Thomason 2003

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The Relationship between Marital Status and Marital Attitudes LeAnn Thomason Columbus State University

Why do this research?: 

As noted by the National Center for Health Statistics (1998), 2,384,000 marriages took place in the U.S. in 1997 and 1,163,000 divorces. Apparent attitudes of married vs. divorced people Why do this research?

Previous research: 

Previous research VanLaningham, Johnson, and Amato (2001) performed a 17-year longitudinal study on marital happiness as a function of marital duration marital happiness has a tendency to steadily decrease over time, with a dramatic decline in marital happiness early in the marriage life-changing events that occur throughout the course of the marriage couples realize that marriage is not going to be what they expected

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A similar study by Bonds-Raacke, Bearden, Carriere, Anderson, and Nicks (2001) marital satisfaction decreases as the length of the relationship increases investigated the distorted ideals that many engaged couples have toward marriage engaged couples scored significantly higher than married couples on a measure of idealistic distortion tendency for Americans to focus more on short-lived romantic love than practical love

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DeMaris (1984) conducted a study to determine whether there was a difference in the satisfaction levels of individuals in their first marriage compared to those that were remarried. only a modest difference in the satisfaction of individuals in the two types of marriage, not significant increased difficulty of remarriage (ex. stepchildren, ex-spouses)

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Numerous studies done on the change in happiness and satisfaction through life, none that explored the change of attitudes toward marriage through divorce and remarriage. I was interested to see if and how these attitudes shift.

Present study: 

Present study surveyed participants that were either never married, married for the first time, divorced, or remarried, using the Marital Attitude Scale (MAS) (Braaten andamp; Rosen, 1998).

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Hypotheses: 1) the marital attitudes of individuals in their first marriage would not differ from those in their second marriage. 2) the attitudes of divorced individuals toward marriage would be lower than individuals that are married. 3) single (never married) individuals would have more positive marital attitudes than any of the other groups.

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In addition to the preceding hypotheses, I was also interested to learn what other factors were related to the marital attitudes. length of marriage, length of the divorce, marital status of the individual’s parents, and number of children in the household Therefore, I included a demographics questionnaire that asked participants these relevant questions.

Method: 

Method Participants 38 female participants and 9 male. 6.4% of participants were never married 66% were presently married for the first time 10.6% were presently divorced 17% were remarried after divorce. The mean age of the participants was M = 40.72 (SD = 11.76).

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Materials The MAS was used as a measure of overall satisfaction toward marriage, appropriate for individuals that are married or single, uses a Likert scale to determine how much the individual agrees with each statement concerning marriage. 1. People should marry. Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree 2. I have little confidence that my marriage will be a success. Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree People should stay married to their spouses for the rest of their lives. Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree

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The participants were also given a demographic questionnaire that inquired about their: Age Gender Marital status Length of present/previous marriage Length of divorce presently/previously in Number of children from present/previous marriage Marital status of parents

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Procedure MAS was administered to each participant after obtaining signed informed consent. Placed their consent forms in a sealed enveloped and their questionnaires in a separate folder. Therefore, the consent forms could not be matched up with the questionnaires. Names were not associated with their responses on the surveys.

Results: 

Results The score on the MAS can range from 23 to 92, with higher scores representing a more positive attitude toward marriage (Braaten, 1998). The mean score on the MAS was M=47.68 (SD=7.62).

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The MAS scores were compared with current marital status by conducting an ANOVA, F (3,43) = 0.644, p = 0.591, no significant relationship. Boxplots representing the distribution of scores for the various marital statuses

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MAS scores were also correlated with the length of the marriage for those individuals in their first marriage to see if marital attitudes decrease as length of marriage increases, r (29) = -0.281, p = 0.125, medium effect size, not significant

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MAS scores were also correlated with the number of children the individuals in their first marriages had, r (29) = -0.56, p = 0.001, large effect size, statistically significant.

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MAS scores were also correlated with the length of the divorce for those participants that had not remarried to see if marital attitudes were related to the length of time one remained divorced, r (9) = -0.135, p = 0.693, small effect size, not statistically significant

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Scores on the MAS were compared with the age of the participants, r (45) = -0.221, p=0.135, small to medium effect size, not statistically significant

Discussion: 

Discussion No correlation between marital status and marital attitudes. If marital attitudes are considered to correspond with marital satisfaction, these results were different from those of DeMaris (1984), which showed that there was a modest increase in the satisfaction of individuals in their first marriage. However, evaluations of marital satisfaction and marital attitudes may not necessarily be measuring the same idea. A distinction needs to be made between the two concepts.

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lack of adequate sampling - the sample of divorced and remarried individuals in this research was not comparable to the number of individuals in their first marriage.

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Marital attitudes decrease somewhat steadily over time, with age and with length of marriage, (VanLaningham et. al, 2001; Bonds-Raacke et. al, 2001). life-changing events and coming to the realization that the marriage is not what was expected (VanLaningham et. al, 2001).

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Similarly, the longer one remains divorced, marital attitudes seem to continue to decrease moderately. These findings, however, were not statistically significant, which may be due, in part, to the low number of subjects in the divorcee group. A larger sample of divorcees may demonstrate a more significant decrease in marital attitudes as the length of divorce increases.

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A statistically significant finding in the research was that marital attitudes in first marriages decrease with the number of children. Those with no children had much more positive attitudes than those with 3 and 4 children. Skinner et. al (2002) also found that the presence of a child in the home correlated with slightly more disagreements between the couple than those without a child VanLaningham et. al (2001) found that the presence of children is negatively correlated with happiness.

Need for additional research: 

Need for additional research examining at what point the attitudes toward marriage change when children are the factor could benefit greatly those couples debating on whether or not to have children, or have more children larger samples of each type of marital status determining what specifically causes the decrease in marital attitudes throughout marriage and throughout time may aid in the understanding of why the marital attitudes of divorcees continue to decline as they remained divorce Findings may even show that the decline in marital attitudes prevents them from remarrying