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Using nationally representative data from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth, I estimate the association between intimate premarital relationships (premarital sex and premarital cohabitation) and subsequent marital dissolution. I extend previous research by considering relationship histories pertaining to both premarital sex and premarital cohabitation. I find that premarital sex or premarital cohabitation that is limited to a woman's husband is not associated with an elevated risk of marital disruption. However, women who have more than one intimate premarital relationship have an increased risk of marital dissolution. These results suggest that neither premarital sex nor premarital cohabitation by itself indicate either preexisting characteristics or subsequent relationship environments that weaken marriages. Indeed, the findings are consistent with the notion that premarital sex and cohabitation limited to one's future spouse has become part of the normal courtship process for marriage.

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Over the past quarter-century, many covariates of divorce have been identified. However, the extent to which the effects of these covariates remain constant across time is not known. In this article, I examine the stability of the effects of a wide range of divorce covariates using a pooled sample of data taken from five rounds of the National Survey of Family Growth. This sample includes consistent measures of important predictors of divorce, covers marriages formed over 35 years he increased prevalence of divorce, combined with its well-known consequences for the well-being of men, women, and children (Amato 2000;Cherlin, Chase-Lansdale, and McRae 1998;McLanahan and Sandefur 1994), has spurred efforts to understand its determinants. Using various methods and data from different historical periods, researchers have linked numerous social, demographic, and economic variables to divorce. DaVanzo and Rahman (1993), Faust and McKibben (1999), and White (1990) reviewed this extensive literature. The list of variables considered is long and the results have varied, but a small number of sociodemographic variables have been linked consistently to the risk of divorce. These variables include age at marriage, education, premarital births and conception, religion, parental divorce, and race.Unfortunately, little research has attempted to ascertain whether the determinants of divorce are invariant across historical time even though there are reasonable theoretical, albeit slimmer empirical, grounds for expecting the effects of various predictors of divorce to vary across time. In my study, I tested the equality of effects across time using a pooled sample of data taken from five rounds of the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG); the NSFG included consistent measures of important predictors of divorce, covered marriages formed over 35 years , and spanned substantial historical variation in the overall risk of marital dissolution. With the exception of race, I found that the effects of the major sociodemographic predictors of divorce do not vary across time. These results indicate that the effects of historical period have been pervasive, at least over the period covered by this research. WHY SHOULD EFFECTS VARY OVER HISTORICAL TIME?There is no generally accepted theory of divorce, although the predominant perspectives all rely on some notion of the exchange of expressive and instrumental goods and services between husbands and wives (Becker 1991;Becker, Landes, and Michael 1977;Oppenheimer 1994Oppenheimer , 1997Ruggles 1997). The assumption is that marriage is beneficial because mutual interdependence generated by exchange increases the well-being of each *Jay D. Teachman, Department of Sociology, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225-9081; E-mail: teachman@cc.wwu.edu. I thank Kyle Crowder, Mick Cunningham, and the anonymous reviewers for their many helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.