DENISE PREVITI AND PAUL R.
AMATO
Pennsylvania State University
Why Stay Married? Rewards, Barriers, and
Marital Stability
This paper describes people’s open-ended, per-
sonal accounts of why they stay married. Most
people perceived the cohesiveness of their mar-
riages in terms of rewards and barriers, and few
people referred to a lack of good alternatives.
People who reported barriers only tended to be
relatively unhappy with their marriages and were
more likely than other individuals to be thinking
about divorce. People who reported barriers only,
compared with people who reported rewards only,
were more likely to divorce during the next 14
years. This association was significant even after
controlling for marital happiness and divorce
proneness.
Over the past few decades, numerous researchers
have used the constructs of rewards, barriers, and
alternatives to study marital cohesion. Rewards in-
volve the positive outcomes associated with being
in a relationship, barriers encompass psychologi-
cal forces that restrain people from leaving rela-
tionships, and alternatives reflect the attractiveness
of potential partners other than one’s spouse (as
well as the attractiveness of having no partner at
all). Many researchers assume that people’s per-
ceptions of rewards, barriers, and alternatives de-
termine whether a marriage ends in divorce (Hea-
Department of Sociology, Pennsylvania State University,
211 Oswald Tower, University Park, PA 16802-6207
(pxa6@psu.edu).
Key Words: barriers, divorce, marital cohesion, marital
happiness, rewards.
Journal of Marriage and Family 65 (August 2003): 561–573
ton & Albrecht, 1991; Levinger, 1965, 1976;
White & Booth, 1991).
To assess the extent to which these factors op-
erate in marriages, researchers usually define cer-
tain variables as rewards (such as satisfaction with
the spouse as a companion or with the sexual re-
lationship) and other variables as barriers (such as
being religious or having children). Researchers
then use these variables to predict whether peo-
ple’s marriages end in dissolution. Because these
rewards and barriers are defined in an a priori
fashion, however, it is not clear whether the re-
wards and barriers studied by researchers are the
most salient ones for individual husbands and
wives. Although rarely used, another approach is
to ask open-ended questions about why people re-
main in their marriages. This method has the ad-
vantage of allowing individuals to describe, in
their own words, the most important factors that
maintain the cohesiveness of their unions.
The present study used national, longitudinal
data to investigate people’s open-ended responses
to the question, ‘‘What are the most important fac-
tors keeping your marriage together?’’ After cod-
ing these responses into a set of categories reflect-
ing rewards, barriers, and alternatives, we
examined the links between these accounts and
the odds of divorcing in subsequent years. Our
goal was to see if people’s open-ended reports in-
crease our ability to predict divorce, net of the
marital quality scales typically used by researchers
(e.g., scales of marital happiness and divorce
proneness). A related goal was to compare peo-
561
562
ple’s open-ended reports of barriers with people’s
responses to a series of fixed-choice questions
about the importance of specific (and largely ob-
jective) barriers in keeping their marriages togeth-
er. As we show below, people who reported that
specific barriers were important tended to be in
relatively stable marriages. In contrast, our open-
ended question revealed that individuals who
viewed their relationships as being maintained pri-
marily by barriers (as opposed to rewards) tended
to be in marriages that were relatively unstable.
We argue that barriers can reflect either greater
marital stability or greater marital instability, de-
pending on how they are conceptualized and op-
erationalized.
BACKGROUND
Rewards, barriers, and alternatives are central
constructs in marital cohesion frameworks (John-
son, Caughlin, & Huston, 1999; Levinger, 1965,
1976; Rusbult, 1983). Levinger, for example,
drew on exchange theory to explain why some
marriages remain intact and other marriages end
in divorce. According to Levinger, attraction to a
spouse is proportional to the rewards received
from the relationship minus the costs involved in
the relationship. Rewards include pleasant aspects
of the relationship, such as companionship, emo-
tional support, affection, sex, and everyday assis-
tance. Costs reflect unpleasant aspects of the re-
lationship, such as having to make compromises,
dealing with verbal or physical aggression, and
putting up with the spouse’s bad habits. In general,
people are motivated to remain in marriages when
relationship rewards are high and relationship
costs are low.
Although a low level of rewards may lead to
thoughts of divorce, spouses who wish to end their
marriages must first overcome a variety of barri-
ers. Barriers include feelings of obligation (to the
spouse, children, and extended family members);
moral or religious values; a concern about social
stigma; legal restrictions; and financial depen-
dence on one’s spouse. Levinger (1965, 1976) not-
ed that the strength of barriers matters little when
people are strongly attracted to one another. For
example, happily married spouses are unlikely to
think of their children as barriers to leaving the
marriage. Instead, mutual feelings of affection,
along with other rewards, are likely to be the most
salient cohesive forces. Barriers, according to
Levinger, primarily affect marital cohesion among
unhappily married spouses who are thinking about
Journal of Marriage and Family
leaving their marriages. Spouses in troubled mar-
riages, for example, may decide that it is in their
children’s best interest for the marriage to contin-
ue. Under these circumstances, spouses explicitly
recognize the role of their children in stabilizing
the marriage.
Levinger (1965, 1976) also assumed that the
presence (or absence) of alternatives to the mar-
riage can undermine (or strengthen) marital co-
hesion, irrespective of people’s level of marital
satisfaction. According to this perspective, even
happily married individuals may be tempted to
leave their spouses if they believe that other re-
lationships would bring greater rewards. Corre-
spondingly, even unhappily married individuals
may remain with their spouses if they believe that
no viable alternatives to the marriage exist. Of
course, some spouses may view being alone as a
desirable alternative to being in an unrewarding
marriage.
Marital cohesion frameworks have proven to
be useful in understanding and predicting marital
instability. A large number of studies have shown
that the rewards of marriage, as reflected in peo-
ple’s reports of marital happiness and satisfaction,
are negatively associated with thoughts of divorce,
as well as subsequent marital dissolution (Brad-
bury, Fincham, & Beach, 2000; Glenn, 1991;
Lewis & Spanier, 1979). Other research supports
the assumption that barriers inhibit divorce. For
example, studies show that couples are less likely
to divorce if they believe in marriage as a lifelong
commitment, have children, own a home together,
have strong religious beliefs, or are economically
dependent on one another (Heaton & Albrecht,
1991; Larson & Goltz, 1989; Martin & Bumpass,
1989; South & Spitze, 1986; White & Booth,
1991). Finally, research shows that the availability
of attractive alternatives increases the likelihood
of divorce (South & Lloyd, 1995; White &
Booth).
Scales of marital happiness or satisfaction are
often used to represent rewards. For example,
Johnson et al. (1999) determined rewards on the
basis of (a) how much the respondent loves the
