Marital Quality of Black and White Adults Over the Life Course

Abstract

This paper tests family development and life-course perspectives in explaining marital quality over the course of marriage for black and white adults. The sample of 1430 adults (1097 white, 333 black) in their first marriage was from a 1986 national survey. As expected, positive marital quality (satisfaction and interdependence) had significant curvilinear patterns across length of marriage but only satisfaction showed the characteristic U-shape with a dip in the middle years which is consistent with a family life-cycle explanation. Furthermore, family structure variables did not eliminate this pattern, although family financial factors reduced it to marginal significance. Negative marital quality (discord and spouse negative behavior) had significant negative linear patterns over the marital life course, which were unaffected by family life-cycle variables. All four patterns were similar for blacks and whites, except that blacks had a stronger negative linear association between negative marital quality and marriage length. Marital quality was significantly lower among blacks on all measures; kin relation and status inequality variables did not eliminate this difference. The results suggest that marital quality is better explained by a life-course perspective than by the family development model.