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Unfree people in the Roman world could not legally marry, while they could in the Middle Ages. This paper explores the marriage of the unfree in the Carolingian empire (750–900 CE), a society with an intense moral concern about marriage. Carolingian churchmen wrote extensively about marriage, using a strongly gendered discourse focusing on how men should approach marriage and behave as husbands. However, these moral and legal texts rarely discussed unfree marriage, even though the practice was common. It is argued that this silence reflects the persistence of late antique class‐based gender models, in which masculinity was reserved for married property holders. Although legal prohibitions on unfree marriages had ended, Carolingian moralists continued to be influenced by patristic assumptions that these were not valid relationships. These assumptions, combined with Frankish social practices that largely excluded unfree men from other key male roles, such as arms‐bearing, meant that unfree husbands were not conceptualised as sufficiently 'manly' to have their marriages discussed. It is only from the tenth century onwards, when images of masculinity began to fragment more along lines of social status, that authors began explicitly to state that the Christian ideas of marriage applied to all, free and unfree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The passage of marriage equality in Rhode Island offers insight into the role of organized groups and politicians in policymaking. Despite a Democratic legislature and popular support, marriage equality was initially defeated in 2011, in part due to concentrated opposition from the Catholic Church and the reluctance of Democratic officeholders to confront members of the same party on the issue. In the following primary elections, small interest groups in Rhode Island, with the help of national interest groups, helped raise the salience of marriage equality by campaigning against opponents, resulting in the release of a marriage equality bill from the Senate Judiciary Committee and its subsequent passage in a floor vote. One organized interest was responsible for blocking marriage equality in the legislature's most significant bottleneck and different organized interests were responsible for enabling passage. The passage of marriage equality in Rhode Island shows that interest groups can enable as well as obstruct majority opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's perspective on the gender role in the family and in marriage, through heavily referencing Hegal concept of ethical life and his book "Philosophy of Right." Hegel's philosopher of the family's relationship with civil society and the state, including in role to women's role in preserving the family, is discussed.

In middle‐class Pakistan, marriage is the prescribed future for all women, but premarital contact between the sexes is discouraged. To find the right partner, then, without visibly flouting social norms, requires a skillful balancing act between private interests and aspirations, and between public representations and collective concerns. Young women often navigate these conflicting demands by developing what they call an understanding: a secret premarital relationship that they normalize by involving family at a late stage to orchestrate an arranged marriage. Firmly enmeshed within the social life of joint families, understandings are an instance neither of defying patriarchal norms nor of pursuing self‐cultivation within them. Instead, they offer a window into how young women live and explore new possibilities within the vestiges of normative structures. [love, marriage, desire, morality, consumption, joint family, Lahore, Pakistan] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which explores the life, accomplishments, and works of African American author and activist Alice Dunbar-Nelson. Topics discussed include the way she depicted the vulnerability of women in her anthologies prior to her marriage to poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, the erotic qualities of her fiction which may have been influenced by her romantic relationships, and the social challenges she faced which may be attributed to her married life.

