ABSTRACT
The goal of the Early Years of Marriage (EYM) project from the beginning was to understand the factors that contribute to the positive development of marital relationships in the early years. At the same time, we were aware that these processes might possibly be different in African-American couples as compared to White couples. Given the high rates of divorce in the United States, we were interested in discovering what aspects of an early relationship predict later marital stability and happiness. Many researchers have proposed explanations for what keeps marriages together and happy (Karney & Bradbury, 1995; Orbuch, House, Mero, & Webster, 1996). One type of explanation focuses on how a couple interacts with each other for such matters as maximizing positive feelings (Cartensen, Gottman, & Levenson, 1995; Huston & Chorost, 1994), reducing conflicts (Markman, 1991), avoiding maladaptive attributions (Bradbury & Fincham, 1992), and integrating work and family roles (Tallman & Riley, 1995). Another type of explanation concentrates on several objective social conditions such as changes in family composition with the addition of children, the couple’s economic viability, and their embeddedness in social support networks (Orbuch, Veroff, Hassan, & Horrocks, 2002). The EYM project was open to both types of explanations and therefore gathered information over the first 7 years of marriage with an eclectic array of measures.