partner, (b) how much the respondent needs the
partner, (c) the respondent’s marital satisfaction,
and (d) the respondent’s ratings of the marriage
on several dimensions, including miserable-enjoy-
able and interesting-boring. Most studies have op-
erationalized barriers with reference to objective
indicators, such as the presence of children or
owning a home. Knoester and Booth (2000) mea-
sured barriers by asking respondents to rate the
Why Stay Married?
importance of several factors in keeping their mar-
riages together, including financial security, reli-
gious beliefs, the children’s distress, or giving up
their residences. Although these measurement
strategies have proven to be useful, they are based
on a priori decisions about the aspects of relation-
ships that are rewarding or serve as barriers. Con-
sequently, it is not clear whether the rewards and
barriers examined by most researchers are the
most salient ones for the individuals being stud-
ied.
A rare example of a study based on a subjec-
tive methodology was conducted by Albrecht,
Bahr, and Goodman (1983), who asked previously
married individuals to recall the main barriers to
their divorces. The most commonly mentioned
factors included concerns about financial security,
children, religious beliefs, legal restrictions, and
the disapproval of friends and family. A limitation
of their study, however, is that post hoc rational-
izations and justifications can bias the recall of
social events and interpersonal processes. Because
people’s memories are, to a certain extent, recon-
structed, a retrospective approach cannot deter-
mine whether these barriers affected the happiness
or stability of the marriage while it was intact, or
whether overcoming these specific barriers played
a role in precipitating the divorce.
GOALS OF THE PRESENT STUDY
Our analysis focused on the main components of
Levinger’s (1965, 1976) model: rewards, barriers,
and alternatives. In contrast to prior studies, we
explored people’s responses to an open-ended
question: ‘‘What are the most important factors
keeping your marriage together?’’ Given that re-
wards, barriers, and alternatives may be defined
idiosyncratically, an open-ended approach gener-
ates the most salient cohesive forces from the per-
spective of the respondents—the prominent fac-
tors that come to mind when people reflect on
their marriages. The first goal of our study was
descriptive—that is, to report the frequency of
various rewards, barriers, and alternatives (or
more precisely, lack of alternatives) that spouses
mention when describing why they stay together.
Our second goal was to see how people’s per-
sonal accounts of marital cohesion are related to
marital happiness; divorce proneness (e.g., think-
ing that one’s marriage is in trouble, thinking
about divorce, talking with one’s spouse about di-
vorce); and divorce. Presumably, people who
view marital cohesion primarily in terms of re-
563
wards are satisfied with their relationships. For
this reason, we hypothesized that accounts of re-
lationship rewards are positively associated with
marital happiness, negatively associated with di-
vorce proneness, and negatively associated with
subsequent divorce.
Our predictions with respect to barriers were
more complex. Levinger (1965, 1976) and other
authors have viewed barriers as forces that keep
marriages together. Consequently, the presence of
barriers should be associated with greater marital
stability. Knoester and Booth (2000) tested this
idea directly by asking survey respondents to rate
the importance of eight barriers in keeping their
marriages together. Although these authors found
that ratings of some barriers (religious beliefs, de-
pendence on the spouse) were negatively associ-
ated with subsequent divorce, ratings of other bar-
riers were not. Furthermore, a summary score
based on all eight barriers did not predict divorce
significantly. Knoester and Booth suggested that
the construct of barriers may have less predictive
utility than prior researchers have assumed.
Our study builds directly on the Knoester and
Booth (2002) study by using the same data set and
by incorporating the same eight-item measure of
barriers. We were particularly interested to see
whether people’s ratings of specific, largely ob-
jective barriers (as studied by Knoester and
Booth) and people’s open-ended reports of barri-
ers (which were not included in the Knoester and
Booth study) were related differently to divorce.
As Levinger (1965, 1976) noted, barriers do not
become salient until people begin to contemplate
the costs of ending their marriages. Presumably,
happily married people, when reflecting on what
keeps them together, focus more on the rewarding
aspects of the relationship and less on the barriers
to leaving the relationship. In contrast, people who
are unhappily married are likely to view barriers
as the most important forces holding their mar-
riages together.
These considerations suggest that barriers can
either represent cohesive forces or serve as indi-
cators of marital instability, depending on how
they are conceptualized and operationalized.
When asked to report whether specific, objective
barriers exist in their marriage, we assume that
people who report a large number of barriers have
relatively stable marriages, all things being equal.
Consequently, we hypothesized that reports of
barriers (when elicited through fixed-choice, ob-
jective questions) are negatively associated with
subsequent divorce. But when people are asked to
564
describe, using an open-ended format, what keeps
their marriages together, reports of barriers should
be more common among individuals who perceive
relatively few intrinsic rewards. Although barriers
might keep couples together for a period of time,
unhappy spouses are likely to find ways, eventu-
ally, to overcome obstacles to marital dissolution.
Because barriers are unlikely to maintain marital
cohesiveness indefinitely, we hypothesized that
open-ended reports of perceived barriers are pos-
itively associated with subsequent divorce.
The presence of attractive alternatives also can
contribute to marital instability. We assumed,
however, that people who remain in marriages pri-
marily because of a lack of viable alternatives are
dissatisfied with the intrinsic rewards from their
relationships. Moreover, although the unavailabil-
ity of alternatives might keep couples together for
awhile, we assume that most people eventually are
capable of locating suitable alternatives to being
unhappily married, even if this means being sin-
gle. Consequently, we hypothesized that people
who report remaining in their marriages mainly
because of a lack of good alternatives tend to be
unhappy with their marriages, are high in divorce
proneness, and are particularly likely to divorce.
Our third goal was to see if personal accounts
of rewards, barriers, and alternatives predict di-
vorce, net of marital happiness and divorce prone-
ness. Open-ended responses may capture subtle
relationship characteristics not reflected in stan-
dard marital quality scales. We also assumed that
barriers are the most proximal predictors of di-
vorce, with marital unhappiness leading to
thoughts of divorce, and thoughts of divorce, in
turn, leading to evaluations of barriers. Although
we could not test the time ordering of these var-
iables, we were able to test the hypothesis that
perceiving the cohesiveness of one’s union pri-
marily in terms of barriers is associated with an
elevated level of divorce, even with marital hap-
piness and divorce proneness controlled.
With respect to hypothesis testing, we distin-
guished between people who reported rewards
only, people who reported barriers only, and peo-
ple who reported rewards as well as barriers. We
