research papers on sex before marriage

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• Published: 29 June 2023

Prevalence and predictors of premarital sexual intercourse among young women in sub-Saharan Africa

• Eugene Budu 1 , 2 ,
• Abdul-Aziz Seidu 3 , 4 , 5 ,
• Ebenezer Kwesi Armah-Ansah 1 ,
• James Boadu Frimpong   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9416-1176 6 , 7 ,
• Richard Gyan Aboagye 8 ,
• Stephen Kofi Anin 9 , 10 ,
• John Elvis Hagan Jr 6 , 11 &
• Bright Opoku Ahinkorah 3 , 12  

Reproductive Health volume  20 , Article number:  99 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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Introduction

Premarital sexual intercourse (PSI) without adequate information and/or appropriate application of the relevant knowledge about sex before marriage, potentially has adverse effects on the sexual and reproductive health outcomes of vulnerable young women in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This study sought to examine the prevalence and predictors of PSI among young women aged 15–24 in SSA.

Nationally representative cross-sectional data from 29 countries in SSA were extracted for the study. A weighted sample size of 87,924 never married young women was used to estimate the prevalence of PSI in each country. A multilevel binary logistic regression modelling approach was used to examine the predictors of PSI at p  < 0.05.

The prevalence of PSI among young women in SSA was 39.4%. Young women aged 20–24 (aOR = 4.49, 95% CI = 4.34, 4.65) and those who had secondary/higher educational level (aOR = 1.63, 95% CI = 1.54, 1.72) were more likely to engage in PSI compared to those aged 15–19 and those with no formal education. However, young women who belonged to the Islamic religion (aOR = 0.66, 95% CI = 0.56, 0.78); those who were working (aOR = 0.75, 95% CI = 0.73, 0.78); belonged to the richest wealth index (aOR = 0.55, 95% CI = 0.52, 0.58); were not exposed to radio at all (aOR = 0.90, 95% CI = 0.81, 0.99); were not exposed to television at all (aOR = 0.50, 95% CI = 0.46, 0.53); resided in rural areas (aOR = 0.73, 95% CI = 0.70, 0.76); and those who were living in the East African sub-region (aOR = 0.32, 95% CI = 0.29, 0.35) were less likely to engage in PSI compared to those who were traditionalist, unemployed, belonged to the poorest wealth index, exposed to radio frequently, exposed to television frequently, resided in urban areas, and lived in the Southern Africa sub-region, respectively.

Sub-regional variations in the prevalence of PSI exist amidst multiple risk factors among young women in SSA. Concerted efforts are required to empower young women financially, including education on sexual and reproductive health behaviors such as the detrimental effects of sexual experimentation and encouraging abstinence and/or condom use through regular youth-risk communication advocacy.

Plain Language Summary

Having premarital sexual intercourse (PSI) without adequate knowledge and application of the knowledge could have adverse effects on the sexual and reproductive health of vulnerable young women in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This study examined the prevalence and predictors of PSI among young women in SSA. Nationally representative cross-sectional data from 29 countries in SSA were used. A sample size of 87,924 never married young women was used to estimate the prevalence of PSI. A multilevel binary logistic regression was used to examine the predictors of PSI. The prevalence of PSI among young women in SSA was high. Young women aged 20–24 and those who had attained secondary/higher educational level were more likely to engage in PSI. However, young women who belonged to the Islamic religion; were working; belonged to the richest wealth index; were not exposed to radio at all; were not exposed to television at all; resided in rural areas; and those who were living in the East African sub-region were less likely to engage in PSI. Sub-regional variations in the prevalence of PSI exist amidst multiple risk factors among young women in SSA. Concerted efforts are required to empower young women financially, including education on sexual and reproductive health behaviors such as the detrimental effects of sexual experimentation and encouraging abstinence and/or condom use through regular youth-risk communication advocacy.

Peer Review reports

The world has seen a significant increase in the total number of young people and it has been estimated that more than three-quarters of the world’s 1.8 billion young people reside in developing regions including sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) [ 1 , 2 ]. Majority of these young people engage in premarital sexual intercourse (PSI) or sex before they attain their second decade in life [ 1 ].

PSI among young women has become a major public health concern as the  world began witnessing a significant increase in reported sexual activities leading to teenage pregnancies and abortions in most developing regions [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ]. PSI has been explained to encompass penetrative vaginal intercourse that occurs between two individuals before he/she starts a formal marriage life [ 5 , 7 , 8 , 9 ]. PSI in SSA has been defined as sexual intercourse before attaining age 18 [ 10 , 11 ]. This is the more vulnerable group of people who are mostly not married and are young [ 12 ].

Although PSI is common among young people, it does not translate into contraceptive use [ 13 ]. This has had an adverse effect on their sexual and reproductive health outcomes [ 14 , 15 ]. Young people are involved in PSI without adequate information and knowledge of reproductive health and contraceptives [ 9 , 16 , 17 , 18 ]. It is essential to note that many life events, health-damaging behaviours, and PSI start at these youthful years [ 2 ]. Therefore, the onset of sexual intercourse is a potentially life-changing milestone in the physical and psychological development of women in all settings and the timing and circumstances within which it happens can have either an immediate or long-term consequences on their health and wellbeing [ 19 ].

At this stage of development, young women are faced with exploration and risk-taking behaviours [ 20 ]. These risky behaviours are associated with pressure to use alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, early  sexual relationships, intentional and unintentional injuries, having multiple sexual partners, violence that could lead to unwanted pregnancy, unsafe abortion, and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) including HIV/AIDS, hasty and unpromising marriage, lesser employment opportunity, unplanned parenthood, and dropping out of school [ 2 , 6 , 7 , 21 ].

It has been documented that young women in SSA tend to engage in early sexual debut than their male counterparts and it is one of the major predictors that put young women at a high-risk of HIV/AIDS [ 11 , 22 ]. This is because majority of the young women are challenged with peer pressure and are shy to discuss sexual matters with their parents explicitly due to culture reasons [ 1 ].

Studies have revealed that there are three categories of predictors of PSI among young women in SSA: namely individual, family, and institutional level predictors [ 12 , 22 ]. The individual-level predictors include age, sex, ethnicity, love affair, and loneliness [ 12 ]. The family-level predictors consist of family type, family income, occupation, broken families, and parenting while the institutional level predictors are not only limited to social network, organization, communication (mobile phones, internet, books and magazines, radio and television) but includes policies and laws [ 12 , 23 ]. Also, studies have indicated that factors such as urban poor settings, high unemployment, unstable wages, low literacy, and inadequate recreational facilities have been linked to young women's engagement in PSI and multiple sexual partners [ 14 , 24 , 25 ].

There is a high prevalence of risky sexual behaviours (e.g., multiple sexual partners, transactional sex, early sexual debut) among young women in SSA [ 26 , 27 ]. Evidence suggest that by age 15 years, young women in Kenya would have had at least a sexual intercourse in their lifetime while the median age at first sexual intercourse among young women in Ghana and Malawi is 16 years [ 22 ].

Studies on sexual practices and behaviours in SSA have mainly focused on adolescents [ 1 ]; correlates of early sexual debut [ 22 ]; university students [ 28 , 29 ]; preparatory school students living with and without parents [ 18 ]; magnitude and associated factors of premarital sex [ 2 ]; in-school youths [ 16 ]; parenting style [ 6 ]; impact of premarital sex on health [ 12 ]; and adolescent students’ attitude towards premarital sex [ 23 ].

Since there is a paucity of studies related to the prevalence and predictors of premarital sexual intercourse among young women in SSA, it is essential to understand and identify current trend of this behavioral practice of young women in order to develop appropriate and context-specific interventions in the sub-region. Findings from this study will play an invaluable role in inspiring young women about the risk of premarital sexual practice and inform policymakers as well as for organizations that work in this area.

Data source and study design

Data for the study were extracted from the most recent Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) of 29 countries in SSA. We pooled the data from the women’s recode files in each of the countries. The DHS is a comparatively nationally representative survey conducted in over 85 low-and-middle-income countries worldwide [ 30 ]. DHS employs a descriptive cross-sectional design. Respondents for the survey were recruited using a two-stage cluster sampling method. Detailed sampling technique has been highlighted in the literature [ 31 ]. Standardized structured questionnaires were used to collect data from the respondents on health and social indicators including age at first sexual intercourse. We included a total of 87,924 never married young women in our study. Only the women with complete cases of variables of interest were included in the study using listwise deletion. The dataset used is freely available at https://dhsprogram.com/data/available-datasets.cfm . This manuscript was drafted with reference to the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) statement guidelines [ 32 ]. Table 1  provides details of the description of the study sample.

Outcome variable

The study used PSI as the outcome variable. PSI refers to any sexual relations a person has prior to marriage [ 33 ]. Simply put, it is when a person engages in sexual activities before they marry. Restricting the analytical sample to never married young women, this variable was derived using the question on age at first sex which was  “at what age did [NAME] first have sex?” For this study, those who had never had sex were put in the category “No PSI” and this category was coded as “0” while those who had sex at age eight (which was the minimum age at first sex for the study sample in all the countries) and above were put in the category “ever had PSI” and were given the code “1”. Studies that used the DHS dataset employed similar coding [ 34 , 35 , 36 ].

Explanatory variables

The explanatory variables considered in this study were selected based on their association with PSI from literature [ 21 , 28 , 37 ] and also their availability in the DHS dataset. A total of 10 variables were included in the study. These variables were grouped into individual level and contextual level factors. The individual level factors considered in this study were women’s age, educational level, religious affiliation, occupational status, wealth index, frequency of reading newspaper or magazine, frequency of listening to radio, and frequency of watching television. Place of residence and geographical subregion were the contextual level variables in the study. The categories of each of the variables are shown in Table 2 .

Statistical analyses

Data for the study were analysed using Stata version 16. First, a bar chart was used to show the prevalence of PSI among young women across the 29 countries. Next, the weighted frequencies and percentages for the explanatory variables were presented as indicated in Table 2 . Later, we presented the bivariate results on the distribution of PSI among young women across the explanatory variables using the Pearson chi-square test of independence (Table 2 ). We further conducted a cross-tabulation between age and the other explanatory variables as a sensitivity test to show how age is distributed across the other explanatory variables (Additional file 1 ). After this, we checked for collinearity multicollinearity among the explanatory variables using the variance inflation factor (VIF) and the results showed no evidence of high collinearity (Maximum VIF = 1.66, Minimum VIF = 1.07 and Mean VIF = 1.31). Finally, a four-model multilevel binary logistic regression (Model O-III) analysis was conducted. Model O was an empty model where no explanatory variable was used. Model I had only the individual level variables. Model II had only the contextual variables while Model III, which was considered as the complete model had both the individual and contextual level variables. The results were presented as adjusted odds ratio (aOR) with their respective 95% confidence interval (CI). All the analyses  were weighted while the survey command (svy) in Stata was used to adjust for the complex sampling structure of the data in the analyses.