Cet article est consacré aux Principes du Code des Personnes et de la Famille au Mali et à son applicabilité dans le cadre de la célébration du mariage. L’importance de la célébration du mariage n’est plus à démontrer dans la société malienne. Si à un moment donné de l’histoire, c’està-dire sous le régime de la loi n°62-17 ANRM du 03 février 1962 portant Code du Mariage et de la Tutelle (CMT), seul l’officier d’état civil92 était habilité à célébrer le mariage au Mali, avec les exigences de l’heure, une évolution constante a abouti à la célébration par deux (2) autorités. Il s’agit là d’une avancée significative sur le fond dans le droit de la famille au Mali. Le Code des Personnes et de la Famille consacre une parfaite assimilation entre mariages civil et religieux au regard des conditions de leur formation, une similitude des formalités antérieures (publication du projet de mariage, la preuve du mariage). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marriage patterns of the second-generation are gaining greater attention in the US and Europe. The majority of studies so far have concentrated on partner choices and transnational marriages. An interesting case in point concerns Turkish second-generation women in France who marry at a significantly younger age than all their male and female counterparts, a decision often justified along the lines of family taking priority. This article focuses on the marriage decisions of young French women of Turkish origin in Strasbourg, while scrutinizing their experiences in education and at work. Using biographical interviews, I examine the perspectives of young women who do (or do not) have early matrimony in their trajectories. Detailed analysis of the school and work trajectories of these young women shows how marriage can function as an alternative transition pathway into adulthood, providing an understanding of marriage decision that goes beyond cultural essentialist explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the ongoing significance of Pakistani heritage in the lives of young British Pakistani Muslims. Drawing upon interviews with 56 women and men, it explores the link between Pakistani heritage and young peoples' lives, focusing upon marriage. Pakistani heritage is widely regarded as a constraint and an anachronism, which young people are jettisoning in favour of religious or secular identities: as Muslims, British, or both. This is a half-truth, at most. Some young people are turning away from Pakistaniness, but others are embracing and exploring versions and elements of this heritage as they make decisions about whether, when and whom to marry. Whether they are rejecting or embracing Pakistani heritage, young people are actively mobilizing the terms "Pakistan" and "Pakistani" as springboards from which to identify and make life choices. They are exploring possibilities rather than acknowledging inevitabilities, and approaching heritage as a resource rather than a constraint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the marriage patterns of five hundred highly successful women in modern German-speaking Central Europe. Among the women at the very top of their professions, women of Jewish descent were more likely than non-Jewish women to marry while they pursued their careers. The results of our quantitative study—67.6 percent of women of Jewish descent married versus 51.6 percent of non-Jewish women—provide a unique body of data that complements and contributes to other research that identifies distinctive aspects of Central European Jewish life patterns: the high number of Jewish women university students, the importance of women of Jewish descent in a number of fields, and Jewish families as early adopters of a modern family form with a small number of children and intensive investment in each child. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The twenty-first century has witnessed the rise of a new constitutional jurisprudence of marriage which extends the institution of marriage to include same-sex couples in the name of equality, freedom, and dignity, and an accompanying trend of constitutionalizing marital supremacy. Progressive critics have voiced against the constitutional treatment of marriage as the ideal family form, proposing various approaches to promote equality for diverse families. The inequality of single women without children, however, has not yet received the attention that it deserves in the jurisprudence of non-marriage, despite the globally growing phenomenon of women opting out of marriage and other formal unions and living a legally single life. It is argued that the move beyond marriage equality must include the pursuit of single equality, that is, equal citizenship unmediated by marital, relational, family, or parental status. It is suggested that a feminist agenda of single equality is needed even more, and that public laws' active role is required to facilitate single equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the Internet's role in creating new couples continues to expand, now accounting for over a third of recently-formed U.S. couples, its impact on endogamy is increasingly consequential. While there are good reasons to expect greater diversity from online romantic sources, there are also good sociological reasons to predict greater assortativity online. Increases in the rates of interracial and interreligious couples within the U.S. have occurred seemingly in tandem with the rise of online dating, but the evidence connecting online romances and couple