assumed that people who reported rewards only
would have the lowest level of divorce, that peo-
ple who reported barriers only would have the
highest level of divorce, and that people who re-
ported both rewards and barriers would have an
intermediate level of divorce. The third category,
in which rewards and barriers were combined,
was of interest because thinking of rewards in
Journal of Marriage and Family
conjunction with barriers may weaken the asso-
ciation between barriers and divorce. As we de-
scribe later, few people in our sample referred to
the absence of alternatives as reasons for remain-
ing married. For this reason, we examined this
category of responses separately from accounts of
rewards and barriers.
Our presentation of results proceeds in three
steps. First, we present descriptive data on the fre-
quency with which people report various reasons
for staying married. Second, we combine these
reasons into broad categories reflecting rewards,
barriers, and alternatives, and we examine asso-
ciations between these categories and marital hap-
piness, divorce proneness, and subsequent divor-
ce. Third, we use event-history methods to see if
people’s subjective perceptions of rewards and
barriers predict divorce with other dimensions of
marital quality controlled, including scales of mar-
ital happiness, perceived barriers, and divorce
proneness. Our statistical model also controlled
for demographic variables that may be correlated
with sources of marital cohesion (rewards, barri-
ers, and alternatives) as well as divorce. These
variables include gender, age, years married, ed-
ucation, family income, and race (see Booth,
Johnson, White, & Edwards, 1985; Bradbury et
al., 2000; Johnson et al., 1999; and White, 1991,
for relevant studies).
METHOD
Sample
This analysis was based on the 17-year longitu-
dinal study of Marital Instability Over the Life
Course (Booth, Amato, & Johnson, 1998). The
original target population consisted of all married
individuals in households with a telephone in the
United States in 1980. In order to qualify for the
study, spouses had to be living together and both
spouses had to be age 55 or less. Telephone in-
terviewers used random digit dialing to select a
sample of households and a second random pro-
cedure to determine whether to interview the wife
or husband. Seventeen percent of selected individ-
uals could not be reached after 20 telephone calls.
Of those individuals contacted, 78% provided
complete interviews. The final sample consisted
of 2,034 married persons (not couples). When
compared with 1980 U.S. Census data, the sample
was representative of married individuals with re-
spect to age, race, urban residence, household
size, home ownership, and presence of children.
Why Stay Married?
The sample was contacted again in 1983, 1988,
1992, and 1997, resulting in subsequent inter-
views with 78%, 66%, 59%, and 53% of the orig-
inal sample, respectively. The interview question
on which our analysis was based was included in
the 1983 interview. Our analysis included all mar-
ried individuals interviewed in 1983 and 1988,
along with 94 individuals who declined to be in-
terviewed in 1988 but provided information on
their marital status in that year. The total sample
size was 1,424. Note also that our sample under-
represented recently married individuals, because
the shortest duration of marriage in 1983 was 3
years. To the extent that our sample overrepre-
sented people in longer duration (and hence, rel-
atively stable) marriages, our findings probably err
on the conservative side.
We relied on Heckman’s widely used method
to adjust for potential attrition bias. We first con-
ducted a probit analysis predicting whether re-
spondents dropped out of the study using the five
variables that best predicted attrition: being male,
being relatively young, not having a college de-
gree, being non-White, and living in rented ac-
commodation. (Note that measures of marital
quality did not predict attrition.) Based on the
probit regression equation, we calculated l—the
probability of attrition for each case in the sam-
ple—and used this as a control variable in all anal-
yses. Controlling for attrition had only trivial ef-
fects on sample estimates and significance tests,
so for the sake of parsimony, we excluded l from
subsequent analyses.
Variables
Rewards, barriers, and alternatives. The 1983
wave of the interviews included the question,
‘‘What are the most important factors keeping
your marriage together?’’ This question appeared
in the interview schedule after a series of ques-
tions on marital happiness, divorce proneness, and
ratings of specific barriers to divorce. (These
questions are described later.) The question was
open-ended, and interviewers transcribed as many
factors as the respondent mentioned, with the
number of factors ranging from 1 to 6. The au-
thors read all of the responses and created a pre-
liminary set of categories reflecting rewards, bar-
riers, and alternatives. Based on these preliminary
categories, the two authors independently coded
100 responses. We then compared the codes, dis-
cussed the discrepancies, and refined the catego-
ries. We then independently coded another 100
565
responses, compared the codes, and obtained a k
value of 0.89 (p , .001). k is a measure of in-
tercoder agreement for categorical data and shows
how closely the decisions of two judges corre-
spond after correcting for chance agreement. This
statistic ranges from 1 (perfect agreement) to 21
(perfect disagreement), with 0 indicating no as-
sociation (Norusis, 1998). Given the high level of
agreement, we coded the remaining cases, allow-
ing multiple responses per individual. The final
scheme consisted of 18 categories, with 11 cate-
gories reflecting rewards, six categories reflecting
barriers, and one category reflecting alternatives.
The categories obtained from the open-ended
responses are listed in Table 1, along with cate-
gory definitions and examples of responses. Re-
wards consisted of love, respect, trust, communi-
cation, shared past, friendship, happiness,
compatibility, emotional security, commitment to
the spouse (as opposed to commitment to the in-
stitution of marriage), and sex. Barriers consisted
of children, religion, finances, commitment to the
institution of marriage (vs. commitment to the
particular spouse), interdependent marital roles
(having a traditional breadwinner-homemaker di-
vision of labor), and other barriers. A single cat-
egory turned out to be adequate for the small
number of references to alternatives.
Divorce. Our main dependent variable, divorce,
was based on whether respondents divorced or
separated permanently between 1983 and 1997.
During this period, 201 marriages ended in di-
vorce. The year in which the divorce occurred
also was recorded. Because we relied on event
history methods to analyze these data, we were
able to use all respondents who provided infor-
mation on marital status in 1988, irrespective of
whether they dropped out of the panel in 1992 or
1997 (Allison, 1984).
Marital happiness. We relied on an 11-item scale
to assess marital happiness in 1983. Sample items
included, ‘‘How happy are you with the amount
of understanding you receive from your spouse?
With the amount of love and affection you receive
from your spouse? With the extent to which you
and your spouse agree about things?’’ Responses
were scored in the direction of greater happiness
(1 5 not too happy, 2 5 pretty happy, 3 5 very
happy), and the mean response served as the scale
score. This scale had an a reliability of .87. Prior
to analysis, we standardized the scale to have a
mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1.
566 Journal of Marriage and Family

