Black Men and the Decision to Marry

Abstract

The purpose of this descriptive study is to understand the decision to marry among a sample of 52 married Black men. Qualitative inquiry was used to explore this issue. The men noted five factors that encouraged marriage: wife's characteristics, spirituality, desire to be together, readiness to marry, and encouragement from others. Five barriers to marriage were personal reservations, perceived loss of freedom, disapproval from others, prior relationship experiences, and finances. If they had to make the choice to marry again, 44% reported they would marry at the same time, 30% would opt to marry later, and 23% would select to marry earlier. Author note: Tera R. Jordan publishes using her maiden name Tera R. Hurt. The National Center for Family and Marriage Research funded this project. The author thanks Dr. Steven Beach of the University of Georgia for permission to recruit men for this study from the Program for Strong African American Marriages Study, as well as his feedback on a previous version of this manuscript. She also is grateful for the support of a devoted research team who assisted with the data collection and implementation of the Pathways to Marriage Project. The author is indebted to the 52 Black men in Georgia who openly shared their marital experiences with the interviewers. Hazel Hunley provided valuable editorial support and Malinda Mabry-Scott's help with the transcription was useful. Stacey McElroy and Laila Ali-Husin supported this work by offering helpful assistance with literature searches and member-checks. Dr. Chalandra M. Bryant of the University of Georgia, in addition to the anonymous reviewers, gave helpful comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. Black men and the decision to marry AbstractThe purpose of this descriptive study is to understand the decision to marry among a sample of 52 married Black men. Qualitative inquiry was used to explore this issue. The men noted five factors that encouraged marriage: wife's characteristics, spirituality, desire to be together, readiness to marry, and encouragement from others. Five barriers to marriage were personal reservations, perceived loss of freedom, disapproval from others, prior relationship experiences, and finances. Forty-four percent reported they would marry at the same time, if they had to make the choice to marry again while 30% would opt to marry later and 23% would select to marry earlier. Three percent of men would not choose to marry again. Implications are discussed.3 Black men and the decision to marry Studies have focused on the role of marriage markets and individual-level factors that

The psychology of romantic relationships: motivations and mate preferences

“…These findings indicate that an attractive partner permits both genders to obtain new experiences more easily. However, our findings also demonstrate that an attractive partner is a status symbol for men but not women, as shown in some previous studies ( Hurt, 2014 ; Gittins, 2017 ).…”

“…These findings may reflect different social norms related to raising families and children. Men may perceive family and children as requiring them to give up some of their interests and care more for others, while women may perceive raising family and children as serving their own interests and the interests of the other ( Buss et al, 2001 ; Hurt, 2014 ; Gittins, 2017 ).…”

“…The literature review demonstrates that in most studies, romantic motivations were used as a list of non-related entities; they remained unsystematized (for exemptions, see Rempel et al, 1985 ; Jones, 1993 ; Townsend et al, 2020 ), and the connections between them remained unclear ( Eekelaar, 2007 ; James, 2010 ; Cohn, 2013 ; Park and Rosén, 2013 ; Hurt, 2014 ; Carter, 2018 ; Fedoseeva and Ivanova, 2018 ; Thorpe and Kuperberg, 2021 ). Most existing studies on romantic motivations are not theory-driven.…”

“…The motivation to create a family was stronger among young religious dating people than non-religious people ( Fuller et al, 2015 ). At the same time, highly educated and non-religious young people reported stronger marriage motivations related to sex, pleasure, and mutual care ( Eekelaar, 2007 ; Hurt, 2014 ; Fedoseeva and Ivanova, 2018 ).…”

Factors associated with marital readiness among Turkish young adults

“…Previous studies (Carroll et al, 2009;Karada g, 2006) have reported that more than half of young people did not feel ready for marriage. Marital readiness is regarded a factor facilitating the decision to marry (Hurt, 2014), and it has a positive association with marital satisfaction (Holman et al, 1994). Although marital readiness plays an important role before and during the marriage, Goad (1987) drew attention to the fact that marital readiness is not sufficiently emphasized in studies on marriage and family.…”