Tim B. Heaton

Religious influence on marital stability.

Researchers frequently postulate a strong relationship between religiosity and marital stability. We incorporate a multidimensional specification of religiosity into event-history models of the religion-marital stability relationship. Results are based on panel data from the National Survey of Families and Households (N = 4,587 married couples). While no single dimension of religiosity adequately describes the effect of religious experience on marital stability, the frequency of religious attendance has the greatest positive impact on marital stability. When both spouses attend church regularly, the couple has the lowest risk of divorce. Spouse differences in church attendance increase the risk of dissolution. All significant religious affiliation influences disappear once demographic characteristics are controlled. The wifes religious beliefs concerning marital commitment and nonmarital sex are more important to the stability of the marriage than the husbands beliefs.

Factors Contributing to Increasing Marital Stability in the United States

Results from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth indicate that marriages contracted after 1980 are becoming more stable. This article examines several individual characteristics in search of an explanation for increasing stability. A person-year file is created and logistic regression is used to determine which covariates account for the negative effect of year in a model predicting the likelihood of marital dissolution. Increasing experience of premarital sex, premarital birth, cohabitation, and racial and religious heterogamy are detracting from marital stability. However, rising age at marriage and, to a lesser degree, increased education are associated with increasing marital stability. These latter effects more than counterbalance the factors associated with instability leading to an overall decline in the rate of marital dissolution.

The Effects of Religious Homogamy on Marital Satisfaction and Stability

Previous studies have indicated a relationship between religious homogamy and marital satisfaction and stability. However, most have emphasized denominational affiliation only. Using loglinear analysis of national survey data, this study tested the effects of three types of religious homogamy - namely denominational affiliation, church attendance, and belief in the Bible - upon marital satisfaction and stability. Results indicated that denominational affiliation homogamy is the most critical, with church attendance homogamy contributing slightly to marital success. Similar beliefs about the Bible did not have a statistically significant association with either marital satisfaction or marital stability.

Persistence and change in decisions to remain childless

Numerous researchers have examined the incidence, correlates, and predictors of childlessness. Few, however, have examined changes in intended childlessness because the longitudinal data required to track these changes are rare. We utilize the National Survey of Families and Households to examine trends in intentions to remain childless. We include both demographic and ideational variables in the analysis, and we focus on respondents between the ages of 19 and 39 years who had not had children at the beginning of the study. The largest group wants children but still postpone childbearing. The next largest group carries out their intention to have children. The third largest group switches from wanting children to not wanting children. Some are consistently childless in both surveys. Finally, a relatively small group did not intend to have a child in the first survey but subsequently had a child. Marital status is the most salient predictor for having children, but cohabitors also are more likely to have children than are single noncohabitors. Rates of childlessness in the United States have varied substantially over the past several decades. Morgan (1991), for example, reports that census data show slightly over 15% of White women born in the mid-1880s remained childless. This childless rate increased to over 25% of women born in 1910 who reached normal childbearing age during the Depression. The percentage then dropped dramatically to about 10% of White women born in 1935 who reached childbearing age during the baby boom. Since then, the rate has increased again, with a projected childless rate of 22% for women born in 1962 (Morgan & Chen, 1992). Non-White women experienced a similar increase in childlessness during the Depression and a similar decline during the baby boom, but they have not participated in the post-baby boom rise in childlessness to the extent that White women have (Chen & Morgan, 1991.) These fluctuations indicate that potential parents do respond to economic and social conditions, even when modern and efficient contraception is not available. (See also May, 1995, and Friedman, Hechter, & Kanazawa, 1994.) Because demographers have been concerned with population growth arising from high fertility, their explanations for why people have children are designed to explain fertility decline. Such theories provide incomplete explanations for fertility decline during demographic transition (Mason, 1997) and are even less satisfactory in accounting for the persistence of childbearing in highly developed societies (Schoen, Young, Nathanson, Fields, & Astone, 1997). New approaches to understanding why people continue to have children have been suggested (Axinn & Thornton, 1996; Friedman et al., 1994; Rovi; 1994). Given recent increases in childlessness, these new approaches also should be able to account for the decision not to have children. We examine factors related to persistence and change in decisions to remain childless. The general trends in childlessness that we have noted combine both the infertile (or involuntarily childless) and the voluntarily childless. Though such trends reflect and affect the overall structure and composition of society, the rate of involuntary childlessness has declined as a result of better health and a general decrease in sterility caused by sexually transmitted diseases. Voluntary childlessness, on the other hand, reflects the choices of potential parents and has varied substantially by period and cohort. By all accounts, voluntary childlessness has increased in recent decades. We develop and test a model of persistence and change in voluntary childlessness. EXPLANATIONS FOR VOLUNTARY CHILDLESSNESS Prevailing theories of voluntary childlessness have tended to emphasize either a rational choice approach, focusing on the costs and benefits of having children, or ideational approaches, focusing more on values and norms. …

Marital Stability Throughout the Child-Rearing Years

Although there is evidence that the number and ages of children influence marital stability, studies have not systematically tracked the risk of marital disruption throughout the child-rearing years. This study uses marital and fertility histories from the June 1985 Current Population Survey to examine this issue. Continuous-time regression models with ages and numbers of children as time-varying covariates are estimated. Net of controls for age at marriage, year of marriage, education, and marital duration, stability increases with family size up to the third child but starts to decline as family size reaches five or more children. Aging of children is disruptive until the youngest child reaches adulthood, after which marriages become much more stable. Arrival and aging of children is an important dynamic with strong implications for marital stability.

