David Popenoe
1. Marriage benefits men much
more than women.
Contrary to earlier and widely publicized reports, recent research
finds men
and women to benefit about equally from marriage, although in
different
ways. Both men and women live longer, happier, healthier and
wealthier lives
when they are married. Husbands typically gain greater
health benefits
while wives gain greater financial advantages.
2. Having children typically brings a married
couple closer together and
increases marital happiness.
Many studies have shown that the arrival of the first baby commonly
has the
effect of pushing the mother and father farther apart, and bringing
stress
to the marriage. However, couples with children have a slightly
lower rate
of divorce than childless couples.
3. The keys to long-term marital success are good
luck and romantic love.
Rather than luck and love, the most common reasons couples give
for their
long-term marital success are commitment and companionship.
They define
their marriage as a creation that has taken hard work, dedication
and
commitment (to each other and to the institution of marriage).
The happiest
couples are friends who share lives and are compatible in interests
and
values.
4. The more educated a woman becomes, the lower
are her chances of getting married.
A recent study based on marriage rates in the mid-1990s concluded
that
today's women college graduates are more likely to marry than
their
non-college peers, despite their older age at first marriage.
This is a
change from the past, when women with more education were less
likely to
marry.
5. Couples who live together before marriage,
and are thus able to test
how well suited they are for each other, have more satisfying
and
longer-lasting marriages than couples who do not.
Many studies have found that those who live together before marriage
have
less satisfying marriages and a considerably higher chance of
eventually
breaking up. One reason is that people who cohabit may
be more skittish of
commitment and more likely to call it quits when problems arise.
But in
addition, the very act of living together may lead to attitudes
that make
happy marriages more difficult. The findings of one recent study,
for
example, suggest "there may be less motivation for cohabiting
partners to
develop their conflict resolution and support skills." (One
important
exception: cohabiting couples who are already planning to marry
each other
in the near future have just as good a chance at staying together
as couples
who don't live together before marriage).
6. People can't be expected to stay in a marriage
for a lifetime as they
did in the past because we live so much longer today.
Unless our comparison goes back a hundred years, there is no
basis for this
belief. The enormous increase in longevity is due mainly to a
steep
reduction in infant mortality. And while adults today can expect
to live a
little longer than their grandparents, they also marry at a later
age. The
life span of a typical, divorce-free marriage, therefore, has
not changed
much in the past fifty years. Also, many couples call it quits
long before
they get to a significant anniversary: half of all divorces take
place by
the seventh year of a marriage. 6
7. Marrying puts a woman at greater risk of domestic
violence than if she
remains single.
Contrary to the proposition that for men "a
marriage license is a hitting
license," a large body of research shows that being unmarried
that married women may significantly underreport domestic violence.
Further,
women are less likely to marry and more likely to divorce a man
who is
violent. Yet it is probably also the case that married men are
less likely
to commit domestic violence because they are more invested in
their wives'
well-being, and more integrated into the extended family and
community. These
social forces seem to help check men's violent behavior.
8. Married people have less satisfying sex lives,
and less sex, than
single people.
According to a large-scale national study,
married people have both more and
better sex than do their unmarried counterparts. Not only
do they have sex
more often but they enjoy it more, both physically and emotionally.
9. Cohabitation is just like marriage, but
without "the piece of paper."
Cohabitation typically does not bring the benefits
married couples. This is due, in part, to the fact that cohabitants
tend not
to be as committed as married couples, and they are more oriented
toward
their own personal autonomy and less to the well-being of their
partner.
10. Because of the high divorce rate, which weeds out
the unhappy
marriages, people who stay married have happier marriages than
people did in the past when everyone stuck it out, no matter
how bad the marriage.
According to what people have reported in several large national
surveys,
the general level of happiness in marriages has not increased
and probably
has declined slightly. Some studies have found in recent
marriages,
compared to those of twenty or thirty years ago, significantly
more
work-related stress, more marital conflict and less marital interaction.