TABLE 1. PEOPLE’S REASONS FOR STAYING MARRIED: DEFINITIONS AND EXAMPLES OF THE 18 CATEGORIES

Category Definition Example

Rewards
Love Having strong feelings of love and af-
fection.
Respect Respecting the spouse and the spouse’s
needs.
Trust Being honest with each other, trusting
the spouse.
Communication Understanding, listening, talking about
concerns.
Shared past Having a shared past, joined lives, be-
ing married many years.
Friendship Feeling comfortable together, getting
along well, spending time with one
another.
Happiness Feeling happy with one’s spouse or
one’s marriage.
Compatible Sharing similar goals, interests, or be-
liefs.
Emotional security Gaining emotional security from the
marriage, depending on the spouse to
meet one’s emotional needs.
Commitment to the partner Being dedicated, faithful, or loyal to
the spouse.
Sex Being physically attracted to the
spouse, enjoying the sexual relation-
ship
Barriers
Children Feeling concerned about the children
Religion Believing that marriage is sacred, hold-
ing religious beliefs that bind the
couple together.
Financial need Being concerned about financial inde-
pendence or losing one’s home.
Interdependent roles Dividing responsibilities for housework,
child care, and breadwinning through
a traditional division of labor.
Commitment to marriage Upholding the norm of marital perma-
nence, being committed to marriage
(as opposed to being committed to
the particular spouse).
Other barriers Referring to other barriers.
Alternatives Seeing no good alternatives to the mar-
riage.
‘‘I guess we love each other. That’s it.’’
‘‘We respect each other’s feelings and
privacy.’’
‘‘We trust each other.’’
‘‘We talk to each other before anything
becomes a problem.’’
‘‘Our love for each other for 26 years
keeps us together. You just don’t
give that up.’’
‘‘We try to spend as much time togeth-
er as we can and do things togeth-
er.’’
‘‘I get a charge out of her.’’
‘‘We have the same goals, principles,
and beliefs.’’
‘‘We’re very close and dependent on
one another.’’
‘‘I want to stay with him. I’m here be-
cause I want to be. The same is true
for him.’’
‘‘Our physical relationship keeps us to-
gether.’’
‘‘The kids are keeping us together.’’
‘‘We have a personal relationship with
God through Jesus Christ.’’
‘‘I can’t get a job anyplace and depend
on his income.’’
‘‘I do the housework and he makes the
money to pay the bills.’’
‘‘Mutual dedication to the institution of
marriage.’’
‘‘He’ll kill me if I try to leave.’’
‘‘The fact that it could be worse alone
is what keeps me in this marriage.’’

