Heather Lewis

Heather Lewis

SOC-111

600 words

April 29, 2017

Marriage and Family Quiz

            In the article called "Trends in Marital Happiness by Gender and Race, 1973 to 2006" by Mamadi Corra, Shannon K. Carter, J. Scott Carter, and David Knox is about the trends that were significant in how happy married couples were from the General Social Survey with different race groups that they used during the time the information was gathered that was mentioned in the title of the article. One of the significant findings that were found was that whites and husbands were happier than the blacks and wives which followed throughout the years that the trend was studied. The researchers compared four groups that were the white husbands, white wives, black husbands and black wives. Another significant finding that was found was that black wives were the least happy in their marriages out of the groups, but through the years there has been an increase in how much happier black wives have been. There was also a finding that race and how happy the marriages were connected in which blacks were less happy than whites in marriages. The dependent variables are that the researchers put the years into four categories that flow from the past to the future along with the sampling that was gathered was that the researchers made sure that the individuals made sure that they were not married to the other people in the data. The researchers compared how happy single people were to married people. The independent variables that were mentioned were that they measured social location, what each individual do for their work, if they were divorced or not, age, income, employment status, education and religion. There was a finding that race and gender were independent of each other. The researchers said there needs to be further research in order to assess the changes that are going to happen do to different social changes. Overall the researchers found that all four groups there was a decrease in marriages.

            In this article called "A Path toward Interracial Marriage: Women's First Partners and Husbands across Racial Lines" by Rosalind Berkowitz King and Jenifer L. Bratter is about the interracial marriage and how these partners get picked based on several factors. One of the significant factors that the researchers found was that each partner chose each other based on where they were born and their parents' education. All of the information that used came from the National Survey of Family Growth from 1995. Based on the evidence the author suggests that marrying across race lines is something from American thinking. One of the methods that were used was that the research only included females and not males because of several factors such as not being able to give information from their previous partners on sex. The researchers used demographics and background variables on how they picked their people to participate in the survey. The survey used race organization with five groups that were white, black, Asian/Pacific Islander, American Indian/Alaskan and alongside Hispanic categories. The background information that was used was what the participants were connected to in religion and whether or not they were born in America. The variables that were used were age, and geography on where they were born which were four categories which were: Northeast, Midwest, South and West. The dependent variables were similar to the race of the person who took the survey and their first sex partner. One of the things that the researchers noticed that for further researching on the topic there has to be information on how much interracial interaction is taken when the people who took the survey were children as well as when they are adults. The researchers also discussed that there needs to be more information on race and ethnic combinations in the interracial partners. The researchers would also like to put more on casual dating, neighbors and friends for future researches.