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This qualitative study explores assumptions of family scholars who draw on age heterogamy and marriage-gradient approaches to suggest that marriages between older husbands and much younger wives are likely to be male-dominated, with traditional gender arrangements. Drawing on resource theory and marital power perspectives, we analyze the life histories, psychosocial understandings, and day-to-day arrangements of both partners in eight husband-older marriages to uncover their unique features. We present four cases with distinct dynamics to suggest that future research needs to consider that (a) husbands’ older age does not automatically translate into male dominance and rigid gender arrangements; (b) when combined with additional forms of heterogamy, such as racial status, social class, occupational prestige, and education, age heterogamy is likely to be associated with male dominance; (c) men can experience a shift toward more marital sharing and androgyny upon remarriage to a younger woman; and (d) gender arrangements in husband-older marriages can undergo major shifts across the life course.

Using a national sample of Christians, this study compared interchurch and same-church respondents on several relationship variables and explored possible predictors of marital satisfaction. Interchurch and same-church respondents were not different on marital satisfaction or other nonreligious relationship variables but were different on several religious relationship variables. The relationship between marital satisfaction and religious heterogamy was dependent on how religious heterogamy was operationalized. Communication was the most important predictor of marital satisfaction for both interchurch and same-church respondents. Parenting variables were also predictive of marital satisfaction for both interchurch and same-church respondents.

This study addresses two questions: Do religiously dissimilar couples argue more often than other couples? Are religious differences among partners associated with arguments concerning particular issues? We investigate these issues using data on 2,945 co-residing, first-time married couples from Wave 1 of the National Survey of Families and Households. Denominational homo/heterogamy, measured in several different ways, has little bearing on the frequency or types of marital disagreements. Men's religious attendance is inversely related to the overall frequency of disputes and to disagreements over housework, money, how time is spent, and sex, whereas women's attendance is not. Attendance (dis)similarities among partners are positively associated with the overall frequency of conflicts. Theological disparities between partners are linked with more frequent conflicts overall and also with disagreements over household labor and finances. Several implications and promising directions for future research are discussed.

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.

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.

Data from a representative sample of 1,070 married Protestants and Catholics were used to examine the relationship between religious homogamy and marital happiness. Although couples may vary in the extent to which they share religious views (e.g., beliefs, values), previous research has treated religious homogamy as a dichotomy; a couple is either homogamous or it is not. A partial explanation for this is that few studies have gone beyond the broad divisions of Protestant, Catholic, and Jew. In the present study religious bodies were classified on the basis of doctrine and ritual, yielding six categories: Baptist, Calvinist, Catholic, fundamentalist, Lutheran, and Methodist. These categories were then used to develop a measure of estimated “religious distance” or degrees of heterogamy. This measure was used to test the hypothesis that the larger the religious distance or disparity, the greater the likelihood of unhappiness with the marriage. The hypothesis was supported by the data.