Divorce proneness. The second scale, divorce
proneness, measured the extent to which respon-
dents viewed their marriages as being unstable in
1983. Items dealt with divorce-related thoughts
(such as thinking that one’s marriage is in trouble
or thinking about divorce) as well as behaviors
(such as discussing divorce with the spouse or dis-
cussing divorce with friends and family mem-
bers). Items were summed, but because the re-
sulting distribution was positively skewed, the log
of the sum served as the scale score. This 13-item
scale had an a reliability of .91, with higher scores
indicating greater perceived instability. To facili-
tate later interpretation, this scale was standard-
ized to have a mean of 0 and a standard deviation
of 1.
Specific barriers. To measure the importance of
specific barriers in 1983, we relied on an eight-
item scale. People were asked to rate the extent
to which eight factors were ‘‘important in keeping
your marriage together.’’ These items referred to
Why Stay Married? 567

TABLE 2. PERCENTAGE OF RESPONSES AND RESPONDENTS RESULTS

REFERRING TO 18 CATEGORIES OF MARITAL COHESION

% % Descriptive Results
Category Responses Respondents

Rewards
Table 2 shows the percentage of respondents who
Love 28 60 cited various reasons for staying married. The ta-
Friendship 11 24 ble indicates that people generally thought in
Communication 8 18 terms of rewards when describing their marriages.
Commitment to spouse 6 12 Overall, 74% of responses fell into the rewards
Respect 6 12
Compatibility 5 10 category, 25% of responses fell into the barriers
Trust 4 9 category, and 1% of responses fell into the alter-
Shared past 2 4 natives category. Specifically, love (28%), friend-
Happiness 2 4 ship (11%), and communication (8%) were the
Emotional security 2 5
Sex life 1 1
most frequently mentioned rewards, and children
Barriers (14%) and religion (6%) were the most frequently
Children 14 31 mentioned barriers. Although Levinger’s (1965,
Religion 6 13 1976) framework also includes alternatives, only
Financial need 3 6 a small number of respondents (32 people) re-
Interdependent roles 1 1
Commitment to marriage 0.5 2 ported staying in their marriages because they saw
Other 0.5 1 no good alternatives to living with the current
Alternatives 1 2 spouse. The low representation of responses in
Totals 100 214 this category suggests that few people view the
Note: Responses in column 2 can sum to more than 100 lack of alternatives as a prominent reason for re-
because most people listed more than one reason for stay- maining in their current marriages. Alternatively,
ing married. N 5 3,087 responses and 1,424 respondents. this finding may reflect a degree of social desir-
ability, with people being reluctant to cite a lack
not wanting to leave the residence, financial se- of alternatives as a reason for staying married.
curity, religious beliefs, the spouse’s dependence Overall, 47% of respondents mentioned re-
on the respondent, the respondent’s dependence wards only, 14% of respondents mentioned bar-
on the spouse, the disapproval of friends and fam- riers only, and 38% of respondents mentioned a
ily, concern about whether the children will suffer, combination of rewards and barriers. To simplify
and concern about losing the children (1 5 not later analyses, we created three dichotomous var-
very important, 2 5 somewhat important, 3 5 iables to represent these responses, one for re-
very important). Individuals who did not have wards only (1 5 rewards only, 0 5 other); one
children were given mean scores based on the first for barriers only (1 5 barriers only, 0 5 other);
six items. Responses to these questions were pos- and one for a combination of rewards and barriers
itively correlated, and treating the items as a scale (1 5 rewards and barriers, 0 5 other).
produced an a coefficient of .72. We standardized Table 3 contains correlations between all var-
the scale to have a mean of 0 and a standard de- iables. The three dichotomous variables (rewards
viation of 1. (This instrument was the same as the only, barriers only, and a mix of rewards and bar-
one used in the Knoester and Booth, 2000, study.) riers) were negatively correlated, but because re-
spondents could be in only one category, these
Control variables. The control variables in this correlations reflect logical, rather than substantive,
analysis were gender (0 5 husband, 1 5 wife); associations. More importantly, reporting rewards
age; years married; years of education; family in- only was positively correlated with marital hap-
come in thousands of dollars; and race (0 5 piness and negatively correlated with divorce
White, 1 5 non-White). Wives made up 60% of proneness. Correspondingly, reporting barriers
the sample. The average respondent was about 35 only was negatively correlated with marital hap-
years old; the sample was predominantly White piness and positively correlated with divorce
(12% non-White); the typical respondent had be- proneness. These correlations are consistent with
tween 13 and 14 years of education; mean family our reasoning that people who view the cohesive-
income was about $27,000 (in 1983 dollars); and ness of their unions exclusively in terms of bar-
the average duration of marriage was about 12 riers are relatively unhappy with their marriages
years. and are relatively high in divorce proneness. Peo-
568 Journal of Marriage and Family

ple who reported rewards only scored compara-

12.42
9.25
—
14
tively low on the eight-item barriers scale, where-
as people who reported barriers only (as well as
a mix of rewards and barriers) scored compara-

.18
27.04
12.95
—
13

tively high on the eight-item barriers scale. Re-

porting rewards only was negatively associated
with divorce, whereas reporting barriers only was

.36
2.06
13.50
2.53
—
12

positively associated with divorce. These results

are consistent with the assumption that percep-
tions of rewards and barriers are linked with

2.04
2.08
2.05
0.12
0.32
—
11

whether couples subsequently dissolve their mar-

riages.
Given the small number of people who men-
2.04
2.01
.25
.84
35.34
9.28
—

tioned alternatives, we created a single variable

10

for these responses (1 5 reported alternatives, 0

ALL VARIABLES

5 did not report alternatives). People who men-

2.08
.01
2.13
2.06
.03
0.60
0.49
tioned alternatives reported lower levels of marital
—
9

happiness, higher levels of divorce proneness, and

were more likely to end their marriages in divorce.
FOR

Table 3 also indicates that no correlations between

.02
2.01
2.03
.02
.01
.01
0.14
0.35
—
8

the demographic control variables and reports of

CORRELATIONS

rewards, barriers, and alternatives were signifi-

cant. This finding suggests that people’s reasons
2.06
2.02
.05
.01
2.01
2.04
.06
0.00
1.00
—

for staying together are specific to the particular

7

relationship and have relatively little to do with

broad social structural factors such as gender, so-
AND

2.06
.31
.02
.00
.01
.01
.01
.00
0.00
1.00
—

cial class, race, and age. Of course, people’s rea-

6
TABLE 3. MEANS, STANDARD DEVIATIONS,

sons for staying together may be related to other

Note: Correlations $.06 or #2.06 are significant at p , .05 (two-tailed). N 5 1,424.

structural factors not included in our study.