Ethical consideration

In this study, ethical clearance was not sought due to the public availability of the DHS dataset. The datasets were obtained from the Monitoring and Evaluation to Assess and Use Results Demographic and Health Surveys (MEASURE DHS) after registration and approval were given for its usage. All the ethical guidelines concerning the use of secondary datasets in the publication were strictly adhered to. Detailed information about the DHS data usage and ethical standards are available at http://goo.gl/ny8T6X .

Prevalence of premarital sexual intercourse among young women in SSA

Figure  1 displays the prevalence of PSI among young women in SSA. The prevalence of PSI among young women in SSA was 39.4%. The country-specific prevalence indicated that Liberia recorded the highest (75.3%) prevalence whereas Comoros recorded the lowest (5.0%) prevalence.

Prevalence (%) of premarital sexual intercourse among young women in sub-Saharan Africa

Association between premarital sexual intercourse and explanatory variables

Table 2 outlines the results on the association between PSI and the explanatory variables. The study found that age, level of education, religion, employment status, wealth index, exposure to newspaper or magazine, exposure to radio, exposure to television, place of residence, and sub-region were all significantly associated with PSI at p  < 0.001.

Predictors of premarital sexual intercourse among young women in sub-Saharan Africa

Table 3 presents the results of the predictors of PSI among young women in SSA. The study found that young women aged 20–24 (aOR = 4.49, 95% CI = 4.34, 4.65) and those who had secondary/higher educational level (aOR = 1.63, 95% CI = 1.54, 1.72) had higher odds of engaging in PSI compared to those aged 15–19 and those with no formal education. However, young women who belonged to the Islamic religion (aOR = 0.66, 95% CI = 0.56, 0.78); were working (aOR = 0.75, 95% CI = 0.73, 0.78); belonged to the richest wealth index (aOR = 0.55, 95% CI = 0.52, 0.58); were not exposed to radio at all (aOR = 0.90, 95% CI = 0.81, 0.99); were not exposed to television at all (aOR = 0.50, 95% CI = 0.46, 0.53); resided in rural areas (aOR = 0.73, 95% CI = 0.70, 0.76); and those who were living in the East Africa sub region (aOR = 0.32, 95% CI = 0.29, 0.35) had lower odds of engaging in PSI compared to those who were traditionalist, not working, belonged to the poorest wealth index, exposed to radio almost every day, exposed to television almost every day, resided in urban areas and living in the Southern Africa sub-region, respectively.

The study examined the prevalence and predictors of PSI among young women in SSA. The study found that the pooled prevalence of PSI among young women in SSA was 39.4%. The country-specific prevalence indicated that Liberia recorded the highest (75.3%) prevalence whereas Comoros recorded the lowest (5.0%). The variations in the prevalence of PSI among young women noted in this study could be attributed to the differences in sociocultural practices in these countries. For example, it could be that young women in Comoros normalized premarital sexual behaviours or certain societal norms encouraged sexual experimentation among young women [ 1 ], which made them underreport their engagement in PSI. The fear that they would be identified and punished could have also led to the lower prevalence of PSI among young women from Comoros. The highest prevalence of PSI among young women in Liberia could be as a result of the young women’s incessant engagement in transactional sex [ 38 , 39 ]. Our finding indicates that young women in SSA could be at higher risk of contracting STIs. Therefore, both public and private organizations should intensify their efforts to educate young women about the consequences of engaging in  PSI.

Similar to the findings of other previous studies [ 1 , 16 , 20 , 40 ], our study found that the likelihood of PSI among young women heightened with increasing age. A plausible explanation for this finding could be as result of older women engaging in romantic relationships, which increase their likelihood of having PSI [ 16 , 41 , 42 ]. Since younger women aged 15–19 are generally expected to be in school, it is not surprising that they are less likely to have PSI. This finding suggests that sexual and reproductive health education should be targeted at older young women to reduce the occurrence of PSI in SSA.

Akin to the observation of previous study [ 1 ], this study found that young women who had secondary/higher educational level had higher odds of engaging in PSI compared to those with no formal education. This finding could be as a result of the influence of peers who convince their colleagues to engage in erotic relationships, which subsequently increases their likelihood of engaging in premarital sex [ 43 , 44 ]. It could also be that young women who have attained some level of education try to experiment sexual activities that might have been discussed in the schools, increasing their likelihood of having PSI [ 45 , 46 ]. This finding implies that having higher education is positively associated with PSI, hence, more concerted efforts should be put in educating young women in the school environment about the detrimental effects of sexual experimentation while encouraging abstinence or contraceptive use.

However, young women who belonged to the Islamic religion had lower odds of engaging in PSI relative to those who were traditionalists. This finding is similar to a study [ 47 ] which found that being more religious decreased the likelihood of sexual debut among females. Our finding could be attributed to the existence of certain Islamic teachings that frown upon PSI, reducing young women’s likelihood to engage in sexual activities before marriage [ 47 , 48 ]. Another reason for this finding could be that engaging in more religious activities such as praying five times daily and Quranic recitals protect young Islamic women from engaging in PSI [ 47 ].

Young women who were working had lower odds of engaging in PSI compared to those who were not working. Our finding could be that women who are employed are less encouraged to engage in PSI due to the workload which pose as a source of stress on them. Also, women who are unemployed may have the desire to engage in PSI because of curiosity, experimentation and for financial gains to sustain themselves economically [ 49 , 50 ]. This finding signifies that providing young women with economically sustainable jobs and empowering them financially could help reduce the occurrence of PSI in SSA.

Contrary to the finding of a previous study [ 51 ], this study revealed that young women who belonged to the richest wealth index had lower odds of engaging in PSI as against those who belonged to the poorest wealth index. This finding was observed probably because being financially buoyant protects people from engaging in risky sexual behaviors such as streetism, substance use, and transactional sex which increase women’s propensity of having PSI [ 52 ].

Despite the well-documented positive influence of mass media exposure (e.g., television and radio) on sexual behavior [ 26 , 53 ], this study revealed that young women who were not exposed to radio and television at all had lower odds of engaging in PSI compared to those who were exposed to radio and television almost every day. A probable explanation for this unexpected finding could be attributed to the influx of excess sexually explicit telenovelas and advertisement of sexual enhancing drugs that increase the desire of young women to have PSI [ 54 ]. For PSI among young women in SSA to reduce significantly, it is important for media outlets to regulate the programs they churn out for public consumption.

Contrary to the finding of previous studies [ 1 , 55 ], it was found in this study that young women who resided in rural areas had lower odds of engaging in PSI compared to those who resided in urban areas. A plausible explanation for this finding could be linked with the relatively lower standard of living in rural areas, which reduces young women’s likelihood of engaging in transactional sex for financial assistance [ 56 ]. Even though this is not clear, this finding calls for further studies to substantiate this probable reason.

Young women who were living in the East Africa sub-region had lower odds of engaging in PSI compared to those who were living in the Southern Africa sub-region. A plausible reason for this finding could be attributed to the variations in the socio-cultural practices among the sub-regions of SSA. For example, it is perceived in some parts of Southern Africa sub-region that having a child increases the chance of marriage, which also increases the rate of PSI among young women [ 57 ]. This was evident in this study where Southern African countries such as Angola, Lesotho, Namibia, and Zambia recorded a high prevalence of premarital sex among young women.

Strengths and limitations

Since the subject was very sensitive, ruling out social desirability bias in relation to the responses was impossible. Additionally, the cross-sectional nature of the study makes it difficult to establish causal inferences among the studied variables. Again, since the study used self-reported questionnaires, it could be that respondents might have underreported or over-reported their experiences. Despite the above-mentioned limitations, the study has certain strengths that need to be mentioned. Hence, findings from the study should be interpreted with caution. First, the study employed a relatively large sample size that is nationally representative and would be appropriate for generalization. Moreover, the use of statistical procedures to generate interesting findings that could be verified is a strength for the study.

Conclusions

The study revealed that the prevalence of PSI among young women in SSA was high with Liberia and Comoros recording the highest (75.3%) and lowest (5.0%) prevalences, respectively. The study has also identified factors that predict PSI among young women in the studied countries, hence, interventions that seek to alleviate PSI among young women should pay critical attention to these factors. The study recommends that more concerted efforts should be directed at empowering young women financially and educating them about their sexual and reproductive health behaviors such as the detrimental effects of sexual experimentation and also encouraging abstinence and/or contraceptive use.

Availability of data and materials

The dataset used for the study is freely available at https://dhsprogram.com/data/available-datasets.cfm .

Abbreviations

Sub-Saharan Africa

• Premarital sexual intercourse

Demographic and Health Surveys

Adjusted odds ratio

Confidence interval

Sexually transmitted illnesses

Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology

Variance inflation factor

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Study conception: AS, BOA, JEH. Data analysis: EB, RGA, AS, BOA. Writing of manuscript: EB, EKA-A, JBF, AS, RGA, SKA, JEH, BOA. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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. Distribution of age across explanatory variables.

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Budu, E., Seidu, AA., Armah-Ansah, E.K. et al. Prevalence and predictors of premarital sexual intercourse among young women in sub-Saharan Africa. Reprod Health 20 , 99 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12978-023-01626-8

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Are delay ages at marriage increasing? Pre-marital sexual relation among youth people in the place of residence in India

• Ujjwal Das   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3791-4805 1 &
• Sasmita Rout 1  

BMC Women's Health volume  23 , Article number:  16 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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Adolescent sexual and reproductive health is a major public health issue throughout the world. At the same time shifting of marriage are undergoing discernible changes in country like India. This paper attempts to examine the effect of delay age at marriage on the risks of pre-marital sexual intercourse for the youth people in the place of residence.

Data used in the present study is from various annual publications of Sample Registration System (SRS) and four round of National Family Health Survey, which was conducted in 2015–2016. The Kaplan–Meier life table technique and multivariate regression models are used to examine the premarital sex by the place of residence and marriage cohort.

