We offer a framework to help marriage educators think more thoroughly, systematically, and creatively about intervention opportunities to strengthen marriage. We draw attention to the educational dimensions of content, intensity, methods, timing, setting, target, and delivery, and their implications for marriage education. Our discussion points out the potential value of developing marriage education with greater specificity in content, timing, and target. We call for intervention that embeds marriage education in diverse institutional settings and provides access to couples across the socioeconomic spectrum. In the end, we address the need to take marriage education beyond a valuable helping profession and an expanding educational service to a vibrant social movement.

The current study seeks to address the implicit assumption in the developmental literature that marital attitudes are static by investigating how various marital attitudes might change across adolescence. Longitudinal change for three marital attitudes in relation to family structure, educational aspirations, race and gender are examined. Utilizing a sample of 1,010 high school students (53% male; 76% white) recruited from a Midwestern metropolitan area, latent growth models were used to model marital attitude trajectories across adolescence. The sample was followed for 4 years from ages 14 until 18. Results revealed that adolescents placed a higher priority on marriage as they prepared to transition into young adulthood but that gender, race and educational aspirations all altered the degree in which marital attitudes changed across the time period of the study. Results highlight the importance of considering multiple constructs of marital attitudes and the need for more longitudinal work in this area of study.

The impact that desire to marry has on risk-taking behaviors during emerging adulthood is examined in the current investigation using nationally representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Looking both at the simple relationships between desire to marry and risk-taking behaviors, as well as the possible predictive power desire to marry could have on binge drinking, marijuana use, and sexual behaviors, data revealed that attitudes toward marriage may be an important component of emerging adulthood and risk-taking research. Results indicate that desire to marry was predictive of several risk-taking behaviors for both men and women even after controlling for other known predictors of risk-taking. Implications for future research are discussed.

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The present study utilized a sample of 1755 adult couples in heterosexual romantic relationships to examine how different patterns of pornography use between romantic partners may be associated with relationship outcomes. While pornography use has been generally associated with some negative and some positive couple outcomes, no study has yet explored how differences between partners may uniquely be associated with relationship well-being. Results suggested that greater discrepancies between partners in pornography use were related to less relationship satisfaction, less stability, less positive communication, and more relational aggression. Mediation analyses suggested that greater pornography use discrepancies were primarily associated with elevated levels of male relational aggression, lower female sexual desire, and less positive communication for both partners which then predicted lower relational satisfaction and stability for both partners. Results generally suggest that discrepancies in pornography use at the couple level are related to negative couple outcomes. Specifically, pornography differences may alter specific couple interaction processes which, in turn, may influence relationship satisfaction and stability. Implications for scholars and clinicians interested in how pornography use is associated with couple process are discussed.