2.57
2.03
2.25
.02
.02
2.03
2.09
2.01
.05
0.00
1.00

To assess the predictive utility of people’s re-

—
5

ports of rewards and barriers, we relied on dis-

crete-time, event history methods (Allison, 1984).
We constructed a person-year file, with each year
2.19
.15
2.05
.07
.01
2.03
2.02
.00
.04
2.02
0.02
0.14
—

that respondents remained in the sample repre-

4

senting a separate observation. Cases were cen-

sored from the data file if they divorced in a par-
2.06
2.01
.01
.13
2.03
2.01
.02
.02
2.01
.03
.03
0.38
0.49
—

ticular year or dropped out of the panel. Cases that

3

remained in the panel until 1997 were censored in

that year. The total number of person-years was
2.31
.08
2.30
.22
.10
.17
.02
2.04
.01
.03
.00
2.02
0.14
0.35
—

15,518. We used this file to predict divorce be-

2

tween 1983 and 1997 from people’s reports of

barriers and rewards, the marital quality scales de-
scribed earlier, and the six control variables. We
2.37
2.73
2.04
.19
2.14
2.19
2.09
2.01
2.02
2.04
2.01
2.04
2.02
0.47
0.50
—
1

also included dummy variables to capture the pas-

sage of time, with the years immediately follow-
ing the interview (1983–1985) serving as the ref-
Non-White respondent

erence category.
Rewards and barriers

Divorce 1983–1997
Female respondent
Age of respondent
Divorce proneness

The results of a logistic regression analysis are

Marital happiness

Family income

shown in Table 4. The control variables were not

Years married
Barriers scale
Alternatives

significant predictors of divorce. The dummy var-

Education
Rewards

iables for time indicated that divorce was more

Barriers

common in the years following the interview, with

a significant peak occurring in the early 1990s.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.

SD

Marital happiness was negatively associated with

M
Why Stay Married? 569

TABLE 4. PREDICTORS OF DIVORCE BETWEEN 1983 AND 1997

Predictor B SE Exp (B)

Female 2.028 .168 .972

Age 2.023 .019 .978
Non-White 2.106 .141 .899
Education .015 .034 1.015
Family income .000 .000 1.000
Years married .024 .018 1.025
Years of observation
1983–1985 — — —
1986–1989 .286 .234 1.331
1990–1993 .748 .227 2.110***
1994–1997 .285 .265 1.330
Marital happiness 2.166 .089 .847
Divorce proneness .605 0.92 1.831***
Barriers scale 2.197 .090 .821*
Rewards only — — —
Barriers only .529 .245 1.70*
Barriers and rewards .148 .190 1.160
Constant 24.786
Note: N 5 15,518 person years. Coefficients are based on logistic regression. Significance tests are two-tailed. Model x2
5 144.985, df 5 14, p , .001.
*p , .05. **p , .01. ***p , .001.