Findings of the study indicate that the reasons underlying delayed marriage differs between blow 21 years age group and 22–30 years age group. Multinomial analysis clearly shows education, wealth quintile and mass media are major controlling factors of delayed age at marriage. Residing in urban adolescent women who belonged to better economic family background and exposed to mass media had a higher probability to experience premarital sexual intercourse than the rural adolescent in delay age group.

The study concludes that the restorative the empowerment of youth especially for women and health care provider should consider a multidimensional approach for higher education among youth people and safe sexual behaviour in pre-marital sexual intercourse.

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Introduction

Marriage is a universal process, but recent trends indicate that there is increase in the age at marriage in the country. Government of India has changed the age at marriage for women at 21 in the year 2021. Further, A comparative analysis between 2001 and 1991 census data clearly explains that for those who have been married during 1992–2001, marriages remain at higher ages as compared to those married for twenty years or more, before 1991 census., Hence, the pattern of delayed marriages in India has remained relevant and needs further enquiry. The prior research observed that marriage patterns are based on much more similarities in union formation, such as “the similarities between partners regarding their social class, level of education, employment, religion, ethnic group and family background” [ 1 ]. In addition, marriages get delayed for lack of proper matches and at the same time decision-making power of the youth people play the dominant role of individual marriage. However, the levels of difficulties lies in identifying the possible factors that may explain why the youth people remain unmarried or get married in the delayed age group. Simultaneously, increase in the delayed age of marriage among the youth people is because of the widening sexual behaviour among the young couple in the place of residence. Because the adolescence age group (15–19) is one of the most critical transitions in the life course. “This period is part of rapid biological, cognitive, and psychosocial development, encompassing not only the physical changes of puberty but also leading to the development of sexual maturity” [ 2 ]. In addition, “the global adolescent population (10–19) is estimated to have reached 1.3 billion (49%: 15–19 years old) in 2020, of whom over 235 million (46%: 15–19 years old) live in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), accounting for 23% of the region’s population” [ 3 ].

Furthermore, delayed marriage has now become a major problem, which may lead to a “change in the sequence of sexual initiation and marriage” [ 4 ]. In addition, delayed marriage has brought the issues such as “dating, premarital sexual relations, unwanted pregnancies”, thereby increasing likelihood of the spread of HIV/AIDS [ 5 ]. As a consequence because of extensive gap between puberty and marriage there is “an increase in likelihood that young women will become involved in sexual relationships before marriage” [ 6 ]. Prior research on pre-marital sex in the United State of America, Finer (2007), concluded that “premarital sex is not surprising in an era when men and women typically marry in their mid to late twenties and they are sexually active as singles for extensive periods” [ 7 ]. On the contrary, due to pre-marital sex females are mostly affected with associated diseases like sexually transmitted diseases HIV/AIDS as compared to their male counterparts. Alo and Akinde (2010) suggested that the sexually transmitted diseases HIV/AIDS are higher among the females than the males as a result of premarital sex [ 8 ]. Also, “first-time sexual intercourse increases the possibility of contracting sexually transmitted infections (STIs) because people do not have appropriate knowledge of the precautions to protect from STIs” [ 9 ]. The early age of premarital sexual behaviours may be lead to a high risk of adolescent pregnancy, “sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), prevalence of illegal and unsafe abortions, single mother–child/abandoned child and juvenile delinquency” [ 10 , 11 ].

Several literatures have identified association of “individuals, family structures, peer groups, and community-level factors with pre-marital sexual experiences among young people” [ 12 , 13 , 14 ]. Further, it is found that at the individual level, education and pre-marital sex is negatively correlated [ 15 , 16 ], and at the family level, factors such as “co-residence with a parent, parental disapproval of pre-marital sexual activities, and parental connectedness” used to prevent or delay pre-marital sexual initiation among young people especially strongly associated with young women [ 17 , 18 ]. Further “good, open, and higher levels of parent–child communication play an important role in lowering the rates of premarital intercourse with partners among young people [ 19 ].

The sexual variations between men and women in the place of residence are substantial. For women, the median age at first intercourse is low in rural residences because of early marriage and high in urban residences [ 11 ]. For men, age at first intercourse is not linked to age at marriage while it is found that in most African and Asian countries, men started to have sex later than women [ 20 ]. In addition, “in some industrialized countries, sexual activity before the age of 15 years has become more common in recent decades” [ 9 , 21 ]. Furthermore, the trend towards later marriage in many countries have also explains the reasons for an increasing prevalence of premarital intercourse. It is also found that the trends in the average time spend between first sexual intercourse and settling with a marital or cohabiting partner are different among men and women. “The time between first sexual intercourse and living with a partner is longer for men than for women (typically 3–6 years compared with 0–2 years respectively)” [ 22 ]. This might also be explained by the age-sex pattern of sexual activity. The existing literatures have suggested that in the younger age groups (15–19) women are highly engaged in sexual activity while the case is reverse in older age groups (≥ 20 years). Most importantly, a large proportion of men have more than one sexual partner, whereas the women are predominantly monogamous. It is also noticed that the age of marriage has been increasing because of increasing influence of education and economic empowerment of both gender in place of residence. Hence, “a substantial portion of boys and girls in contemporary India have to deal with a long period of sexual desire” [ 23 ]. Premarital sexual relationships among the youth people are more common in urban residences as compared to the rural residence, because of urban lifestyle behaviour, decision making power influence the delayed age at marriage as well as premarital sex in higher age group (≥ 20 years) [ 10 , 24 , 25 ].

The socio-cultural phenomena play an important role in increasing premarital sex. Better nutrition and better health care facilities lead to attain puberty at early age. While “Indian girls started their first puberty at the ages between 8 and 13 and reach menarche (first menstruation) early, boys on contrary enter puberty between the ages of 9 and 14” [ 26 ]. With early puberty girls are vulnerability to early marriage in the developing countries [ 27 ] and therefore entering into sexual life [ 22 ]. Thus the possible factors such as declining age at puberty and the increasing age at marriage may have created an opportunity for premarital sexual relationships [ 28 ]. Both aspect timing and romantic partner relationship have immediate individual effects in premarital relationships among the youth people. Women who have intercourse before marriage or at very young age have to face serious health problems such as unplanned pregnancy which may lead to unsafe abortion [ 29 ]. Therefore, the study aims to understand the tendency of premarital sex among the youth people with the effect of delayed age at marriage in the residences.

Data and methods

In this study the data is used from the fourth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-4, conducted under Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW), Government of India for the year 2015–2016. The survey provides information on demographic and health indicators at the national, regional, state, and district levels from a nationally representative sample. NFHS-4 (2015–2016) collected information from a nationally representative sample of 601,509 households, and 699,686 women of age 15–49. The present study deal with the premarital sexual behaviour among the youth people due to delay age at marriage in India, and the analysis is based on information of married and unmarried people from rural and urban residence in ages 15–30 years youth people. In rural areas total information was collected from 176,282 among them 171,956 are married and 4326 are unmarried, while in urban residence information was covered total 59,376 among them 57,418 are married and 1958 are unmarried of age 15–30 years respectively [ 30 ].

Furthermore, various annual publications of the Sample Registration System (SRS) are used for identifying the level, trend, and regional variation of female age at marriage in the country. Further, it is to be noted here that the Sample Registration System was introduced as a pilot scheme in some selected Indian states in 1964–65 to generate reliable estimates of nuptiality, fertility, and mortality at the national and state levels, which strengthens the reasons for using such data sources. All the data analysis in this study is done by using STATA version12.0 software.

Outcome variable

The premarital sex is the main outcome variables in the study. The measurement of premarital sex is a very crucial and sensitive issue. For which National Family Health Survey did not ask the question directly to the respondents about premarital sex. For the absence of variable on premarital sexual intercourse, we have analysed premarital sex among married and unmarried men and women at age 30 years. And those are currently unmarried and had experienced sex, as a considered pre-marital sex which was also confirmed earlier study done by Melesse et al. [ 31 ]. To note here, premarital sex is combing measures of the age and first vaginal sexual intercourse. As the present study intends to define premarital sex for the first time, therefore, respondents were asked a few questions, such as, “Have you ever had sexual intercourse?“ If so, “how old were you when you had your first sexual intercourse? For additional information on age at marriage: “Have you ever been married?“ and “How old were you when you first got married?“ from the analysis it is understood that the individuals who had sex a month or more earlier than their month of the first marriage, or who had had sex but had not married by the time of the interview, were considered to have experienced pre-marital sex. Those who had sex for the first time in the same month as (or after) their first marriage and those who had neither had sex nor married contributed their months of non-experience of the premarital sex and were “censored” at the time of marriage (for those who had married) or at the time of interview (for those who had not married), since they ceased to be at risk of the event at that point. After that life table procedure was used for censored information, which is considered as the best suitable method [ 7 ].

Independent variables

Several studies have highlighted the demographic and community variables, which are explaining premarital sex in various countries [ 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 ]. The main independent variable of this study is age at marriage in 30 years, it was divided into three categories’, such as married early (less than 21 years), married late (27–30 years) and unmarried till 30 years. The others variables are included age, education, residence, caste, religion, region, wealth index, and regular exposure to mass media (television, radio, and newspaper) as independent variables.

Statistical methods

Bivariate and multivariate analyses were used for the analysis of premarital sex due to delayed age at marriage. The life table technique was used to measure the median age at premarital intercourse. For multinomial analyses, the relative risk ratio (RRR) was estimated for the measurement of premarital sex in various ages. Multinominal discrete-time models with a logit transformation [ 38 ] are used to understand the effects of key independent variables on the probability of premarital intercourse. The relative risks of premarital intercourse can be analysed with a general formulation as follows:

And the alternative formula, directly specifying π (x), is

where the P represents the risk of premarital intercourse at the age of youth people, the parameter \({{\upbeta }}_{I}\) refers to the effect of \({\text{x}}_{I}\) , on the log odds that Y = 1, controlling other \({\text{x}}_{j}\) , for instance, \(\text{e}\text{x}\text{p}\) ( \({{\upbeta }}_{i}\) ) is the multiplicative effect on the odds of one unit increase in \({\text{x}}_{i}\) , at fixed levels of other \({\text{x}}_{j}\) .

