Marital Stability and Changes in Marital Quality in Newly Wed Couples: A Test of the Contextual Model

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Abstract
This study presents evidence supporting a contextual model of marriage that demographic and personality variables relevant to relationship functioning provide a context within which marital events are appraised. Changes in marital relationships were examined from the time of marriage to 1 year later. Twenty-three couples who separated/ divorced before their first anniversary reliably differed from 353 couples who stayed together on demographic variables, personality variables and spousal discrepancies on the personality variables. The intact couples were divided into six types of couples which varied by marital history of each spouse (first marriage or remarriage after divorce) and presence/absence of children or stepchildren. Over both times of assessment, couples experiencing a premarital pregnancy reported the lowest marital quality. Marital quality decreased over the 1-year period, especially for couples having experienced a premarital pregnancy and for couples in a remarriage or in a stepfather family. Husbands' and wives' marital quality, as well as changes in marital quality over the 1-year period, were related to their own personality scores as well as to the overall discrepancy between husbands' and wives' personality scores.