The long term objective of the proposed research is to delineate processes that generally underlie positive development of marital relationships of white couples and black couples in the first seven years of marriage.
The specific aims are: (1) to consolidate and extend information thus far obtained from interviews over a four year period about factors contributing to marital stability and enhanced marital quality during these first years of marriage in a representative urban sample of black and white couples; and (2) to obtain and analyze another wave of data during the couples' seventh year of marriage.
Both aims will seek evidence for: the importance of balance between individual and relational gratifications as the basis for well-being in marriage; the significance that different styles of integrating work and family lives has on marital well-being; how reconstruction of the couple's own narrative, assessed in a story-telling procedure, clarifies the nature of the marital experience; the ways that determinants of marital stability and well-being are both similar and different for black and white couples. Analyses of the already existing data will follow a number of different avenues. It will build on analyses already done. Particularly important will be analyses of how experiences at work spill over into gratifications and frustrations in family life; how child care arrangements affect marital well-being, how changes in the couples' construction of their own narrative from the first to the third year are associated with changes in marital quality, and how predicting enhanced marital well-being in the fourth year of marriage follows different patterns for black and white couples. It is estimated that 125 white couples and 80 black couples will be reinterviewed in the seventh year. By and large, the procedures will be identical to the first and third waves of the original study: each spouse interviewed for 90 minutes; the couple interviewed for an hour to tape their joint narrative and to observe their behaviors as they work out disagreements about marital ideals.
| Oggins, J; Veroff, J; Leber, D (1993) Perceptions of marital interaction among black and white newlyweds. J Pers Soc Psychol 65:494-511 |