We have n independent observations with p-independent variables i.e. age at marriage, and the qualitative response variables were k categorical, constructed the logits in the multinomial case. If the Relative Risks Ratio (RRR) is greater than 1, then indicates that with increasing values on the independent variables there is an increased likelihood /risk of a case falling into the comparison category and decreased risk of falling into the baseline category. Contrary to that if RRR is less than 1, then it indicates that with increasing values on the IV there is decreased risk of a case falling into the comparison group and an increased risk of the case falling into the baseline category. If the RRR equals 1, then there is no relationship between the IV and the risk of falling into the comparison group with the baseline group. And also note that if \({\upbeta }\) =0, then RRR = 1. If \({\upbeta }\) >0, then RRR>1, if \({\upbeta }\) <0, then RRR <1 respectively. All analysis has been done by using the statistical software package STATA® (Version 14.0).

Table  1 represents the mean age of female marriage by place of residence in India from 2011 to 2018. Within 7 years’ time period female age at marriage increased by 1.1 years, wherein in 2011 it was 21.2 years and in 2018 it was 22.3 years respectively. Similarly, the same trend was also found in rural residences but the urban residence female age at marriage increased by 0.7 (22.7 to 23.4)) months from 2011 to 2018. It indicates that the delayed age at marriage is relatively higher in urban residences as compared to rural residences. Because in urban areas most of the families belonged to the richest quintile, and they are supported in higher education, which leads to delayed marriage in the residences.

Figure  1 shows the proportion of individuals in the 2015–2016 survey who had premarital sex and married by specific age in the place of residence. Table  2 contains the proportion of youth who had premarital sex by specific age for all respondents by gender and place of residence. By the exact age of 18 years, 40% of premarital sex in urban residences and 44% have in rural residences. In that age group, 34% had married in urban residences and 29% had married in rural residences respectively. In the age group of 21 years, 11% had married in rural residences and 16% in urban residences. The premarital sex of the corresponding age was found at 16% and 24% in rural and urban residences respectively. Thus it indicates that delay in age at marriage and premarital sex was higher in urban residents as compared to rural residents. “Although the overall marriage curve is included for comparison to the sex curves, the percentage who had premarital sex by a certain age cannot be calculated by taking the difference between the sex curve and the marriage curve at that age because most of those who both had sex and been married by that age had sex first”, which is also confirmed by Finner, in his earlier study [ 7 ].

Percentage distribution of adolescents who had first sexual intercourse, marriage by specific age in place of residence

Figure  2 presents the gender-wise differential of premarital sex in the place of residence. It is found that in the age group below 18 years male and female premarital sex of urban residents were 19% and 9% respectively. The corresponding figures found in rural residents were 29 and 26% respectively. Moreover, in the age group of 21 years premarital sex in rural residences was 16 and 18% for both males and females. On the contrary, the premarital sex in the urban residents in the same age group for both males and females was 24 and 29% respectively. Further, after the age group of 21 years, prevalence of premarital sex declined but the gender-based difference was still constant for both residences. It indicates that males were slightly more likely to have premarital sex at the early age group, by the exact age of 18; wherein females in the delay age group were by the exact age of 21.

Percentage of individuals who had premarital sex by specific ages and sex in place of residence, 2015–2016

Table  3 shows that the percentage of age at marriage for all respondents by different background characteristics, as well as the median age at marriage for various subgroups. It was observed that in the age group below 21 years 92% of males and 91% females in the rural areas got married. On the contrary, in urban areas, 81% of males and 85% of females got married in the same age group. Due to no education or only primary education, or poor family status, and less or no exposure to mass media people were married in the early age group, often below 21 years in places of residence in both the settings. Furthermore in the age group of more than 21 years females were more delayed married as compared to males in both places of residence. The reason behind the delayed age of marriage includes the rich background family with higher education and more exposed to mass media. The Christian and Schedule Tribe (ST) background family had married more at delayed age as compared to the other religions and communities. On the contrary, in the Muslim religion and Hindu Schedule Cast, marriages take place in the place of residence in the early age. While considering the median age at married in the place of residence was varied by the different subgroups. For example, in rural areas, both the male and female median age at married was age 17 years, while in urban areas age was 18. The youth people who were not completed primary education, the median age at marriage for these groups in 17 years for both residences. While, those were completed higher education, median age at married is 21 years for rural residents and 22 years for urban residents. The poorest background family in rural areas most were married at the exact age of 16 years while, in urban residence age at 17 years, on contrary richest background family rural–urban differences median age at married as 21 and 22 years respectively.

Table  4 contains the life table estimate prevalence of pre-marital sex among the youth people by the different background characteristics in the place of residence in India. The result suggested that the prevalence of pre-marital sex among the females in early-age married was higher than the male (58.4 vs. 52.8%) in rural residences, while in urban residences differences were narrowed (57.1 vs. 57.0%). The prevalence of pre-marital sex was higher due to delayed age married for both groups in rural and urban residences. The prevalence of unmarried people till 30 years was lower than delayed age married people, but males are more engaged in premarital sex than females for both residences (52.5 vs. 47.7% and 38.8 vs. 22.2%). However, males were slightly more likely to have had premarital sex than those have till unmarried at the age of 30 years; while females were more likely to have premarital sex at delayed age. The percentage of pre-marital sex among the scheduled tribe community was higher than the other social group at an early age. Furthermore, the early age of premarital sex was found in rural areas for those who belonged to the poorest economic family background with low education and Muslim religious community in the country. On the other hand, delayed ages at premarital sex were found in urban residents who had covered higher education, higher exposure to mass media, and the richest economic family respectively.

Table  5 presents the Adjusted Relative Ricks Ratios (RRR) of premarital sex by different background characteristics in the place of residence in India. The result suggested that early marriage is a reference category, while the relative risk for pre-marital sex in delayed married 1.57 times higher in urban residence as compared to the rural residence. The tendency of premarital sex among the unmarried people was lower and also the negligible difference in residence while in rural areas relative risk for pre-marital sex 0.23 times and urban areas 0.26 times respectively. The females are at a greater risk of premarital sex in urban residences as compared to rural residences in the country with statistical significance (RRR 1.33 vs. 1.30). Earlier a cross-sectional study by Liu et al., (2006) was conducted on premarital sex among vocational students in northern Thailand at aged 15–21 years and suggested female sexual initiation was associated with earlier initiation at a younger age [ 39 ]. Because of living away from family, lacking a family members are getting more confidants for premarital sex. Considering education groups with no education as the reference category and the risks of pre-marital sex were higher who had completed secondary and higher secondary than those who completed only primary education. In addition, the higher educated people in urban residences 1.78 times had a higher risk of having premarital sexual intercourse than the rural residence with statically significant (RRR 1.78 vs. 1.66). Thus, “delayed marriage for literate women indicates that they have a long time before getting married. However, a single literate woman is less likely to experience sexual intercourse than an illiterate single woman” [ 40 ]. Another interesting finding Muslim religious people in rural residences 1.78 times higher risks of pre-marital sex than urban residents without statically significant in the country. In the context of pre-marital sex with the economic background of the family, the richest people have a higher relative risk of premarital sex compared to the poorest background family for both residences with statically significant in the country. Those people highly exposed to mass media to higher chances to engaged premarital sex as compared to those who have no exposure to any other mass media (radio, television, newspaper) respectively.

The result of the analysis indicates that premarital sex is highly determined by the age of marriage of the youth people in the residences. Almost all individuals of both sexes have intercourse before marrying. Available literature suggested that “the prevalence of premarital sex is positively associated with the delayed age of marriage for men and women. Due to poverty, financial implications, and emotional attachment, most females are bound to marry late. This has increased the divorce rate due to various reasons that are post effects of late marriage” [ 41 ]. The result of the study highlighted that in rural areas mean age of female marriage is 21.8 years whereas in urban residences 23.4 years. Previous research on sub-Saharan African countries suggested that “the greater decline in child marriage compared to sexual debut before age 18 implies an increase in premarital sex” [ 42 ]. On contrary, “the slower decline in childbearing compared to marriage and sexual debut among adolescent girls indicate the inadequate access to modern contraceptives and other ASRH services for sexually active single adolescents” [ 43 , 44 ]. Further, it is also found that “girls with primary or less education are much more likely to be married early as well as have their first child before the age of 15 than those with secondary or higher education. Early marriage and childbearing were much more common in rural areas with the poorest family than in urban areas with the richest family. The highly educated people may have better knowledge of access to contraception, more awareness in earlier pregnancies while in rural younger people lack in education. Due to lower knowledge of reproductive health and sexuality they commence their adult life course earlier and thus engage in long-term relationships that are expected to lead to marriage earlier in life. These gaps persisted or even increased over time in the residences. These adverse trends highlight that the disadvantages associated with these outcomes are increasingly concentrated within already vulnerable poor and rural girls” [ 45 ]. Similarly, urban–rural ratio and rich–poor disparities in girls with less education led to increasing and persistent long-term inequalities in age-sex reproductive health in different regions. It is also confirmed that “adolescent girls living in rural areas and the poorest households report higher prevalence rates as compared to rich urban households” [ 46 ]. Differences in premarital sex between urban and rural residences by young people were contradicted by many scholars. For instance, a few studies reported “premarital sex was more common among rural young people” [ 47 , 48 ] and, others indicating that have identified prevalence of sexual activity more among those living in urban areas [ 49 ]. But these researches have highlighted that males initiated sexual intercourse at an earlier age than females in rural residences, whereas in urban residences delay aged of premarital sex is common among female groups. On contrary, unmarried people till 30 years have lower prevalence of pre-marital sex than those were married latter. This might be explaining in age heaping in older cohort. The earlier study also suggested that “estimates of underreporting are substantially higher for females, perhaps indicative of the different standards and taboos that are applied to young men and women in their societies” [ 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 ]. Sexual initiation was also associated with having a non-agriculture background, peer groups, and using alcohol consumption [ 39 ]. The growing number of the literature suggested that the current use of alcohol, tobacco, and including “peer pressure as the main factors that motivated them to initiate sexual activity among males, while having a poor relationship with parents, exposed to family conflict, and currently living with parents and being an income earner was the strongest association with premarital sex for females” [ 54 , 55 , 56 ]. The family was an important influence on premarital sex among the female, some studies reported that “lack of parental control, as well as very strict parenting, were also associated with sex before marriage [ 57 ]. Because unintended pregnancy were more likely to be reported among unmarried females in society as compared to married women [ 58 ]. This unintended pregnancy was associated with a higher risk of sexual behaviour with multiple partners and forced sex, a lower level of sexual reproductive health knowledge, without the use of contraception, and a lack of parental supervision [ 37 , 59 , 60 ].

