by 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.
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 licence is a
hitting licence," a large body of research shows that being unmarried
~ and especially living with a man outside of marriage ~ is associated
with a considerably higher risk of domestic violence for women. One
reason for this finding is 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' wellbeing, and
more integrated into the extended family and community. These social
forces seem to help check men's violent behaviour.
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 ~ in physical
health, wealth, and emotional wellbeing ~ that marriage does. In terms
of these benefits cohabitants in the United States more closely
resemble singles than 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 wellbeing 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.
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