Premarital Prediction of Marital Quality or Breakup

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

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2. Premarital Factors and Later Marital Quality and Stability

   • Thomas B. Holman, Steven T. Linford

   Pages 1-27

3. Assumptions and Methods

   • Thomas B. Holman, Steven T. Linford

   Pages 29-45

4. Breaking Up before and after Marriage

   • David B. Meredith, Thomas B. Holman

   Pages 47-77

5. Family-of-origin Structures and Processes and Adult Children’s Marital Quality

   • Thomas B. Holman, Paul James Birch

   Pages 79-103

6. Individual Characteristics Influencing Marital Quality

   • Thomas B. Holman, Jeffry H. Larson, Joseph A. Olsen

   Pages 105-117

7. Social Contexts Influencing Marital Quality

   • Cynthia Doxey, Thomas B. Holman

   Pages 119-139

8. Premarital Couple Interactional Processes and Later Marital Quality

   • Jason S. Carroll, Thomas B. Holman

   Pages 141-163

9. Putting it all Together: Four Longitudinal, Multivariate Models of Premarital Prediction of Marital Quality

   • Thomas B. Holman, Steven T. Linford, Kent R. Brooks, Suzanne F. Olsen, Clifford Jay Rhoades, Jason S. Carroll

   Pages 165-189

10. General Principles, Implications, and Future Directions

    • Thomas B. Holman, Jeffry H. Larson, Robert F. Stahmann, Jason S. Carroll

    Pages 191-222

11. Epilogue and Invitation

    • Thomas B. Holman

    Pages 223-232

12. Back Matter

    Pages 233-328

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This book should be of interest to scholars, researchers, students, and practitioners alike. Scholars, researchers, and students of personal relationship development will recognize in this book the first serious attempt in over 40 years to do a large-scale, longitudinal study of premarital factors that predict premarital breakup and marital quality; they should also appreciate our attempt to develop a theoretical rationale for predicted paths and to test those paths with the best available statistical tools. Practitioners-while generally not as interested in the intricacies of the statistical results-will find much that is useful to them as they help individuals and couples make decisions about their intimate relationships, their readiness for marriage, and how to increase the probability for marital success. Teachers, family life educators, premarital counselors, and clergy will find helpful our “principles for practice,” particularly as described in Chapter 9, as they teach and counsel couples in any premarital situation. My interest in the development of relationships from premarital to marital probably began when I got married in 1972 and started to notice all of the characteristics my wife and I brought from our respective families and how our “new beginning” as a married couple was in many ways the continuation of our premarital relationship, only more refined and more intense. My professional interest began when I did my doctoral dissertation in 198 1 on premarital predictors of early marital satisfaction (the results of that study are reported in Chapter 8).

• Action
• children
• family
• interaction
• marriage
• quality
• research
• stability

`By focusing on premarital predictors of the development of marital discord, Holman answers a call in the marital literature to more carefully examine courtship and engagement.'
Marriage and Family, 64 (November 2002)

• Brigham Young University, Provo

  Thomas B. Holman

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