heterogeneity have been limited and mixed. Using a unique nationally-representative dataset collected in 2009 and 2017 on how U.S. couples met, and controlling for the diversity of their local geographies, I find that couples who met online are more likely to be interracial, interreligious, and of different college degree status, but also more similar in age. Couples who met online are not more nor less likely to cross political boundaries, however, and not more nor less likely to have educationally different mothers. These exogamy differences can vary by where on the Internet couples met. Population-level estimates suggest that only a small part of the recent changes in couple diversity can be directly attributed to couples meeting online, but there is the potential for more Internet-induced change if it continues to expand as the modal source of romance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent increases in the average age at first marriage have created an extended period during which young adults frequently continue to socialize with friends, even as romantic ties typically become increasingly serious. Nevertheless, little research has focused on some of the challenges associated with navigating these two social worlds simultaneously. The current study expanded the traditional lens of social learning theory to investigate associations between a range of attitudes and behaviors of friends and a serious form of conflict—intimate partner violence (IPV). Analyses relied on structured survey and in-depth interview data from a longitudinal study of a large, diverse sample of male and female respondents followed across the adolescent to adult transition (n = 928). Consistent with prior work, friends' IPV experience was significantly associated with respondents' own IPV perpetration. Yet the social learning perspective we developed highlighted the importance of considering a broader portfolio of friends' characteristics. Controlling for friends' IPV experience and family background: (a) involvement with friends perceived as more liberal in their attitudes toward dating and sexuality and (b) friends' delinquent behavior were both associated with the odds of reporting IPV. Further, longitudinal analyses showed an effect of variability in friends' delinquency on within-individual changes in IPV across the full study period, suggesting that the association is not due solely to an underlying antisocial propensity. In-depth interviews with a subset of respondents (n = 102) corroborate these results, further illuminate underlying mechanisms, and highlight the dynamic aspects of these forms of social involvement during young adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study seeks to understand the ways in which spouses' gender-related attitudes are configured within couples and how such configurations are linked to marital satisfaction in Chinese marriage.Method: Latent profile analysis was conducted using dyadic data from a nationwide large sample of Chinese couples from the China Family Panel Studies (N = 7,257 couples; Myears of marriage = 28.36, SD = 12.84; Mage for wives = 52.38, SD = 12.63; Mage for husbands = 50.51, SD = 12.37).Results: Four profile groups were identified: the "modern female and traditional male" group (MFTM); the "traditional female and modern male" group; the "child-oriented" group; and the "traditional female and traditional male" group. Husbands' and wives' marital satisfaction varied across groups in different patterns (yet all relevant effect sizes were modest). In general, husbands in the congruent group reported higher satisfaction than did those in the incongruent groups, whereas wives in the "MFTM" group reported lower satisfaction than did those in the other groups.Conclusions: Such findings shed light on the understudied heterogeneity that inherently exists in the within-couple patterning of gender-related attitudes and its implications for marital well-being in a Chinese cultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study examines cohort differences in attitudes toward women's roles within marriage in Japan. Background: Japan has undergone dramatic sociocultural shifts in the 20th century that have shaped childhood experiences differently by cohort. Sociodemographic perspectives predict cohort effects, which suggest the lasting impact of experiences during the formative years on attitudes. Method: This study employs a hierarchical age‐period‐cohort analysis and uses repeated cross‐sectional data from the 2000 to 2012 Japanese General Social Survey (N = 31,912), a nationwide probability survey. Results: Among cohorts born before 1960, for both sexes, attitudes toward wife's employment and a gender‐based division of labor were significantly less traditional for later born cohorts. However, younger cohorts born in 1960 and after were not significantly different in their attitudes from the cohort born in the 1950s. Conclusion: This study suggests the strong impact of ideological shifts and mothers' homemaking role (experienced in one's formative years) on gender role attitudes. It points to the important and lasting influence of structural contexts on attitudes and hence cohort effects. Implications: This study contributes to our understanding of attitudinal change (and stagnation) toward gender roles and has policy implications for Japan and other countries characterized by low marriage and fertility rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study examines whether individual health predicts cohabiters' union