Premarital Prediction of Marital Quality or Breakup: Research, Theory, and Practice / Edition 1

by Thomas B. Holman

Overview

This book should be of interest to scholars, researchers, students, and practitioners alike. Scholars, researchers, and students of personal relationship development will recognize in this book the first serious attempt in over 40 years to do a large-scale, longitudinal study of premarital factors that predict premarital breakup and marital quality; they should also appreciate our attempt to develop a theoretical rationale for predicted paths and to test those paths with the best available statistical tools. Practitioners-while generally not as interested in the intricacies of the statistical results-will find much that is useful to them as they help individuals and couples make decisions about their intimate relationships, their readiness for marriage, and how to increase the probability for marital success. Teachers, family life educators, premarital counselors, and clergy will find helpful our “principles for practice,” particularly as described in Chapter 9, as they teach and counsel couples in any premarital situation. My interest in the development of relationships from premarital to marital probably began when I got married in 1972 and started to notice all of the characteristics my wife and I brought from our respective families and how our “new beginning” as a married couple was in many ways the continuation of our premarital relationship, only more refined and more intense. My professional interest began when I did my doctoral dissertation in 198 1 on premarital predictors of early marital satisfaction (the results of that study are reported in Chapter 8).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306463266
Publisher:	Springer US
Publication date:	01/31/2001
Series:	Longitudinal Research in the Social and Behavioral Sciences: An Interdisciplinary Series
Edition description:	2001
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.03(d)

Table of Contents

Premarital Factors and Later Marital Quality and Stability.- Assumptions and Methods.- Breaking Up before and after Marriage.- Family-of-origin Structures and Processes and Adult Children’s Marital Quality.- Individual Characteristics Influencing Marital Quality.- Social Contexts Influencing Marital Quality.- Premarital Couple Interactional Processes and Later Marital Quality.- Putting it all Together: Four Longitudinal, Multivariate Models of Premarital Prediction of Marital Quality.- General Principles, Implications, and Future Directions.- Epilogue and Invitation.

Editorial Reviews

‘By focusing on premarital predictors of the development of marital discord, Holman answers a call in the marital literature to more carefully examine courtship and engagement.'
Marriage and Family, 64 (November 2002)

From the Publisher

Holman (Brigham Young U.) and others associated with the Church of Latter-Day Saints report on a large-scale longitudinal study of premarital factors that predict the fate of marriages, the theoretical rationale for predicted paths they developed, and the tests of those paths with the available statistical tools. They began collecting premarital data in 1989 when the PREParation for Marriage Questionnaire became available for use by teachers, workshop leaders, clergy, premarital counselors, and researchers. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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