Furthermore, unequal access to education and health services are also the reasons for increasing trend of premarital sex in different places of residence. Girls becoming pregnant or marry early are responsible for the drop outs of school and therefore naturally their future opportunities were limited. Further, it is also found that “higher educated unmarried adults in India were more likely to have multiple partners in premarital sexual relations” [ 15 ]. Further, “education has created more time and opportunities for young people to adopt liberalized sexual norms and get involved in intimate (sexual) relationships before marriage” [ 61 , 62 ]. The prior research also suggests that “educated mothers have greater educational aspirations for their children and may discourage them from engaging in activities, including pre-marital sexual activity that might affect the realization of those aspirations” [ 29 ].

The richest and richer wealth quintiles are more likely to have multiple premarital sex partners at a delayed age as compared to the poorer and poorest wealth quintiles at an early age. As dating generally requires gifts and parties, which youths from advantaged households can afford. Thereby there is an increase in the risks of premarital intercourse especially among girls from wealthier families. On the other hand, in the poverty driven households, socio-economic status is an important criterion because male youth expect gifts from females of advantaged households. Conversely, female youth from poor households are in need and thus they don’t share. In a nutshell, at the same levels of beauty/attractiveness, both female and male youth from rich families are favored [ 63 ].

“The major role of mass media in the formation of multiple partners in premarital sexual relationships was described in the place of residence” [ 64 ]. Reporting premarital sex at an early age is higher among rural residents those who have no regular exposure to media, while in contrast percentage of premarital sex among the late married people was higher despite having constant exposure to media in urban residences. Previous study also mentioned that those people never watch western television, listen to pop music or once a week listen/ watch are less likely to engaged in pre-marital sexually activities, while people who watch/listen at several times a week are more likely to have done pre-marital sex [ 65 ] and these prevalence are more common urban residence as compared to rural residence respectively. The sex is not bad for the health. The Robert Malthus also mentioned in his preventive check the passion between the sexes appears to be fairly constant but “when a general corruption of morals with regard to sex pervades all classes of society, its effects must necessarily be to poison the springs of domestic happiness, to weaken conjugal parental affection…” thus sex in early ages and sex with multiple partner also violent for HIV/AIDS. Knowledge of HIV/AIDS is highly relevant for premarital sex among both males and females in place of residence. Rural residents lack in knowledge of HIV/AIDS, thus, they sexual debut at an early age, on the contrary, in urban residents, detailed knowledge of HIV/ AIDS is increased, and therefore, reported delayed premarital sex.

Findings of this study reflect on the rural–urban differences in age at marriage and premarital sex in the country. It is asserted that marriages get delayed among the educated and richest households. The pattern of delayed marriages and premarital sex at the state level might differ in large scale [ 66 ]. Therefore, it is difficult to draw any firm conclusion pertaining to the states based on the present research, because of rural–urban disparity and poorest to richest wealth quintile from one state to another winding the gap age at marriage and delayed premarital sex. As mentioned earlier that the educated and richest unmarried people having premarital sex are more likely to have multiple sexual partners in urban residences as compared to the rural residence [ 41 ]. Policy-makers and programs needs to take action to for sexual health status and need to provide “services to unmarried young women, supplying condoms, decriminalizing commercial sex and homosexual activity, and prosecuting people who commit sexual violence are likely to be beneficial rather than detrimental” [ 67 , 68 ]. These programs also need to take the emphasize of rural girls’ empowerment for making proper decisions and preparing them for marriage at the appropriate manner and time. Apart from that improve the inclusion of disadvantage unmarried youth people for sexually reproductive health research, particularly those are out of school, economically disadvantage and marginalized group.

Availability of data and materials

This research work was performed based on secondary data which is freely available upon request at IIPS, India website (Source of data: http://rchiips.org/NFHS/NFHS4Reports/India.pdf ).

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Acknowledgements

This paper uses data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS). The authors would like to thank International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) for providing publicly accessible data.

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Das, U., Rout, S. Are delay ages at marriage increasing? Pre-marital sexual relation among youth people in the place of residence in India. BMC Women's Health 23 , 16 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12905-022-02149-3

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Dr. Chernin acknowledged how stressful those conversations can be, sometimes deteriorating into finger-pointing, belittling or stonewalling. That said, these suggestions may help.

Embrace the awkwardness.

It’s common for partners to have trouble talking about intimacy and desire. Research suggests that even in long-term relationships, people know only about 60 percent of what their partner likes sexually, and only about 25 percent of what they don’t like.

Cyndi Darnell, a sex and relationships therapist in New York City, said her patients frequently tell her that talking about sex is “awkward” — which is especially true “if you’ve spent months or years avoiding it,” she said.

“We’ve been tricked into believing sex is natural,” she added. “But, if it were easy and natural, people wouldn’t struggle with it as much as they do.”

She mentioned one couple she worked with, both in their 50s, who hadn’t had sex in years. Every time they talked about it, they fought. So they sought outside help to get past their embarrassment and anger.

In therapy, they realized that they had only been focused on penetration, but the husband was really longing for closeness and tenderness. And once the wife realized that her husband was not going to “pounce on her” whenever she cuddled with him, they were able to be more sensual with each other — and to talk about what they like to do and why, Ms. Darnell said. But it took a spirit of willingness, curiosity and acceptance.

Death to ‘We need to talk.’

It may be possible to temper the dread that often accompanies these conversations, if you approach them sensitively. “When a partner says, ‘We need to talk,’ Dr. Chernin said, “the other person feels like, ‘I’m going to the principal’s office.’”

Instead, try to:

Focus on problem-solving together

That means saying something like: “On the one hand, I know how difficult this is for us to talk about,” Dr. Chernin said. “On the other hand, I think it’s important for our marriage or for our relationship to be able to have some discussions about our sex life.”

Then ask: “What can we do about it?”

Prepare questions ahead of time

A script offers scaffolding, Ms. Darnell said. She suggested prompts like: “Our relationship is really important to me, and I’d like for sex to be part of it (again). I was curious if that is something you’d be into also?”

Bring in some positives

Maggie Bennett-Brown, a research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and an assistant professor at Texas Tech University, said “it doesn’t have to be explicit.” Maybe you tell your partner that you like it when he hugs you or plans a romantic night on the town.

If it has been a while since you were intimate, it can help to reminisce — and that can segue into a deeper question. “If people have never had a conversation about: ‘What do you enjoy?’ that’s a good first step,” Dr. Bennett-Brown said.

Be mindful of your timing

Be careful about initiating a discussion about sex while in bed, Dr. Chernin said, particularly if you are being critical. (Though some couples may find it easier to talk about sex when they are basking in the afterglow, he said.)

“Think about a conversation as a series of discussions,” Dr. Chernin said. “That way, you’re not putting too much pressure on yourself or your partner.”

Know when to talk to a professional.

If your partner is unwilling to talk — or if the conversation feels painful, not just uncomfortable, Ms. Darnell said — a sex therapist or couples counselor may be able to help mediate.

She did not downplay how high-stakes these conversations can be. But she added that sex may not always be a necessary component of a satisfying romantic relationship.

“One of the questions I often ask my couples for whom sex is a tenuous and difficult issue is: Does this relationship have to be sexual?” she said. She worked with one couple in their 30s and 40s who realized they liked engaging in flirty banter, but did not want to move beyond that. “Permission to not have sex at this phase of their relationship was huge — and a relief,” she said.

“Sex is about so much more than just what we do when our pants are off,” she said.

Catherine Pearson is a Times reporter who writes about families and relationships. More about Catherine Pearson

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The Future of Sex

It’s time to recognize the power of sex technology to change our intimate lives..

Posted May 26, 2024 | Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano

• The Fundamentals of Sex
• Find a sex counsellor near me
• Rapid advances in technology have enabled sex tech to become even more competitive with human lovers.
• Four misunderstandings prevent people from grasping the potential risks of advancing sex tech.
• Ignoring the evolution of sex tech leaves us ill-prepared to optimize it while minimizing its potential harms.
• It’s time to talk about protecting the more vulnerable among us from harm.

Sex technology is advancing at an astounding rate and promises to revolutionize intimacy. Chatbots, avatars, sex dolls, and VR porn are some examples of advancing sex tech that are already gaining traction– and this is just the beginning. Intimacy is the core of humanity, yet the ways we are intimate are changing fast.

How future humans engage emotionally and sexually is being determined today by tech companies. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because human intimacy is far from perfect. People today struggle significantly in their romantic relationships . Hopefully, innovative sex tech will help make the future of intimacy less stressful and more pleasurable. However, the risk of negative impact is also real. For at least a subset of the population, sex tech is poised to become a compelling, albeit unhelpful, intimate partner.

Yet it’s easy to minimize the impact of tech on sex and the future of intimacy. First, we already have a lot to concern ourselves with. The news alerts us to problems all over the world, so our bandwidth for additional concerns may be diminished. Further, the future is uncertain. It’s much easier to focus on reality than concern ourselves with the unknown. I've found that people tend to justify their lack of concern about the impact of sex tech with one of four statements:

“People will always prefer human partners.”

Even if this were the case—and I don’t believe this is a given— it doesn’t mean that people would reject sex tech and hold out for a potentially elusive but preferred human partner. We are a species that needs connection, while appreciating convenience and efficiency. Advancing sex tech can do many things more proficiently and expediently than a human partner. For example, a better, faster orgasm , a less emotionally needy sexting partner, a perfect-looking body, a technology that embraces your kink rather than being disgusted by it.

Further, not all humans are great lovers, and not everyone has the option for a human sex partner. So, just because a human partner may remain the gold standard, it doesn’t mean that people will always prefer humans to sex tech, or that just being human makes a potential partner more desirable than sex tech.

“I don’t find any of the new tech sexually compelling, so other people won’t, either."

People often incorrectly assume that others’ opinions will mostly mimic their own. But what constitutes great sex is a unique experience. Furthermore, research consistently suggests that younger generations find advancing sex tech more appealing than older generations. This makes sense, since younger generations are more used to interfacing with tech in all aspects of their lives.

Finally, and very importantly, the human brain is neuroplastic, meaning it is modified by experience. Neuroplasticity is amplified in infancy and again in early adolescence —a time when many young people are first exposed to sex tech (Pizzol et al., 2016). Since their young brains are being rewired in response to that sexual stimulation (Brown & Wisco, 2019), it is likely that, as adults, their view of sex tech will be different from that of someone whose brain wasn’t modified by such technology as a young adult.

