ABSTRACT
The mass media are taken as indicators, people put a high value on romance and family life. It follows that average Americans should attach great importance to getting married, being married, and staying married. Major trends include smaller families, more single-parent families, more families created by remarriage, more dual-earner families, and more people living alone. S. E. Crohan and J. Veroff found that cohabitation before marriage is not at all related to marital satisfaction for whites who eventually married but is negatively related to marital satisfaction for blacks. According to P. Yelsma and K. Athappilly, there is little relationship between communication style and marital satisfaction in arranged marriages in India, because these marriages put a lower premium on emotional expressiveness than North American marriages do. The average period between divorce and remarriage is 1.9 years for men and 1.0 years for women.
