Religious Homogamy Affects the Connections of Personality and Marriage Qualities to Unforgiving Motives: Implications for Couple Therapy

In Ghana, collectivism holds people together in marital relationships, even if partners are religiously different. Married partners still hurt, betray, or offend each other and might develop avoidance or vengeful (i.e., unforgiving) motives. We investigated whether religious homogamy moderated connections of personality and marriage variables to unforgiving motives. Heterosexual married couples (N = 176 heterosexual married couples; N = 352 individuals; mean marriage duration 10.89 years) participated. Most identified as Christian (83.5% males; 82.3% females) or Muslim (11.9% males; 14.3% females). Couple religious homogamy was related directly to lower unforgiving motives. Religious homogamy did not moderate the connection between some personality variables (i.e., agreeableness and trait forgivingness) and unforgiving motives. Religiously unmatched couples tended to have greater unforgiveness at higher levels of neuroticism and lower forbearing, marital satisfaction, and marital commitment relative to religiously matched couples. One implication is that couple therapists need to assess partner neuroticism, marriage climate (i.e., satisfaction and commitment), and the general tendency to forbear when offended. Those can combine to produce unforgiving relationships, which might make progress in couple therapy improbable.

Weighted Statistical A-optimal Designs for Two-variable Poisson Regression Model with Application to Fertility Studies

This research extends design optimization to model involving count data. A two-variable Poisson regression model was investigated for A-optimality on a constrained design space and the weights of the optimal design points were obtained. The constructed designs were verified to be A-optimal at 4-point design through the general equivalence theorem. The efficiency of the constructed optimal design was found to be 100% A-efficient. The concept of weighted optimal designs for Poisson regression model was applied to fertility studies. Approximate A-optimal design weights of educational level of women were obtained for each marriage duration period with respect to their places of residence. The study revealed that the numbers of women with secondary education and above were found to be consistently more than that of women with no education, lower primary education and upper primary education, respectively for all the marriage duration periods considered and at each place of residence. The only exclusion is the marriage duration of 0–4 years at Suva where the proportion of women with no education was more than other educational levels. Keywords: A-optimality; Design Point; Fisher Information Matrix; Imperialist Competitive Algorithm; Poisson Regression Model

Marital Surname Change and Marital Duration Among Divorcées in a Canadian County

Women’s marital surname change has been discussed as comprising one possible signal of intention to remain married, and may be perceived as such, and valued, by husbands. Here, the practice was investigated as a potential predictor of marital duration among couples who went on to divorce. An archival analysis was based on a search of all available, opposite-sex divorces filed over an 8-month period in a Canadian county. Among couples (n = 107) divorcing, marriages the women in which underwent marital surname change lasted 60% longer, controlling for wife’s age at the time of marriage. When the woman’s marital surname change/retention was used as a regression predictor of number of children of the marriage alongside marriage duration in years, only the latter was predictive. No husband took his wife’s surname. Giving the maternal surname (along with the paternal surname) to children occurred at a negligible frequency. Potential reasons for these findings including costly signaling and, ultimately, paternity uncertainty, as well as possible implications for public policy, are discussed.

Factors influencing decision-making power regarding reproductive health and rights among married women in Mettu rural district, south-west, Ethiopia

Background Women’s decision-making power regarding reproductive health and rights (RHR) was the central component to achieve reproductive well-being. Literatures agree that a women having higher domestic decision-making power regarding their health care were more likely to utilize health services. More than 80% of women in Ethiopia reside in rural areas where they considered as the subordinates of their husbands. This would restrict women to fully exercise their RHR. Thus, this study aims to determine the factors influencing the women’s decision-making power regarding RHR in Mettu rural district, South West Ethiopia. Methods A community based cross-sectional study was done among 415 by using randomly selected married women of reproductive age from March to April 2017. Data was entered by using Epi-data manger 1.4 and analyzed by SPSS version 21. Descriptive and multivariate logistic regression analysis was carried out. Result One hundred sixty-eight (41.5%) of the women had greater decision-making power regarding RHR. Woman’s primary education AOR 2.62[95% C. I 1.15, 5.97], secondary (9+) education AOR 3.18[95% C. I 1.16, 8.73] and husband’s primary education AOR 4.0[95% C. I 1.53, 10.42], secondary (9+) education AOR 3.95 [95% C. I 1.38, 11.26], being knowledgeable about RHR AOR 3.57 [95% C. I 1.58, 8.09], marriage duration of more than 10 years AOR 2.95 [95% C. I 1.19, 7.26], access to micro-credit enterprises AOR 4.26[95% C. I 2.06, 8.80], having gender equitable attitude AOR 6.38 [95% C. I 2.52, 12.45] and good qualities of spousal relation AOR 2.95 [95% C. I 1.30, 6.64] were positively influencing women’s decision-making power regarding RHR. Conclusion More than four in ten rural women had greater decision-making power regarding RHR. External pressures (qualities of spousal relation, gender equitable attitude) and knowledge about RHR were found to influence women’s decision-making power. Public health interventions targeting women’s RHR should take into account strengthening rural micro-credit enterprises, qualities of spousal relations and priority should be given to women with no formal education of husband or herself and marriage duration of < 5 years.

Marriage stability in a pastoralist society

We examined how individual investment was associated with the duration of marriage partnerships in a pastoralist society of Amdo Tibetans in China. We collected demographic and socioeconomic data from 420 women and 369 men over five villages to assess which factors predicted partnership length. We found that the payment of dowry and bridewealth from both sides of the family predicted marriage stability. The production of offspring, regardless of their survivorship, also had a positive effect on marriage duration, as did trial marriage, a time period before formal marriage. Finally, we found that if both bride and groom invest resources initially into a partnership—whether wealth or labor—their subsequent partnership is stronger than couples who do not make such investments. This paper adds to our understanding of complex social institutions like marriage from a behavioral ecological perspective.

Institutional Supports and Life Satisfaction: The Case of Cross-border Marriage Migrants in South Korea

The positive influence of institutional supports from social networks on psychological well-being of immigrants is extensively acknowledged in the literature. However, immigration experiences outside the Western societies are underexplored. Using data from the 2012 Korean National Survey for Multicultural Family, I examine how institutional supports for cross-border marriage migration shape life satisfaction among female marriage migrants in South Korea. Findings reveal that levels of life satisfaction among marriage migrants married via commercially arranged marriage agencies are lower than those of female marriage migrants using interpersonal networks from kinship and friends/colleagues. Religion-motivated marriage migrants show lower levels of life satisfaction. In addition, the impacts of institutional supports on life satisfaction are mediated by marriage duration and language proficiency, indicating higher levels of satisfaction are associated with shorter marriage duration and better language proficiency; however, the impacts vary by institutional supports.