“The technology isn’t there yet; it’s just not that powerful”.

Sex robots don’t exist in a compelling way today, but it’s truly anyone’s guess how long this will remain the case. Technology advances in leaps and bounds in relatively brief periods of time. For example, it took less than two years from the introduction of smartphones to their being coveted objects. Similarly, porn exploded on the world wide web within a year of the web becoming accessible. Things change quickly, and improvements happen fast.

“New inventions are always accompanied by hype, like the printing press, but people’s worst fears never materialize.”

This concept is rapidly becoming outdated. Sex tech, unlike the printing press, meets complex and primal human needs in ways that human lovers cannot always compete with. Furthermore, AI is quickly gaining in intelligence . Our trust that we can inform our futures by looking to our past is no longer tenable. Humanity’s future relies on our ability to think clearly in novel situations and do what we are supposed to do best: respond logically and humanely. We are living in a unique moment in history. Change is happening faster than ever before, as all aspects of our lives are being modified.

Moving forward

As we embrace the excitement of advancing technology, let’s also recognize that sex tech is potent, and it will impact the future of intimacy, probably in both positive and negative ways. Rather than waiting to see how this adventure unfolds, I suggest we take a proactive step to assist the more vulnerable among us with this transformation.

For example, I have great concern for the impact of VR porn on adolescents’ experience of intimacy and sex. I also worry about the impact of this tech on folks who are emotionally fragile; for example, how will they handle data breeches of highly personal, sexual information (Yang et al., 2023), restricted access to a beloved artificial companion, deep fake porn (Flynn et al., 2022), and the many other legal and ethical challenges unfolding before us.

Stay tuned as I explore these topics in coming months. But first, let’s recognize that intimacy isn’t a game and sex tech is super-potent. We will better serve future humans if we become more engaged now in a dialogue about the future of intimacy.

Brown, J., & Wisco,J. (2019). The components of the adolescent brain and its unique sensitivity to sexually explicit material, Journal of Adolescence, 72, 10-13, ISSN 0140-1971, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2019.01.006 .

Flynn, A., Powell, A., Scott, A., & Cama, E. (2022). Deepfakes and Digitally Altered Imagery Abuse: A Cross-Country Exploration of an Emerging form of Image-Based Sexual Abuse, The British Journal of Criminology , 62, (6), 1341–1358, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azab111 .

Pizzol, D., Bertoldo, A., & Foresta, C. (2016). Adolescents and web porn: a new era of sexuality. International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health , 28 (2), 169–173. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijamh-2015-0003

Yang, Jing, Yen-Lin Chen, Lip Yee Por, and Chin Soon Ku. 2023. "A Systematic Literature Review of Information Security in Chatbots" Applied Sciences 13, no. 11: 6355. https://doi.org/10.3390/app13116355oi.org/10.1093/bjc/azab111

Marianne Brandon, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, diplomate in sex therapy, author, and lecturer with over 20 years of experience working with couples. She is the author of Monogamy: The Untold Story.

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Well, Duh: New Study Finds Marriage Equality Didn’t Ruin Society

By Abby Monteil

Before the nationwide legalization of marriage equality in 2015, homophobes loved to claim that letting “the gays” marry would diminish the institution of marriage and, thereby, destroy society. But a new report found what queer people always knew all along: The sky did not fall. In fact, the legalization of same-sex marriage has actually increased marriage rates overall.

The report finds that since Massachusetts became the first state to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2004, the number of marriages has increased across the board. Among cisgender, heterosexual couples, rates of matrimony ticked up by one to two percent — a modest but notable increase. When factoring in LGBTQ+ partners, marriages increased by a more robust 10%. (However, the vast majority of couples, both queer and not, remain unmarried.)

The research was conducted by the University of California, Los Angeles and the nonprofit group RAND by reviewing 96 studies about the effects of marriage equality published over the past two decades. “We find no evidence for a retreat from marriage,” Melanie A. Zaber, a lead author of the report, said in a press release . Her co-author, Benjamin R. Karney, concluded similarly: “Overall, the fears of opponents of same-sex marriage simply have not come to pass.”

While resulting in more marriages overall, the legalization of marriage equality has also had a major positive impact on LGBTQ+ couples’ quality of life, as the report notes. Marriage grants U.S. citizens more than 1,000 unique privileges not afforded to unmarried partners. These include the ability to file taxes jointly and accessing their partner’s health insurance to granting individuals the right to make decisions about their spouse’s care during a health emergency.

Legalizing same-sex marriage had even broader benefits outside of the legal and political arena, according to researchers. The report found that marriage equality positively impacted the physical health of the queer community as a whole, with rates of HIV/AIDS and syphilis falling as marriage rights were expanded. Meanwhile, multiple studies have found that married same-sex couples report lower psychological distress than unmarried same-sex partners.

The data also dispels the conservative notion that same-sex marriage is inherently harmful to children. Children living in same-sex households in the U.S. “fare just as well” when it comes to academic performance, psychological health, and social well-being, according to one report included in the researchers’ metadata. Virtually every mainstream study on the subject has reached the same verdict, sometimes finding that children are healthier and happier in LGBTQ+ homes than when raised by cisgender, heterosexual parents.

Although conservatives claimed same-sex marriage would force religious adoption and foster agencies to close, adoption rates have actually increased. Previous reports have indicated that LGBTQ+ partners are seven times more likely to adopt than other couples.

And despite fears that letting gays tie the knot would lead to increases in divorce and non-marital cohabitation, there has been no significant change in either.

Largely, the public has recognized what a not big deal same-sex marriage turned out to be: In the most recent Gallup poll, 71% of U.S. respondents expressed support for marriage equality , a record high. Meanwhile, 37 countries across the world now recognize the freedom to marry, with Liechtenstein set to be the 38th . Following a near-unanimous vote in their parliament earlier this month, the tiny European country will begin allowing same-sex couples to wed on January 1, 2025, joining nations like Chile, Cuba, Estonia, Greece, and Switzerland.

But despite the benefits and increasing popularity of marriage equality, conservatives will continue to target LGBTQ+ couples’ rights. In February, the state of Tennessee passed a first-of-its-kind law allowing officiants to refuse to perform same-sex weddings. Meanwhile, Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have called upon the bench to repeal its Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, the 2015 decision legalizing marriage equality nationwide.

Those attacks, though, can’t change the reality: America wasn’t weakened by marriage equality. If anything, legalizing love made it stronger.

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Research on Marital Satisfaction and Stability in the 2010s: Challenging Conventional Wisdom

Although getting married is no longer a requirement for social acceptance, most people do marry in their lifetimes, and couples across the socioeconomic spectrum wish their marriages to be satisfying and long-lasting. This review evaluates the past decade of research on the determinants of satisfaction and stability in marriage, concluding that the scholarship of the past ten years has undermined three assumptions that were formerly accepted as conventional wisdom. First, research exploiting methods like latent class growth analyses reveal that, for most couples, marital satisfaction does not decline over time but in fact remains relatively stable for long periods. Second, contrary to predictions of behavioral models of marriage, negative communication between spouses can be difficult to change, does not necessarily lead to more satisfying relationships when it is changed, and does not always predict distress in the first place. Third, dyadic processes that are reliably adaptive for middle-class and more affluent couples may operate differently in lower-income couples, suggesting that influential models of marriage may not generalize to couples living in diverse environments. Thus, the accumulated research of the last ten years indicates that the tasks of understanding and promoting marital satisfaction and stability are more complex than we appreciated at the start of the decade, raising important questions that beg to be answered in the years ahead.

Despite what you may have heard, the institution of marriage is alive and well. It is true that marriage is no longer a requirement for social acceptance and advancement ( Cherlin, 2004 ). It is also true that more of the population of the United States is currently unmarried than ever before ( United States Census Bureau, 2017 ), because people have been cohabiting more frequently ( Rosenfeld & Roesler, 2019 ), entering marriage later ( Kreider & Ellis, 2011 ), and yet divorcing at similar rates ( Cohen, 2016 ). Notwithstanding these trends, however, the vast majority of people across levels of socioeconomic status still aspire to marry ( Kuo & Raley, 2016 ; McDonald, Pini, Bailey, & Price, 2011 ), and well over 90% of people do marry at some point in their lives ( Kiersz, 2017 ; Yau, 2015 ).

The persistence of marriage makes sense considering that the intimate relationship enshrined by marriage continues to be vital to well-being. When marriages are stable and fulfilling, spouses are healthier ( Robles, Slatcher, Trombello, & McGinn, 2014 ), happier ( Be, Whisman, & Uebelacker, 2013 ), and live longer ( Whisman, Gilmour, & Salinger, 2018 ); when the relationship falters, other pillars of well-being are also at risk ( Holt-Lunstad, Smith, Baker, Harris, & Stephenson, 2015 ). The evidence is stronger than ever that the critical driver of these effects is the quality and longevity of the connection between the partners ( Musick & Bumpass, 2012 ). Spouses themselves understand this: across the socioeconomic spectrum, people do not merely want to get married, they want to marry someone they love, and to remain in love together for the rest of their lives ( Geiger & Livingston, 2019 ; Kefalas, Furstenberg, Carr, & Napolitano, 2011 ; Trail & Karney, 2012 ; Van Hooff, 2013 ).

Yet, as the goals and benefits of a happy marriage endure, so do the challenges, reflected in the fact that nearly 50% of first marriages will end in divorce ( Kreider & Ellis, 2011 ). How do people sustain close intimate connections within marriage over time? Why is this so difficult for so many well-intentioned couples? When we first reviewed the accumulated literature addressing these questions twenty-five years ago ( Karney & Bradbury, 1995 ), research on how marriages remain stable or change over time was relatively young, and methods for addressing change were still being developed. The subsequent decades have seen an explosion of research and the blossoming of new methods for conducting that research. In this review, we focus on efforts within the last ten years to account for stability and change in marriage, in hopes of setting the stage for the decade ahead. Further, because the bulk of research on marriage continues to focus on different-sex couples (despite the legalization of same-sex marriage halfway through the decade), this review will likewise focus primarily on research on different-sex couples. Yet even within those restrictions, we cannot do justice to the breadth and depth of contemporary research on the determinants of marital quality and stability (for recent reviews that complement this one, see Finkel, Simpson, & Eastwick, 2017 ; McNulty, 2016 ; Proulx, Ermer, & Kanter, 2017 ; Robles et al., 2014 ). Instead, our current goal is more narrow: to identify specific areas where research over the last ten years has overturned, or at least called into question, long-standing and widely-held ideas about marital quality and stability. In particular, this review will focus on how the research of the last decade has undermined previous assumptions about how marriages change, how that change comes about, and to what extent our conclusions about these issues generalize across populations.

