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This report investigates future trends in marriage and the family. The project was started because of the revolutionary changes in marriage and family life in the Netherlands since about 1965 (Chapter 1). A brief review of the history of marriage and the family shows that the characteristics and functions of this institution have changed considerably with time. A search of the scientific literature on the future of marriage and the family shows a need for well founded research on future trends in marriage and the family as a whole (Chapter 2). Experts were consulted to study the future of marriage and the family, and results were processed by the Delphi method, developed in research on the future.Chapter 4 discusses the merits and shortcomings of research on the future in general, specially by the Delphi method.Research was concentrated on the following questions: (Chapter 3)1. What changes did the selected experts expect in marriage and the family in the next fifteen years? (to about 1990)2. What factors influenced to the experts' opinion the changes in marriage and the family?3. What changes did the experts want in marriage and the family in the next fifteen years?4. To what extent did the experts' field of expertise and personal values in fluence their expectations and desires for changes?The concept of expert was defined widely in this research, namely persons who are professionally strongly involved in marriage and the family in view of their publications, their field of activity or other things. The experts were consulted in two rounds, each time by a mailed questionnaire. The purpose of the second round was to clarify and deepen the results from the first round. Respondents in the first round were 155 and in the second 126 persons from four sectors of society and from eleven scientific disciplines. Respondents from the four sectors of society were scientists, field workers, policy makers and opinion formers. The data were collected in the period from the end

In this study the matter of mate selection at marriage in the Netherlands has been raised. Apart from a literature study this study has been based on two field surveys carried out in March and April 1976. The problem dealt with in this report has been formulated as follows: has a change appeared in successing generations in the Netherlands in the complex of factors and/or the power of relations within the complex of factors which influence mate selection and what are the consequences of this eventual change for the theory building about mate selection. Within this framework 21 hypotheses have been put to the test. These hypotheses are partly based on existing literature.In the first chapter the most important concepts emerging from literature about mate selection have been treated. The central idea has been formed by homogamy. In this chapter homogamy has been related to geographic propinquity, racial and ethnic background, religious denomination, level of education and social class. Moreover the incest-taboo and a number of psychological theories have briefly been treated. Also some general theories concerning mate selection have been dealt with. In the final part of this chapter mating and dating behaviour and the first meeting have been discussed. With regard to mating and dating behaviour the matter of marriage bureaus (in 1981: about 9.000 candidates registered at bona fide bureaus) has also been investigated and so has the phenomenon of marriage advertisements. With regard to the first meeting, the geographic propinquity has been treated next to the cause of this meeting.On setting up the inquiry (chapter 2) three conditions had to be fulfilled:a. questioning of the marriage partners has to happen in such a way that mutual influencing was avoided as much as possible; b. couples from the marriage cohorts 1972, 1973, 1974 and 1975 had to be questioned (field survey March 1976);c. questioning of the parents of the marriage partners who had been asked in the first

HUSBANDS AND WIVES OF PSYCHIATRIC PATIENTS: a study of differences pertaining to (marital) experiences and psychological well-being.SUMMARYThe present study has been designed in order to explain differences in psychological well-being between husbands and wives of psychiatric outpatients, found in preceding investigations. Chapter 1 contains an introduction to the study and the outline of the report. In chapter 2 the literature m general sex-differences in psychological wellbeing is reviewed as well as that on the correspondence on psychological distress between husbands and wives. The explanations for the sex-differences can be divided roughly into two models. in the first one, which starts from sex- differences in socialization, it is assumed, that women are better trained than men to discern and express emotions. There is more cultural acceptance of psychological difficulties when expressed by females than when expressed by males. Therefore women will sooner be inclined to report psychological symptoms. The second explanation contradicts the first by noting that the overrepresentation of women on psychological symptons is mainly caused by married women whereas among the never married, males report more feelings of distress than females. According to this explanation, it is the difference between the traditional social roles of married men and women that accounts for the higher rate of married women with symptoms of psychological distress. Compared to their husbands wives occupy fewer social positions, experience less variation, receive fewer structural reinforcements, and are psychologically more dependent on their marital and family lives. Consequently married women have less opportunities to compensate for stressful events with satisfaction derived from a job or from social contacts with colleagues: life areas less bound to the nuclear family. This implies that the risk of boredam and of dissatisfactory conditions of life is higher for married women From a role