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An analysis of differences in marital status in depressive symptoms, to examine the influence of race/ethnicity and sex, confirms that the separated and divorced exhibit higher levels of depression and lower levels of distress, respectively. Differences were insignificant among Mexican Americans and blacks. Married black women exhibited higher levels of distress than their never-married counterparts.

In this paper, we examine ethnic differences in divorce likelihood for a sample of 900 divorce petitions filed in San Antonio, Texas, during 1985. The present study explores ethnic differences in the nature of the divorce process and examines the extent to which observed ethnic differences in divorce likelihood are accounted for by differences between groups in dimensions such as socioeconomic status, marital history, and nature of complaints. Divorce likelihood is viewed from the perspective of Levinger's (1965) exchange model of marital instability, as recently applied to the phenomenon of divorce petition withdrawal by Kitson et al. (1983). Observed differences between Spanish surname and non-Spanish surname petitions in divorce likelihood and divorce delay are largely explained by controls for background and exchange model variables. Significant interaction effects with ethnicity suggest the complexity of the divorce process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]