Religious Homogamy and Marital Satisfaction Reconsidered.

The relationship between religious homogamy and marital satisfaction is examined utilizing log-linear models. Inclusion of the separate effects of husbands and wifes religion on marital satisfaction allows us to control for the potentially spurious relationship between religious affiliation and marital satisfaction. Results indicate that homogamous marriages are more satisfying. In order to test the hypothesis that dissatisfaction in heterogeneous marriages arises over conflict regarding socialization of children, the presence of children is included. The hypothesis is discounted, since the homogamy effect remains significant. When frequency of religious attendance is included, however, the homogamy effect becomes nonsignificant, suggesting that patterns of religious involvement underlie higher satisfaction within homogamous marriages. In this report the relationship between religious homogamy and marital satisfaction is examined, and possible explanations for that relationship are explored. In one of the most recent analyses of interreligious marriage, Glenn (1982) finds evidence that religiously homogamous marriages are characterized by greater marital happiness than are heterogamous marriages. Males, in particular, reported greater marital satisfaction in homogamous marriages, and the difference in the percentage reporting a high level of marital status between homogamous and heterogamous marriages was statistically significant at the .10 level, even after controlling other factors. The difference for females, however, was not significant. Glenn suggested that the homogamy effect is more salient among men because children generally adopt religious values of their mothers, so that heterogamous marriages are more apt to create conflict between fathers and children than between mothers and children. Implicit in this explanation is the notion that the religious identification of children is a major source of strain in heterogamous marriages.

Initiation of Sexual Activity among Female Adolescents

According to the 1982 National Survey of Family Growth, 46% women aged 15-19 had experienced premarital intercourse. Projections based on this study show that by their 20th birthdays, 70% of all women in the US will have experienced premarital intercourse. This article examines the effects of various factors on the likelihood that teenagers will become sexually active. Data for this study were taken from the National Survey of Family Growth, Cycle III. Fieldwork was done in 1982 and included interviews of 7969 women aged 15-44. Data include background characteristics, measures of fertility and contraception, measures of fecundity and birth expectations, use of family planning services, and the respondents marital history. The study concludes that family stability (intact families), Hispanic ethnicity, high parental education, religious affiliation, regular church attendance, and reproductive education decrease the occurrence of 1st intercourse. Other factors characterize an environment that is unstable and unstructured and has a liberalizing influence upon 1st intercourse. Teens from broken homes, blacks, and the lower social classes are more likely to initiate intercourse. Geographic factors have a very small influence upon the initiation of sexual activity among teens. Similar patterns of influence appear regarding contraceptive use. The same factors that encourage stability, such as high fathers education, Catholic or Jewish religious affiliation, religious attendance, and reproductive instruction shift the odds in favor of contracepted rather than noncontracepted sex. Family instability and low social class increase the risk that 1st intercourse will not be contracepted. Providing too much sex education, such as instruction on birth control, may actually contribute to the leniency of the environment, although the authors find no evidence that school-based birth control instruction increases the chances that contraceptives will be used. Environments that are too restrictive increase the chance that 1st intercourse will be noncontracepted. In sum, adolescents need an environment balanced between the liberal and conservative extremes to reduce the rate of 1st intercourse and to increase the use of contraception at intercourse.

Time-related determinants of marital dissolution.

In this article several dimensions of temporality are identified and their impact on marital dissolution is assessed in a multivariate continuous time model using marital and fertility histories from the June 1985 [U.S.] Current Population Survey. The temporal concepts are timing of prior events historical time duration dependence and selectivity. Results indicate that marital stability is decreasing over time increases over marital duration increases with age at marriage and varies with the arrival and aging of children. (EXCERPT)

Adolescent Life Events and their Association with the Onset of Sexual Intercourse

This study examined the timing of several events marking the transition from adolescence to young adulthood and their correlation with the age at first sexual intercourse. The model included parental disruption, dropping out of school, working, drug use, and dating. Socioeconomic status, gender, and race were included as control variables. Data are taken from the National Survey of Children, a longitudinal study of children ages 7-11 in 1976 who were reinterviewed in 1981 and 1986. Factors associated with first intercourse include age, tobacco use, marijuana use, dating, and parental divorce during the childs adolescent years. Age interacts with dating, working, and the use of illegal substances, and race interacts with dating and dropping out of school in their influence on first intercourse. Other transitions, such as alcohol use, parental divorce before adolescence, and parental marriage, had little influence on first sexual intercourse. Events such as dating appear to increase the risk of first intercourse, while the use of drugs may reflect a set of behaviors that occur simultaneously with sexual initiation. The correlated transitions identify a group of adolescents at risk for early sexual activity.

The Timing of Divorce.

Much analysis of the correlates of divorce fails to take into account the time dependency of this event with respect to marital duration. This paper focuses explicitly on the relationship between independent variables and the timing of divorce. Two competing models are proposed. The adjustment model posits a decline in the effects of covariates as marital duration increases. In contrast, the perpetual problem model states that covariates will continue to influence the likelihood of divorce throughout the duration of the marriage. The effects of wifes age at marriage, husbands age relative to the wifes, wifes religion, and religious homogamy do not appear to diminish over marital duration. Thus, the perpetual problem model better describes the relationship between these variables and the timing of divorce.