divorce, with a 1 standard deviation increase in
marital happiness predicting a 15% decline in the
odds of divorce, although this association only ap-
proached statistical significance (p 5 .062). Di-
vorce proneness was significantly linked with di-
vorce (p , .001), with a 1 standard deviation
increase in divorce proneness predicting an 83%
increase in the odds of divorce. In addition, the
eight-item barriers scale was negatively associated
with divorce (p , .05), with a 1 standard devia-
tion increase in barriers predicting an 18% reduc-
tion in the odds of divorce.
Table 4 also indicates that people’s open-ended
reports in 1983 were associated with divorce be-
tween 1983 and 1997. Compared with people who
reported rewards only (the omitted comparison
category), people who reported barriers only were
significantly more likely to divorce (odds ratio 5
1.7, p , .05). People who reported a mix of re-
wards and barriers, however, were no more likely
to divorce than were people who reported rewards
only. A subsequent analysis (not shown) indicated
that people who reported barriers only were some-
what more likely to divorce than people who re-
ported a mix of rewards and barriers (odds ratio
5 1.40), although this difference was not statis-
tically significant (p . .1).
To assess whether these results depended on
the particular way in which rewards and barriers
were categorized, we explored alternative ways of
representing these data. In one analysis, for ex-
ample, we used a variable based on the percentage
of open-ended responses that reflected barriers.
This analysis revealed that the percentage of bar-
riers was a significant predictor of divorce, with
the difference between people who reported 100%
barriers and 0% barriers representing a doubling
in the odds of divorce (odds ratio 5 1.97, p ,
.01). Similarly, the proportion of responses that
represented rewards was a significant predictor of
divorce, with the odds of divorce being lower for
individuals who reported 100% rewards than for
individuals who reported 0% rewards (odds ratio
5 .46, p , .01). These results indicated that our
findings did not depend on the manner in which
barriers and rewards were represented in the anal-
ysis.
Because the number of respondents who re-
ferred to a lack of good alternatives was small, it
was difficult to incorporate these responses into
the model described in Table 4. Consequently, we
conducted a supplementary analysis in which
mentioning alternatives was examined separately.
At the bivariate level, mentioning alternatives was
associated with a 156% increase in the odds of
subsequent divorce. With marital happiness, di-
vorce proneness, the eight-item barriers scale, and
the control variables in the model, however, men-
tioning alternatives was not significantly related to
divorce.
570
DISCUSSION
Using national data, this study examined people’s
personal accounts of the factors that hold their
marriages together. In general, people perceived
the cohesiveness of their marriages in terms of
rewards, rather than barriers or alternatives, with
love, respect, friendship, and good communication
being cited often. The fact that love was men-
tioned by the majority of respondents (60%) is not
surprising. A study by Buss, Shackelford, Kirk-
patrick, and Larsen (2001) documented the ascen-
dance of love as the defining criterion of a good
marriage. These researchers administered ques-
tionnaires to samples of college students, begin-
ning in 1939 and continuing through the 1990s.
In the early surveys, out of 18 characteristics, fe-
male students ranked love in fifth place and male
students ranked love in fourth place as the most
important reason for marrying. But by the 1970s
(and continuing through the 1990s), students of
both genders ranked love in first place. Moreover,
the emphasis on friendship as a reward is consis-
tent with the work of Gottman and Silver (1999),
which stresses a strong friendship as the founda-
tion of a satisfying and stable marriage. Finally,
the importance of good communication is consis-
tent with research by marriage therapists on the
centrality of communication skills in facilitating
positive marital relationships (Bradbury, et al.,
2000).
In addition to rewards, some individuals cited
barriers as factors that keep their marriages to-
gether. Staying married for the sake of the chil-
dren was the most commonly mentioned barrier,
being cited by 31% of all respondents. Other bar-
riers included a lack of financial resources, reli-
gious beliefs, commitment to the norm of lifelong
marriage, and the maintenance of traditional
breadwinner-homemaker roles. Almost no respon-
dents referred to stigma or the disapproval of oth-
ers as barriers, which suggests that the social ac-
ceptance of divorce was widespread by 1983. In
general, the types of barriers that emerged from
the open-ended question were comparable to the
types of barriers that other researchers have stud-
ied using objective indicators (Heaton & Albrecht,
1991; Larson & Goltz, 1989; Martin & Bumpass,
1989; South & Spitze, 1986; White & Booth,
1991). In this sense, our data support the validity
of previous efforts to study barriers.
Few people (2%) referred to the absence of
good alternatives as a reason for staying married.
Although the availability of alternatives may fa-
Journal of Marriage and Family
cilitate divorce among unhappily married people,
this factor does not seem to have a prominent
place in people’s thoughts about marital cohesion.
Consistent with our hypothesis, people who
viewed the cohesiveness of their marriages pri-
marily in terms of rewards tended to be happy
with their marriages and were unlikely to be
thinking (or acting) in ways that might lead to
divorce. Correspondingly, people who attributed
the cohesiveness of their marriages primarily to
barriers or to the absence of alternatives tended to
be relatively unhappy with their marriages and
were likely to be thinking (or acting) in ways that
might lead to divorce. This finding is consistent
with Levinger (1976), who pointed out that per-
ceptions of barriers become important psycholog-
ical forces only when people are unhappy and be-
gin to think about leaving their marriages.
Moreover, consistent with our hypothesis, think-
ing about marital cohesion exclusively in terms of
barriers predicted divorce up to 14 years later,
even after controlling for marital happiness and
divorce proneness. We assume that the perception
of barriers is significantly associated with divorce
because it is the most proximal predictor of di-
vorce (that is, marital unhappiness is followed by
thoughts of divorce, and thoughts of divorce, in
turn, are followed by a consideration of barriers).
We also hypothesized that referring to the lack of
good alternatives would predict divorce, but this
association was not significant with other vari-
ables in the model. Given the small number of
people who mentioned alternatives, however, this
null result may reflect nothing more than a lack
of statistical power.
The finding that barriers are positively associ-
ated with divorce appears to contradict previous
theory and research that treats barriers as cohesive
forces (Heaton & Albrecht, 1991; Martin & Bum-
pass, 1989; White & Booth, 1991). When exam-
ined closely, however, our findings are not con-
trary to previous work. Barriers such as religious
beliefs, concerns about children, or worries about
financial independence may act as cohesive forces
to the extent that they keep unhappily married
couples together for a period of time. But barriers
do not appear to be as powerful as rewards in
maintaining cohesion. Without a strong attraction
between spouses (as reflected in love, friendship,
or positive communication), many people even-
tually find ways to overcome existing barriers and
leave their marriages. For example, wives who are
economically dependent on husbands may wait
until they have developed a sufficient degree of
Why Stay Married?
human capital or saved enough earnings to be-
come independent. Similarly, couples that are con-
