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Based on 424 qualitative interviews with a racially, ethnically, and socio-economically diverse population of young people ranging in age from 21 to 38, the authors ponder the paradox of the evolving role for contemporary marriage within the developmental perspective of the transition to adulthood. The authors identify two groups: marriage naturalists and marriage planners. "Naturalists" comprise one fifth of the sample, are largely from rural America, and follow the fast-track into marriage that defined the mid-twentieth century. "Planners" comprise the remainder of the sample, are based in metropolitan areas, and follow an elongated transition to adulthood. The authors examine the views of each group on commitment and the nature of relationships, and apply their findings to the debates about whether marriage is resilient, in decline, or becoming deinstitutionalized. (Contains 1 table.)

Support of family members has been a long-standing interest of social scientists. Contemporary American families must provide support to members in a historical context wherein family inequality continues to rise. Based on the life course perspective, and utilizing qualitative, in-depth interviews with 50 multi-generational participants from the Family Exchanges Study, this article explores the mechanisms through which families across the socioeconomic spectrum engage in and perceive family support. We discuss both direct and indirect requests by family members for help and identify differences by family socioeconomic status. We also discuss how issues of reciprocity, views toward request propriety, and perceptions of appreciation guide family member responses to need. We argue that this cross-class comparison is particularly essential to further scholarly understands of family functioning and support amidst growing inequality in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, based on three waves of qualitative data with middle-income families outside of Philadelphia, explores how families deal with the challenge of financing postsecondary education over time. Because of economic setbacks, these families adopt a variety of financial maneuvers to support their young adult children's postsecondary educational plans. In particular, families are driven to sacrifice familial savings accounts and retirement funds, take on significant student loan burdens, and downgrade children's college plans to cheaper, often less prestigious, options. These results highlight the financial vulnerability of families in the middle of the income distribution and the complicated relationship between family economics and postsecondary educational plans for children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]