Trajectories of Marital Satisfaction: Most Couples Don’t Decline Much

No one marries intending to get divorced. The frequency of divorce therefore suggests that the initial connection and optimism that characterizes spouses on their wedding day is hard for many couples to maintain. Indeed, one of the most consistent results in longitudinal research on marriage is that, on average, marital satisfaction declines significantly over time (e.g., Kurdek, 1999 ; Umberson, Williams, Powers, Chen, & Campbell, 2005 ). This dispiriting pattern, which has been described as a “typical honeymoon then years of blandness” ( Aron, Norman, Aron, & Lewandowski, 2002 , p. 182), is as close to a truism as exists in marital research: marital satisfaction declines on average in nearly every longitudinal study of marriage ever conducted, and in newer and older marriages alike ( VanLaningham, Johnson, & Amato, 2001 ). Given that couples uniformly wish to preserve their initial happiness, the ubiquity of these declines is the mystery that most longitudinal studies of marriage are designed to explain.

Empirical Advances

Over the last decade, an accumulating body of research indicates that this truism may not be as true as previously thought. The insight guiding this new work is that emphasizing the average trend in marital satisfaction has masked theoretically interesting variability across people. Even the more sophisticated approaches to addressing multiwave longitudinal data on marriage (e.g., growth curve modeling; T. E. Duncan, Duncan, & Strycker, 2013 ) estimate average parameters of change (i.e., intercepts and slopes of marital satisfaction over time), and then use other predictors to account for variability around those average parameters. In contrast, alternative approaches to analyzing longitudinal data treat the variability itself as something worth describing in detail. Whereas procedures like growth curve modeling are variable-centered, the newer approaches are person-centered, seeking to identify distinct groups or clusters of people that are more similar to each other than to members of other groups ( Jobe-Shields, Andrews, Parra, & Williams, 2015 ). Techniques like semi-parametric mixture modeling ( Nagin, 1999 ) and latent class growth analysis ( Jung & Wickrama, 2008 ) are among several allowing researchers to move beyond characterizing average trajectories toward describing different types of trajectories more or less prevalent within a sample or population.

When these approaches were applied to longitudinal data on marriage for the first time, the existing literature supported the strong prediction that, even if distinct classes of change in marital satisfaction could be identified, most people would fall into groups characterized by varying degrees of decline. That’s not what happened. Analyses of 20 years of data from couples in the Marital Instability over the Life Course study did indeed reveal five distinct classes of change in marital satisfaction, for example, but 67.6% of the sample were grouped into the two classes characterized by insignificant change in marital satisfaction over the entire duration of the study ( Anderson, Van Ryzin, & Doherty, 2010 ). The same year, a study examining four years of data from initially newlywed couples also found five distinct classes of marital satisfaction trajectories ( Lavner & Bradbury, 2010 ). In this study, over 80% of the sample were grouped into classes that experienced insignificant or minimal changes in satisfaction over time. In both studies, the average trajectory was the familiar high beginning followed by gradual decline, but this average turned out to result from the small minority of couples that start with low levels of satisfaction and decline rapidly from there.

Once the techniques to identify them became available, other datasets were also found to contain large groups of couples who experienced negligible changes in marital satisfaction over time. In the Early Years of Marriage project, over 50% of wives and over 90% of husbands experienced insignificant or minimal declines in their marital happiness across the first 16 years of marriage ( Birditt, Hope, Brown, & Orbuch, 2012 ). In one study of German parents followed over four years, high marital adjustment with slopes that did not differ significantly from zero characterized 90% of couples ( Foran, Hahlweg, Kliem, & O’Leary, 2013 ). Additional newlywed studies found that between 60% and 85% of spouses experienced insignificant or minimal declines in their marital satisfaction across intervals ranging from 2.5 to 4 years ( Lavner, Bradbury, & Karney, 2012 ; Lorber, Erlanger, Heyman, & O’Leary, 2014 ).

By the time that Proulx, Ermer, and Canter (2017) reviewed this literature, 14 studies had applied these procedures to longitudinal data on marital satisfaction. Given their diverse samples, study durations, and operationalizations of marital satisfaction, it is not surprising that different studies arrived at different ways of classifying marital satisfaction trajectories. Nonetheless, all of the studies undermined the idea that time spent being married leads to declines in marital satisfaction. Across studies, couples experiencing significant declines tended to be couples undergoing stressful life transitions (e.g., new parents) and couples reporting lower satisfaction initially. Yet the dominant pattern across studies was stability, with the most stability experienced by couples reporting the highest initial satisfaction. In other words, the average trend in marital satisfaction has supported a misleading account of how most spouses experience their marriages. Just as no family has ever had 2.5 children, only a minority of couples actually experience high initial marital satisfaction that declines steadily and significantly over the course of their marriage. Instead, most couples who start their marriage happy stay happy for long periods of time.

Priorities for the Next Decade

This is a drastically different account of our dependent variable than the one that has guided longitudinal research to date, and fully embracing it has several important implications for marital research going forward. First, the fact that it has taken this long to recognize the overall stability of marital satisfaction implies that the field has not devoted sufficient attention to describing how marriages change. The welcome progress of the last ten years continues a decades-long trend toward gathering more detailed data from married couples, moving beyond cross-sectional snapshots to exploit the potential of multiwave longitudinal designs and experience sampling methods (e.g., Walsh, Neff, & Gleason, 2017 ). Psychometrically sound and theoretically coherent instruments for assessing marital satisfaction are in wide use (e.g., Funk & Rogge, 2007 ). Nevertheless, the field continues to lack an empirical foundation to guide many of the most basic decisions about how to assess and describe trajectories of marital satisfaction. How often and over what length of time should marital satisfaction be measured to capture meaningful change? What interval between assessments represents the optimal balance between seeking higher resolution and avoiding respondent burnout? Without data addressing these questions, marital researchers have been left to design their studies guided by convenience alone. Research that examined these issues directly would provide a stronger foundation for the longitudinal studies of the future.

Second, if stability is indeed the modal experience in marriage, then by the time a couple gets married, many of the factors that ultimately determine the trajectory of the relationship may already be in place. Where couples start, in other words, appears to reveal a lot about where they will end up ( Lavner et al., 2012 ). And yet, because research on marriage begins with couples who are already married, we know very little about relationship satisfaction across the transition into marriage. Collecting data from couples prior to marriage, and even prior to their engagement, holds great promise for illuminating the paths into marriage that result in more or less satisfied newlyweds.

Third, if couples can be reliably distinguished by the trajectory of their marital satisfaction, then it is time to consider the entire trajectory more precisely. The availability of latent class approaches to analyzing trajectories does not preclude the refinement of variable-centered approaches like growth curve modelling; the two approaches are complementary. To date, growth curve analyses of marital trajectories have almost exclusively estimated levels of marital satisfaction (intercepts) and rates of linear change (slopes), often limited by the availability of relatively few longitudinal assessments. Yet longitudinal changes can be described with many more parameters (see Butler, 2011 for a discussion). For example, with sufficient longutudinal assessments, researchers can estimate not only linear change but curvilinear change, i.e., changes that accelerate or decelerate over time. Even among couples with flat linear slopes, fluctuations around the trend line may reveal hidden turbulence. A starting point for refining theories of marriage would be to develop distinct hypotheses about each of these parameters (see Eastwick, Finkel, & Simpson, 2019 , for a perspective that moves relationship research in this direction). Time-invariant variables, such as spouses’ personalities and personal histories, may be more strongly associated with levels of satisfaction, whereas time-varying variables, such as couples’ communication and experiences of acute stress, may more strongly account for rates of change and fluctuations in satisfaction over time. In this way, greater precision about our dependent variable highlights directions for developing more precise theory about the effects of our independent variables. To the extent that the results of latent class analyses depend on the variables are entered into the analysis, a more refined assessment of the individual trajectories might lead to different latent classes of trajectories as well.

Fourth, the observation that marital satisfaction remains stable for most couples raises pressing questions about the decision to divorce. For many decades, classical marital research has assumed that deteriorating marital satisfaction is the most proximal reason why marriages dissolve ( Gottman & Levenson, 1992 ; Lewis & Spanier, 1982 ). Research adopting the latent class approach confirms that couples in which marital satisfaction declines most steeply are indeed much more likely to divorce. Yet these studies also report that couples in stably happy marriages divorce at non-negligble rates (e.g., 14% over ten years, Lavner & Bradbury, 2010 ), similar to earlier work on national datasets that observed substantial numbers of couples divorcing without preceding signs of marital distress ( Amato & Hohmann-Marriott, 2007 ). One possible explanation for such results is that long intervals between assessments in longitudinal studies fail to measure declines in satisfaction that are in fact occurring shortly before couples make the decision to dissolve. A second possibility is that the explicit measures used in most research on marital satisfaction are not sensitive to changes in spouses’ experience. As McNulty and his colleagues have demonstrated in the last decade ( McNulty & Olson, 2015 ; McNulty, Olson, Meltzer, & Shaffer, 2013 ), automatic attitudes toward the marriage assessed with the Implicit Associations Test can predict later marital outcomes even when standard self-report measures cannot. Still a third possibility is that some couples may be motivated to end their marriages even when they are relatively satisfied. For example, as social exchange perspectives have long argued (e.g., Levinger, 1976 ), couples who hold each other in high esteem may still dissolve if they: a) experience few barriers to leaving the relationship, or b) perceive superior alternatives outside of the relationship. Evaluating the evidence for these diverse possibilities will require higher-resolution assessments of the dynamics of this highly significant life transition.

