Marital quality in later years of marriage: an ethnographic approach

Over the years, the institution of marriage has received a great deal of attention in areas of research and theory. During the 1970's alone, there were 150 articles published which examined quality of marriage (Spanier & Lewis, 1980). Americans seem to be obsessed with the desire to know how men and women respond to being married. We want to know the circumstances and causes of marital break-down as well as how we can avoid this possibility.

The research that has been done in this area has typically dealt with several related aspects of marriage such as marital satisfaction, marital stability, and marital adjustment. The commonality between these components of marriage is that they are all necessary ingredients to make up a marriage which is high in quality (Spanier & Lewis, 1980).