Do Marital Expectations Lead to More Trips Down the Aisle?

• In Event: 50261 - Family Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 2: Marriage, Cohabitation & Divorce

Abstract

This study examines how initial marital intentions shape remarriage outcomes following marital dissolution, drawing on the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) cohort from 1979 to 2020. While existing research examines how marital intentions influence first marriage and cohabitation outcomes, less attention has been given to their impact on subsequent marriages. Utilizing both cross-sectional and longitudinal aspects of the dataset, we analyze whether individuals’ expectations of marriage influence their likelihood of remarriage and the frequency of remarriage over time. Among ever-married respondents, logistic regression model s, logistic regression model indicates that individuals who expected to marry within one or five years in late adolescence and early adulthood were more likely to have remarried by the most recent wave, when they were in their 50s and 60s. The random effects Poisson regression analysis further reveals that both short-term (within one year) and long-term expectations (within five years) are associated with a higher number of marriages. Our findings suggest that stronger initial intentions toward marriage translate into both the occurrence and frequency of remarriage, underscoring the role of early-life marital expectations in shaping long-term relationship trajectories.

Authors

• Jeewoo Shin, University at Albany, SUNY

• Soojin Han, University at Albany, SUNY