transitions to marriage in American young adults. Background: Associations between health and subsequent marital transitions are well documented, but less is known about how health influences transitions of cohabiting relationships. As cohabitation has become a common relationship experience, understanding how health may influence cohabiters' union transitions is an important component of how health shapes relationship exposures more broadly. Method: Data were taken from Waves III and IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, including the supplemental collection of relationship partners conducted during Wave III. Competing‐risk regressions for the transition of cohabiting unions to marriage were estimated in two samples: individuals and a smaller sample of cohabiting couples with information from both partners. Results: Healthier cohabiters are more likely to marry than are their less healthy counterparts, but only women's health is significantly associated with the transition to marriage. In the dyadic sample with information from both partners, the significant association between the female partner's health and the transition to marriage is robust to male partner characteristics, including health. Conclusion: Health is an important predictor of cohabitation transitions in early adulthood, but these transitions may only be sensitive to the female partner's health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Jane Austen's work, mobility is very much a gendered activity, with access to mobility and the freedom to move being seen as privileges primarily reserved for men. Although Austen worried about the impact that new forms of mobility were having upon British society, she increasingly recognized mobility as something that women want and need. It is at the heart of her writing, as Austen came to question the ways in which traditional landed conceptions of property and political power kept women in place, affecting their mental and bodily well-being as well as what they could see and know. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the difficulties women in Pakistan face in their access to education, their numbers have been increasing consistently in medical colleges. However, most of the women medical graduates do not go on to practice medicine after graduation. One of the reasons suggested by Pakistani media and society for this increase in the number of women medical graduates is the desirability of women doctors in Pakistan's marriage market. Based on an ethnographic study of Pakistani women doctors, I examine why women doctors are considered desirable as spouses and how this influences women's access to medical education. I found that women doctors are valued as marital partners because of the status granted to them by their academic credentials, chaste educational experience, and potential to contribute to family income. Because of the value of medical education in marriage, parents are more willing to invest in their daughters' education, facilitating women's access to medical education. I also found that, as a way of bargaining with the patriarchy, women doctors accept the social norms of arranged marriage because it allows them access to professional education, economic opportunities, and a better bargaining position in the marriage market. Overall, I found that, unless underlying patriarchal norms are addressed, potentially empowering projects like women's education will be co-opted by the existing structures of domination. I also discuss potential implications for changing marriage patterns and increasing representation of women in Pakistan's medical workforce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the evolution of marriage vows and its incorporation in St. Ignatius of Loyola's Principle and Foundation. Topics discussed include an outline of the late Medieval marriage vows, the search for health in marriage, the language of love in marriage, and the importance of mutual communication.

For marriage promotion interventions to be effective, social policy for increasing other social benefits (e.g., child welfare, family financial self‐sufficiency), they must increase numbers and/or quality of marriages in such a way to produce those other social benefits. Evidence should show that particular interventions (a) produce increases in numbers and/or quality of marriages, (b) produce increases in other benefits, and (c) produce increases in other benefits through the changes in marriages described in (a). There is some evidence that marriage promotion interventions have produced small increases in numbers and quality of marriages, but there is little evidence regarding the extent to which these interventions have produced other intended social benefits. We describe the nature of additional data and analyses that would enable us to determine the extent to which marriage promotion interventions are effective ways to increase other social benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a lifestyle study pertaining to U.S. women in the 1970's. A nationwide study was conducted in 1975 to determine how women viewed themselves in terms of gender roles. Over 50% of the respondents said they preferred a marriage where both the husband and wife would share household responsibilities. The women who preferred this arrangement were more than twice as likely to be working women. The women who said they preferred a more modern definition of the female role said they were more apt to buy sporty automobiles and were more financially optimistic.

