) endorsing that ideology's socially conservative, individualistic prescriptions for handling it.