cerned about the effects of divorce on children
may wait until their children are older or have left
home before divorcing. Because barriers do not
promote marital cohesion as effectively as re-
wards, the more barriers that people cite as rea-
sons for staying together (and correspondingly,
the fewer rewards that people cite), the more like-
ly these marriages are to end in divorce. There-
fore, although barriers represent short-term cohe-
sive forces, they also serve as indicators of later
marital instability. The fact that perceptions of
barriers predict divorce up to 14 years into the
future indicates that the process of overcoming
barriers can take a good deal of time.
Our study suggests that barriers operate differ-
ently when assessed in open-ended and forced-
choice formats. Table 4 shows that when barriers
are assessed with a standardized survey format
and are treated as a scale, as in the Knoester and
Booth (2000) study, they are associated with less
divorce. But when barriers are assessed with an
open-ended format, they are positively associated
with divorce. These two methods of assessing bar-
riers reflect different ways of conceptualizing and
operationalizing this construct. When people are
asked to rate whether a particular barrier exists in
their marriage (e.g., children, owning a house),
their responses refer to relatively objective cir-
cumstances, irrespective of marital happiness.
Contrary to the usual survey questions, however,
when people are asked open-ended questions
about marital cohesion, their responses reflect the
thoughts that are most salient to them at the time,
and these thoughts are bound up with the quality
of the marriage. Our study indicates that the
thoughts that come to mind when people answer
this question are good predictors of divorce, net
of scales of marital happiness and divorce prone-
ness. Because the inclusion of data on people’s
subjective perceptions of rewards and barriers ap-
pears to increase the predictive power of statistical
models, survey researchers may wish to explore
the utility of other open-ended questions in future
research on marital cohesion and stability.
Our findings appear to clash with the study by
Knoester and Booth (2000). Their study was
based on the same data set, and they used the
same eight-item barriers scale. But contrary to our
findings in Table 4, they found that the barrier
scale was not a significant predictor of divorce.
They concluded, on this basis, that barriers may
not be useful predictors of marital dissolution.
571
Why did our study yield different results? Our
analyses differed in three respects. First, Knoester
and Booth limited their analysis to individuals in
first marriages, whereas we used all married in-
dividuals, irrespective of marriage order. This dif-
ference did not explain the divergent finding,
however, because subsequent analyses (not
shown) indicated that marriage order did not in-
teract with the barriers scale in predicting divorce.
Second, the two studies used slightly different sets
of control variables. But even when we used the
same controls as Knoester and Booth, we contin-
ued to find a significant effect for the barriers
scale. Third, the Knoester and Booth study used
data through 1992, whereas we used data through
1997. The longer time span of our study made it
possible to include an additional 42 cases of di-
vorce in the analysis (a 26% increase in the num-
ber of divorces). Because the power of an event
history analysis is a function of the number of
events (rather than the number of cases), our anal-
ysis had greater statistical power to detect asso-
ciations in the population (Allison, 1984). Consis-
tent with this explanation, when we restricted our
analysis to divorces that occurred prior to 1992
(and omitted divorces between 1992 and 1997),
the association between the barriers scale and di-
vorce no longer was statistically significant. We
conclude, therefore, that the discrepancy in find-
ings is due to the fact that our analysis had greater
statistical power.
Like most studies, our investigation has several
limitations. First, our classification of responses
may not have reflected the respondents’ intended
meanings in some cases. Although relying on sub-
jective accounts allows respondents to express
their views in their own words, it is necessary to
categorize and combine these idiosyncratic re-
sponses for data analysis. This process may have
distorted some respondents’ intended meanings.
Similarly, some rewards and barriers are difficult
to classify. For example, we classified a shared
past as a reward because it was our impression
that these responses primarily reflected satisfied,
nostalgic memories. Some people may have
viewed a shared past as a barrier, however, in the
sense that one does not have the time or energy
to start a new life with a different partner (or by
oneself). Although we were able to establish a
high degree of intercoder reliability in the present
study, some degree of ambiguity inevitably re-
mains when classifying open-ended responses.
A second limitation is that people’s perceptions
of rewards and barriers may change over time.
572
Because the open-ended question was asked in
1983 only, we could not determine the stability of
people’s perceptions or how changes in percep-
tions might accompany changes in marital hap-
piness or the odds of divorcing. Another limitation
is that we could not assess the strength of each
reward or barrier that respondents mentioned. Be-
cause there was no way to assign weights to peo-
ple’s responses, we had to assume that all respons-
es carried equal weight—an unlikely assumption.
It also is possible that people’s responses were in-
fluenced by the placement of the open-ended
questions in the interview schedule. The question
on reasons for staying married was located at the
end of a long series of questions on marital qual-
ity. Because we cannot determine the extent to
which people’s responses may have been influ-
enced by the preceding questions, we leave this
issue for future researchers to address. Finally, we
had information from only one partner, so we
could not incorporate the views of both spouses.
Research on marital cohesiveness and divorce that
does not incorporate input from both spouses is
necessarily incomplete.
Despite these limitations, our study makes sev-
eral contributions to the research literature on
marital cohesion. First, using national data, we de-
scribed the most common factors that people see
as keeping their marriages together. Rewards (es-
pecially love, respect, friendship, and communi-
cation) were more common than barriers, and al-
ternatives were mentioned rarely. Second, we
found that happily married people tended to view
their marriages mainly in terms of rewards,
whereas unhappily married people tended to view
their marriages mainly in terms of barriers. And
third, we found that people who focused mainly
on barriers in response to an open-ended question
were more likely to see their marriages end in
divorce. In contrast, people who reported a large
number of objective barriers in response to a se-
ries of fixed-choice questions were less likely to
see their marriages end in divorce. Our research
suggests that reports of barriers based on fixed-
choice questions and reports of barriers based on
open-ended questions are related differently to di-
vorce. Finally, the articulation of barriers in re-
sponse to an open-ended question about marital
cohesion is a good indicator of future marital in-
stability, even with traditional marital quality
scales in the analysis. Given these results, we rec-
ommend the use of more open-ended items in sur-
veys on marriage and family life.
Journal of Marriage and Family
NOTE
This research was supported by grant 5 R01 AG04146
from the National Institute on Aging and the Pennsyl-
vania State University Population Research Institute,
with core support from the National Institute of Child
Health and Human Development grant 1 HD282663.
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