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Marriage

The Happiest Wives

Summarizes Professor Wilcox's key findings on women's marital
happiness and offers resources to women and men interested in learning more
about successful marriages.

What's Love Got to do with It? Equality, Equity, Commitment
and Women's Marital Quality

Abstract:  The companionate theory of marriage suggests that egalitarianism in practice
and belief leads to higher marital quality for wives and higher levels of
positive emotion work on the part of husbands. Our analysis of women's
marital quality and men's marital emotion work provides little evidence in
support of this theory. Rather, in examining women's marital quality and
men's emotional investments in marriage, we find that dyadic commitment to
institutional ideals about marriage and women's contentment with the
division of household tasks are more critical. We also show that men's
marital emotion work is a very important determinant of women's marital
quality. We conclude by noting that her marriage is happiest when it
combines elements of the new and old: that is, gender equity and normative
commitment to the institution of marriage.

Why Marriage Matters

Abstract:  Why Marriage Matters, Second Edition: 26 Conclusions from the Social
Sciences was produced by a politically diverse and interdisciplinary group
of leading family scholars, chaired by W. Bradford Wilcox of the University
of Virginia and includes psychologist John Gottman, best selling author of
books about marriage and relationships, Linda Waite, coauthor of The Case
for Marriage, Norval Glenn and Steven Nock, two of the top family social
scientists in the country, William Galston, a Clinton Administration
domestic policy advisor, and Judith Wallerstein, author of the national
bestseller The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce. 
Since 1960, the proportion of children who do not live with their own two
parents has risen sharply—from 19.4% to 42.3% in the Nineties. This change
has been caused, first, by large increases in divorce, and more recently, by
a big jump in single mothers and cohabiting couples who have children but
don't marry. For several decades the impact of this dramatic change in
family structure has been the subject of vigorous debate among scholars. No
longer. These 26 findings are now widely agreed upon.

Bringing up Baby: Adoption, Marriage, and the  Best Interest of the Child