Abstract: This article examines the role of anxieties about romantic love in the modernist self‐making projects of Vietnam's growing middle class. Romantic ideals and discourses that emerged from Vietnam's neoliberal reforms emphasize personal compatibility through emotional intimacy and communication. Middle‐class residents of Ho Chi Minh City increasingly privilege the emotions in daily life and define themselves and their relationships in an affective register. This cultivation of emotional self‐reflexivity has, however, become a source of anxiety about the self. An analysis of two case studies traces how individuals draw on their class, gender, and age to negotiate conflicts between various models of love and selfhood and reinvent romantic discourses to claim their own versions of a modern identity. A critical component of both the experience of romantic love and the construction of middle‐class Vietnamese selfhood, love anxiety stems not just from people's changed relations to others but also from a changed perception of the self, which has been rendered unrecognizable to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research based on studies of heterosexual populations suggests that men's health benefits more from marriage than women's, in part because women do more than men to influence the health habits of their spouse. We extend this work by using dyadic survey data from 838 spouses in 419 gay, lesbian, and heterosexual marriages to consider differences in social control tactics across same-sex and different-sex couples-that is, how spouses monitor and regulate each other's health habits. Results suggest that although gender differences in social control are common, gendered patterns sometimes differ depending on whether one is in a same-sex or different-sex marriage. Results also point to the importance of health habits as strong drivers of relationship dynamics across gay and lesbian as well as heterosexual marriages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1957, Elizabeth Bott argued that the organization of family and social networks are intertwined and that the structure and composition of social networks are associated with the ways in which spouses divide household and paid labor. While this idea became a classic in the literature addressing the division of labor, societies have changed tremendously in the past 50 years, and it has become far more common for spouses to divide their labor more equally. In addition, the causal direction is not clear: Do networks affect the division of labor or vice versa? We inquired as to the causal relationship using a large-scale longitudinal data set, collected in 2009/2010 and 2011/2012 (n = 2477; PAIRFAM [Panel Analysis of Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics]). We found moderate support for the hypothesis that personal networks influence the division of labor in households, but there were stronger effects for the reverse—that is, that the division of labor affects network patterns, particularly for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Position of women as witnesses in Islamic marriage procession is still debated until now. This paper sought the factors of women restriction roles as witnesses. Indonesia as a big country which has the majority devoted Moslems was selected for collecting data. This research compared the position of women as marriage witnesses in the Compilation of Islamic Law (CIL) and Indonesian Constitutional Law. The study found that the Indonesian Muslim community has two contradictive ideas on the role of women as witnesses in marriage; first, women have not been allowed to be witnesses not only in marriage process, but also in the divorce, and hudud (Islamic Law) system; second, women could be the witnesses, as long as the number of women as witnesses is doubled and accompanied by a man. Data found showed that there was no gap for women to be witnesses in a marriage. As stated in the 25th article of the Compilation of Islamic Law (CIL) of Indonesia which designates as the witnesses in the marriage ceremony are males. They are Muslim who are fair, adults (Aqeel/baligh), uninterrupted memory and not deaf or hard of hearing. Therefore, this research recommends to renew the CIL, because in 25th article of CIL provides an opportunity for women to be marriage witnesses. It is expected the Central Government and law makers in Indonesia should consider the Judicial Review of CIL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the city of Melbourne throughout the 1940s and 1950s, a radical general practitioner provided a nascent form of sexual therapy. It was an unusual treatment programme in a period when counselling of any kind was rare in Australia. Yet Dr Victor Wallace attracted a steady clientele, who were seemingly eager to fix their sexual dysfunctions and establish and maintain a healthy and happy sexuality. His patients, though diverse, were united in their belief that a harmonious sexual life was essential to marriage, the family and the wider social order. Both doctor and patient faced somewhat of a paradox: a broader culture that stressed the importance of an active heterosexuality within marriage, but which had not yet accepted counselling or psychotherapy. So what could be done when sexual pleasure or passion was elusive? This article explores Wallace’s very early form of medical sex therapy, over 20 years before such therapies became commonplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. The estimated lifetime prevalence of physical or sexual intimate partner violence (IPV) is 30% among women worldwide. Understanding risk and protective factors is essential for designing effective prevention strategies. Objectives. To quantify the associations between prospective-longitudinal risk and protective factors and IPV and identify evidence gaps. Search methods. We conducted systematic