Marital Salience and Trajectories of Risk-Taking Behavior Across the Transition to Adulthood

• In Event: Offending Trajectories over the Life Course

Abstract

Good marriages have long been associated with desistance from crime. Given demographic trends toward a later age at first marriage, some have argued that such relationships are less important than they once were for understanding desistance. Marital Horizon Theory (MHT), however, argues that, although marriage itself is no longer a distinguishing feature of the transition to adulthood, young people’s orientations toward marriage still structure their experiences of this transition. Using longitudinal data on several hundred unmarried African American young adults in the Family and Community Health Study, we find support for this core contention of MHT. Young people who prioritized getting married upon entering the transition to adulthood (age 18) engaged in fewer risk taking behaviors (i.e., substance use and risky sex) than their counterparts who did not prioritize marriage. Moreover, those who prioritized getting married experienced faster declines in both substance use and sexual risk-taking behaviors. These effects were independent of relationship status and suggest that young people begin to modify behavior in preparation for finding a partner. These findings ask us to consider that the salience of marriage, even in the absence of a partner, may be sufficient to induce behavioral change.

Authors

• Ashley Barr, University at Buffalo

• Chandler Fairbanks, University at Buffalo

• Rachel Zhang, University of Tampa