Today, couples have fewer children and have their first child later than in the past. The average age at the time of the birth of a woman’s first child in the United States is about 25. This average age has been increasing steadily since 1970 due to two major trends: Many women postpone children in […]

LEARNING OBJECTIVES • What is it like to be a parent? What are the key issues across ethnic groups? What forms of parenting are there? • How do middle-aged adults interact with their children? How do they deal with the possibility of providing care to aging parents? • How do grandparents interact with their grandchildren? […]

Alma still feels the loss of her husband, Chuck. “There are lots of times when I feel him around. We were together for so long that you take it for granted that your husband is just there. And there are times when I just don’t want to go on without him. But I suppose I’ll […]

Imagine you are a family court judge confronted with the following case. Two professional women, married for three years, are asking for a divorce. One member of the former couple expected that she would split the property and share custody of their 4-year-old child. Her ex wanted sole custody and the ability to move out […]

Despite what couples pledge on their wedding day, many marriages do not last until death parts them; instead, marriages are dissolved through divorce. But even though divorce is stressful and difficult, thousands of people each year also choose to try marriage again. Most enter their second (or third or fourth) marriage with renewed expectations of […]

Most adults want their love relationships to result in marriage. However, U. S. residents are in less of a hurry to achieve this goal; the median age at first marriage for adults in the United States has been rising for several decades. As you can see in Figure 11.5, between 1970 and 2006, the median […]

Less is known about the developmental course of gay and lesbian relationships than heterosexual rela­tionships, largely because they were almost never the focus of research. To date, gay and lesbian rela­tionships have been studied most often in compari­son to married heterosexual couples. What is it like to be in a gay or lesbian relationship? Like […]

Being unmarried does not necessarily mean living alone. People in committed, intimate, sexual relation­ships but who are not married may decide that living 416 CHAPTER 11 together, or cohabitation, provides a way to share daily life. Cohabitation is becoming an increasingly popular lifestyle choice in the United States as well as in Canada, Europe, Australia, […]

When Susan graduated from college with a degree in accounting, she took a job at a consulting firm. For the first several years in her job, she spent more time traveling than she did at home. During this time, she had a series of love relationships, but none resulted in commitment even though she had […]

LEARNING OBJECTIVES • What are the challenges and advantages of being single? • Why do people cohabit? • What are gay male and lesbian relationships like? 414 CHAPTER 11 • What is marriage like across adulthood? • Why do people divorce and remarry? • What are the experiences of widows and widowers? B obbie and […]