searches in 16 databases including MEDLINE and PsycINFO from inception to June 2016. The study protocol is registered with PROSPERO (CRD42016039213). Selection criteria. We included published and unpublished studies available in English that prospectively analyzed any risk or protective factor(s) for self-reported IPV victimization among women and controlled for at least 1 other variable. Data collection and analysis. Three reviewers were involved in study screening. One reviewer extracted estimates of association and study characteristics from each study and 2 reviewers independently checked a random subset of extractions. We assessed study quality with the Cambridge Quality Checklists. When studies investigated the same risk or protective factor using similar measures, we computed pooled odds ratios (ORs) by using random-effects meta-analyses. We summarized heterogeneity with I2 and t2. We synthesized all estimates of association, including those not meta-analyzed, by using harvest plots to illustrate evidence gaps and trends toward negative or positive associations. Main results. Of 18 608 studies identified, 60 were included and 35 meta-analyzed. Most studies were based in the United States. The strongest evidence for modifiable risk factors for IPV against women were unplanned pregnancy (OR = 1.66;95%confidence interval [CI] = 1.20, 1.31) and having parents with less than a high-school education (OR = 1.55; 95% CI = 1.10, 2.17). Being older (OR = 0.96; 95% CI = 0.93, 0.98) or married (OR = 0.93; 95% CI = 0.87, 0.99) were protective. Conclusions. To our knowledge, this is the first systematic, meta-analytic review of all risk and protective factors for IPV against women without location, time, or publication restrictions. Unplanned pregnancy and having parents with less than a high-school education, which may indicate lower socioeconomic status, were shown to be risk factors, and being older or married were protective. However, no prospective-longitudinal study investigated the associations between IPV against women and any community or structural factor outside the United States, and more studies investigated risk factors related to women as opposed to their partners. Public health implications. This review highlights that prospective evidence for perpetrator- and context-related risk and protective factors for women's experiences of IPV outside of the United States is lacking and urgently needed to inform global policy recommendations. The current evidence base of prospective studies suggests that, at least in the United States, education and sexual health interventions may be effective targets for preventing IPV against women, with young, unmarried women at greatest risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship suggests that American partisans dislike other party members so much that partisanship has become the main social divide in modern politics. We argue that at least one measure of this "affective polarization" conflates a dislike for members of the other party with a dislike for partisanship in general. The measure asks people how they feel about their child marrying someone from another party. What seems like negative affect toward the other party is, in fact, negative affect toward partisans from either side of the aisle and political discussion in general. Relying on two national experiments, we demonstrate that although some Americans are politically polarized, more simply want to avoid talking about politics. In fact, many people do not want their child to marry someone from their own party if that hypothetical in-law were to discuss politics frequently. Supplementary analyses using ANES feeling thermometers show that inparty feeling thermometer ratings have decreased in recent years among weak and leaning partisans. As a result, the feeling thermometer results confirm the conclusion from the experiments. Polarization is a phenomenon concentrated in the one-third of Americans who consider themselves strong partisans. More individuals are averse to partisan politics. The analyses demonstrate how affective polarization exists alongside weakening partisan identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, prepared for a symposium issue on the impact of the Protestant Reformation, analyzes John Calvin’s reformation of Western family law in sixteenth-century Geneva. Calvin depicted marriage as a sacred and presumptively enduring union, but also a conditional and breakable covenant with distinct and discernible goods and goals that couples and communities alike had to support. This covenantal framework gave Calvin new rationales for old rules concerning marital and non-marital sex and cohabitation, courtship and weddings, procreation, nurture, and education of children, and the punishment of adultery, polygamy, and “unnatural” sex within and beyond the marital bed. But Calvin also set out new teachings on the proper communal formation and maintenance of the marital covenant, and introduced into Genevan law the rights of husbands and wives alike to divorce and remarry in cases of hard fault. