FORGOTTEN SECRETS

Forgotten Secrets

The older generation apparently knew things about how to make a marriage successful and happy which the younger generation has never learned.  Evidence for the older generation's superior understanding of marital success showed up quite unexpectedly in a study recently completed by scholars from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Pennsylvania State University.  In going over pervious research "suggest[ing] a U-shaped pattern of marital happiness over the life course, with happiness declining in the early years of marriage and rising in the later years, "the Nebraska and Pennsylvania scholars unexpectedly stumbled over indications that the previous finding was a mere "artifact" of flawed statistical methods.  More careful parsing of the data revealed that "the apparent U-shaped association between marital duration and marital happiness is due to older marriage cohorts experiencing higher levels of marital happiness than younger marriage cohorts."

But why did couples in the older generations achieve greater happiness in their unions than do those in the younger generations?   The authors of the new study reason that the older couples were happier because they were "married at a time when people held more pragmatic views about marriage, support for marriage was stronger, and couples were more committed to the norm of lifelong marriage."  In other words, these older couples "may have strengths that allow them to maintain high levels of marital happiness over the long haul."  Regrettably, younger couples have not typically cultivated such strengths.

(Source: John VanLaningham, David R. Johnson, and Paul Amato, "MaritalHappiness, Marital Duration, and the U-Shaped Curve: Evidence from aFive-Wave Panel Study," Social Forces 78[2001]: 1313-1341.)