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Couple Longevity in the Era of Same‐Sex Marriage in the United States
Author(s) -
Rosenfeld Michael J.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of marriage and family
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.578
H-Index - 159
eISSN - 1741-3737
pISSN - 0022-2445
DOI - 10.1111/jomf.12141
Subject(s) - longevity , same sex , national survey of family growth , cohabitation , demography , psychology , government (linguistics) , set (abstract data type) , variety (cybernetics) , social psychology , developmental psychology , sociology , political science , family planning , gerontology , law , medicine , research methodology , population , linguistics , philosophy , artificial intelligence , computer science , programming language
The author used a new longitudinal data set, the How Couples Meet and Stay Together surveys ( N = 3,009), to generate the first nationally representative comparison of same‐sex couple stability and heterosexual couple stability in the United States. He measured the association between marriage (by several definitions of marriage) and couple longevity for same‐sex couples in the United States. Reports of same‐sex relationship instability in the past were due in part to the low rate of marriages among same‐sex couples. After controlling for marriage and marriage‐like commitments, the break‐up rate for same‐sex couples was comparable to (and not statistically distinguishable from) the break‐up rate for heterosexual couples. The results revealed that same‐sex couples who had a marriage‐like commitment had stable unions regardless of government recognition. A variety of predictors of relationship dissolution for heterosexual and for same‐sex couples are explored.