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on interview and survey research with 116 married and unmarried lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) individuals, this study offers the first systematic data on the relationship between legal marriage and LGBQ community life. The author distinguishes between marital status—being married—and marital access—gaining access to the institution of marriage—as distinct drivers of community change. In contrast to research with heterosexuals, the findings suggest that marital access plays a primary role in LGBQ community change. The different life course trajectories of LGBQ people and their prior experiences of social exclusion alter the relationship between marriage and community. The findings push family scholarship beyond a one‐model‐fits‐all approach to understanding the impact of marriage on community engagement. Taken together, they expand literature on marriage as greedy, the deinstitutionalization of marriage, and marriage and social inclusion as well as offer insights into how LGBQ people understand and enact marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the health-relevant resources that marriage is argued to provide vary by socioeconomic status (SES), little research has examined whether the association of marriage with psychological well-being varies by SES. Focusing on depressive symptoms as an outcome and using a two-stage Heckit procedure with multilevel modeling, results from analyses of four waves of data (n = 4340 person-waves) from the American Changing Lives Survey (ACL) shows that differences in depressive symptoms between never-married and married adults varies by adjusted household income. Depressive symptoms are highest among the never married, and differences from the married greatest, at the lowest levels of income. As income increases these differences are eliminated. The conditioning effect of income is partially mediated by financial security, self-efficacy, and social support from friends and relatives. The implications of these findings for U.S. marriage promotion policies are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In studies which analyse the social distance between spouses at the moment a couple is formed, and which attempt to understand the role of the family, and in particular of marriage, in crystallising social divisions, the concept of homogamy has often been purely descriptive. This article questions this static approach and seeks to pinpoint the changes which social homogamy undergoes in the course of conjugal life, addressing women’s decisions on work–family articulation. Drawing on a critical approach to the concept of rational choice, the article intends to demonstrate the merit of an interpretative approach by analysing how members of a sample of 27 university-educated Portuguese partnered mothers take their decisions in the context of an interdependency framework in which the dynamics of family interaction tend to thwart individual career path development, rendering spouses dependent on each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article seeks to contribute to understandings of South Korea's approach to marriage migration. Situating our analysis of marriage migration policy specifically within the recent emergence of a social investment approach to welfare, we bring together two bodies of literature that due to the methodological nationalism of much welfare state scholarship are usually treated separately. Through an examination of the policy framework governing marriage migration ‐ so‐called ‘multicultural family policies’ ‐ we find that successive Korean governments have actively sought female marriage migrants to perform various social reproductive roles as a means to secure the reproductive capacity of the nation, just as feminist scholars have argued the care work of citizen‐mothers can be understood. Our analysis also suggests that marriage migration policy in Korea constitutes a distinctly transnational dimension to its overall social investment approach, which is strongly motivated by concerns to reproduce the next generation of human capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies conducted in many different countries suggest that marriage rates are falling. Factors to explain these trends include higher levels of economic freedom on the part of women, higher rates of divorce and partnering out of wedlock, individualization, and weakening of ties between having and raising children and marriage as an institution. Investigating the reasons for not marrying on the part of women is important in Turkey as a country where the institution of marriage is regarded as the only form of having children in a socially accepted way. The present study focuses on the experience of university graduates and professional women in the age interval of 35–50 who have never married. This qualitative, descriptive study draws upon 20 in-depth interviews to probe the reasons these women did not marry in order to examine whether this decision emerges as an individual solution to some structural problems. More generally, the article explores the contradictions between the socio-economic and cultural distances covered by women and the lack of change in gender roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines opinions concerning fūfubessei (a married couple retaining their birth surnames) posted on an online forum. Recently, the topic of fūfubessei has once again come under a spotlight, since the Japanese Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Civil Code Article 750, which stipulates that a married couple must choose either the husband's or wife's surname upon marriage registration. Owing to the large number of women forfeiting their surnames, the fūfubessei issue has often been researched from feminist perspectives, which may have hindered the voices of others. This article analyzes, using text mining (quantitative analysis) and discourse analysis (qualitative analysis), a large number of opinions from people of various cultural backgrounds. The results of this study reveal a diversity of beliefs and attitudes towards Article 750, reflecting the complexity of the issue. In general, proponents of reform claim the law violates equality, rights and liberty. From opponents there was a strong push to conform rather than to recognize a need for individual choice. Moreover, the many personal narratives provided insight into issues on the ground and revealed how many in Japanese society have dealt with the law, social pressure and social expectations and why they have followed the path they have chosen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]