Correlates of Marital Happiness among the Remarried

Abstract

During the last decade, the divorce rate per 1, 000 population in the United States has doubled and divorce is now recognized as being pervasive throughout all major segments of society. While the remarriage rate has declined somewhat in the past few years, most of those who divorce will, nevertheless, eventually marry again. Data on the correlates of marital satisfaction among those who remarry tends to be fragmentary and dated. To provide additional information on this topic, questionnaires were received from 500 ever-divorced persons living in eight western states who were identified through a screening questionnaire sent to a much larger random sample of residents of these states. A total of369 of these persons were remarried at the time of the study. Comparatively, these individuals exhibit a very high level of marital satisfaction. However, traditional correlates of marital happiness among the firstmarriedsuch as presence or absence of children, religious homogeneity, and social class-are found to be relatively poor predictors of marital happiness among the remarried. The nature and types qf problems which do exist in the remarriages tend to be quite different from those that occurred in the marriage that was terminated by divorce.