Finally, the relatively high degree of stability that characterizes most marriages has implications for interventions that are devised to prevent relationship distress. Psychoeducational programs for couples have proliferated over the past decade, under the assumption that the average relationship will gradually decline in quality, and with the goal of maintaining the high degree of satisfaction that couples report early in marriage (for a review, see Bradbury & Bodenmann, in press ). These initiatives, while well-intentioned, may be misguided to the extent that they are focusing on unselected couples from the general population. Many of these couples will not experience a decline in relationship satisfaction even in the absence of intervention, rendering primary prevention strategies inert and diverting resources away from the subpopulation of couples who will experience relationship distress and perhaps dissolution. Thus secondary prevention—in this case, disseminating interventions specifically to couples who display early indications of risk for distress, whether by virtue of their personal, interpersonal, or environmental vulnerabilities—holds greater potential for promoting healthy marriage (e.g., Barton et al., 2018 ; also see Heyman et al., 2019 ).

Marital Interaction: Poor Communication May Not Cause Distress

In 1974, Raush and colleagues argued that self-report methods were inadequate for understanding marital communication and, as a consequence, “theories about interaction between intimates are neither sufficiently firm nor sufficiently specific at present to provide us with other than rough lines of guidance” ( Raush, Barry, Hertel, & Swain, 1974 , p. 4). Raush et al.’s admonition to observe couples directly has since produced rich insights into couples’ overt patterns of behavioral interdependence (for a critical review, see Heyman, 2001 ). Five decades later, clarifying the interpersonal behaviors that support healthy relationships remains a crucial task for several reasons. First, prominent models emphasize couple interaction as a fundamental source of the many advantages associated with marriage (e.g., health and well-being for adults and children). Second, research-based efforts to treat and prevent marital distress are enhanced by understanding basic processes of communication. Third, the uptake of social policies intended to benefit families likely pivots on how well they disrupt or enable relationship-promoting patterns of behavior. Yet despite persisting as a vibrant topic of inquiry for family scholars, fundamental questions remain about the nature of ‘interaction between intimates.’ Indeed, empirical findings reported in just this past decade offer a fresh perspective on three enduring assumptions about couple communication.

Perhaps the most basic assumption underlying research on marital interaction is that specific behaviors, and specific patterns of interaction, reliably predict relationship distress and dissolution for most couples (e.g., Jacobson & Margolin, 1979 ). Early success at differentiating satisfied from distressed couples cross-sectionally held out promise that a distinct behavioral profile might characterize at-risk couples, as evidenced by distressed couples’ higher rates of negative behaviors, heightened reactivity to and reciprocation of negative behaviors, and sustained cycles of negativity (e.g., Margolin & Wampold, 1981 ; see Woodin, 2011 for a review), particularly during problem-solving conversations. In longitudinal studies, however, these same behavioral patterns have not emerged consistently as predictors of declines in relationship satisfaction (for a review, see Bradbury & Lavner, 2012 ). One possible explanation for the inconsistent findings is that the behavioral differences identified in cross-sectional studies may be a consequence rather than a cause of relationship distress. Another possibility is that the behaviors displayed by clinically distressed couples provide a misleading starting point for understanding how well-functioning relationships are maintained and how they change.

Counter-intuitive longitudinal findings that might have been dismissed as statistical artifacts in prior decades have emerged ever more frequently in the past decade, casting doubt on the assumption that positive exchanges are uniformly good for relationships, and that negative exchanges are uniformly costly. For example, observed positive communication early in marriage does not routinely predict levels of marital adjustment or declines over time, while observed negative communication early in marriage sometimes predicts slower declines in satisfaction ( Markman, Rhoades, Stanley, Ragan, & Whitton, 2010 ). Studies also show that negative communication strategies can be beneficial to relationships over the longer term (despite being perceived by partners as unsuccessful in the short term; Overall, Fletcher, Simpson, & Sibley, 2009 ), with negative thoughts and behaviors proving to benefit couples with more frequent and more severe problems ( McNulty, 2010 ; McNulty & Russell, 2010 ). When repeated assessments of couple behavior and relationship satisfaction are conducted, predictive effects in either direction tend to be weak, and higher levels of satisfaction predict improvements in observed communication more consistently over 27 months than communication predicts improved satisfaction ( Lavner, Karney, & Bradbury, 2016 ). While more extreme forms of negative behavior, such as verbal hostility and physical aggression, tend to show expected effects on relationship satisfaction and dissolution (e.g., Hammett, Karney, & Bradbury, 2018 ; Shortt, Capaldi, Kim, & Laurent, 2013 ), behaviors coded during more ordinary conversations appear to have a more complex and uncertain association with relationship outcomes over time. In sum, cross-sectional characterizations of distressed versus satisfied couples has proven to be easier to achieve than identification of behavioral antecedents of relationship distress, and longstanding assumptions about the predictive effects of positive and negative exchanges on relationship satisfaction have proven to be difficult to corroborate.

A second guiding assumption, following closely upon the first, is that couples can learn to improve their communication behaviors. At the foundation of virtually all preventive and tertiary interventions for couples, this premise has been subjected to numerous randomized controlled tests. Relying heavily on data from well-educated, middle-class samples, an earlier meta-analysis of interventions aimed at preventing relationship distress and dissolution indicated that group-based educational programs did produce intended changes in observed couple communication ( Blanchard, Hawkins, Baldwin, & Fawcett, 2009 ). At the same time, a large-scale multisite government effort to extend communication-based interventions to couples living with lower incomes, known as the Strengthening Healthy Marriages initiative, yielded negligible improvements overall in observed communication, relative to couples receiving no intervention, despite intensive training ( Lundquist et al., 2014 ). Further analyses of these data showed that interventions improved effectiveness and reduced negativity (but failed to increase positivity) only among couples who were at risk by virtue of their younger age at marriage, lower incomes, and fewer years of formal education ( Williamson, Altman, Hsueh, & Bradbury, 2016 ). Thus improvements in communication are certainly possible, though questions remain about the durability and display of learned skills outside the context of formal observational assessments.

When distressed couples participate in empirically-supported forms of therapy, and thus are presumably motivated to grapple with and repair interpersonal deficits, a different understanding of couple communication emerges: from pre-treatment to two years following completion of treatment, observed rates of negativity and withdrawal decline by nearly half, but rates of unilateral positivity decline as well, to levels below those observed prior to the start of treatment ( Baucom, Sevier, Eldridge, Doss, & Christensen, 2011 ). Whereas conventional behavioral models held that well-functioning marriages were characterized by less negativity and more positivity, some scholars now argue that positivity during problem-solving discussions can sometimes reflect avoidance and a reluctance to engage difficult issues. As Baucom et al. (2011) elaborate, “If one partner is upset with the other it is not necessarily helpful to hide these feelings and exclusively express positivity …. Although researchers often make assumptions about the functions of these behaviors, these assumptions are based solely on the topography of the behavior rather than the functional role they actually play in the relationship” (p. 575). In short, with sufficient resources and motivation it does appear that couples can improve their communication, yet the nature of those improvements may well depend upon the quality of the relationship, the specific problem at hand, and both partners’ ability to balance their individual needs with the needs of the larger partnership (see also Baucom, Baucom, & Christensen, 2015 ). More critically, by essentially requiring couples to discuss relationship problems, standard observational paradigms likely fail to sample how couples naturally engage or avoid potentially divisive issues, and therefore may not provide all of the information needed to understand how communcation changes.

A third major assumption in observational studies of couple interaction is that improved communication, once achieved, will enhance the quality and stability of the relationship. Once again, experimental tests of interventions, and the distinction between preventive and therapeutic interventions, prove to be informative. In the aforementioned Strengthening Healthy Marriages project, the small effects that the communication-based interventions produced on relationship satisfaction 18 months later were not mediated by observed communication ( Williamson et al., 2016 ). This indicates that learning to communicate more effectively and with less negativity does not necessarily translate into better functioning relationships and, conversely, that relationships can improve without overt improvements in communication (cf. Barton et al., 2017 ; Cordova et al., 2014 ). Indeed, a brief intervention focused only on enhancing relationship awareness, with no emphasis on skills training, performed as well as 15-hour intensive skill-based workshops, possibly because heavy emphasis on behavioral skills can inadvertently sensitize couples to shortcomings in their communication ( Rogge, Cobb, Lawrence, Johnson, & Bradbury, 2013 ).

Other work reveals interesting disjunctions and continuities between behavior change and changes in satisfaction. According to the largest and longest couple therapy outcome study undertaken to date, changes in observed positivity and negativity from before to after couples therapy are entirely unrelated to spouses’ reports of relationship quality and stability two years later ( Baucom et al., 2011 ). Thus, while empirically-supported couples therapy can change the communication behaviors long emphasized in interpersonal models of marriage, at least some of these changes may have little bearing on subsequent perceptions of the relationship. Observed pre-to-post treatment increases in problem-solving, and decreases in withdrawal, however, do predict better relationships over this span ( Baucom et al., 2011 ). Thus, at least for couples in an acute state of distress, acknowledging and addressing specific deficits or shortcomings in a relationship can enhance evaluations of the relationship, and apparently more so than reductions in negative behavior.

This past decade has witnessed notable progress toward clarifying how communication between spouses is associated with their evaluations of their relationship. Research on couple interaction appears to be in a transitional stage—yielding too few clear empirical results to justify complete adherence to what has been an unusually generative set of models and paradigms, while still casting about for concepts and tools that promise novel insights into how couples conduct their intimate lives. Marked heterogeneity in how researchers define and code specific behaviors no doubt underlies some of this confusion, and important steps are being taken to rectify this problem (e.g., Overall & McNulty, 2017 ). However, the critical uncertainties that remain likely reflect theoretical imprecision regarding exactly when and how specific elements of couple communication come to affect judgements of relationship quality and longevity, a problem compounded by reliance on observational paradigms that provide a rich, compelling, but ultimately constrained appreciation for how intimate partners co-create a dynamically complex behavioral repertoire. While we cannot fully anticipate how this transitional stage will be resolved, several of the findings reviewed here point to gaps in knowledge that, if addressed, might advance understanding in the decade ahead.

First, although we have no strong empirical rationale for doubting that behaviors can have rewarding and punishing properties, and that these properties contribute to variability in judgments of marital satisfaction, evidence is accumulating that what makes a specific behavior rewarding or punishing differs across spouses and couples. Behaviors do not ‘speak for themselves,’ in that the effects of specific behaviors on satisfaction likely vary as a function of immediate but unobservable dyadic and relational microcontexts (e.g., power imbalances in the relationship, the severity and controllability of the problem under discussion, the capacity and willingess of partners to change, partners’ commitment to the relationship; see Overall, 2017 ; Overall & McNulty, 2017 ). Careful parsing of potential moderators would shed needed light on when specific classes of behaviors do and do not predict changes in satisfaction.

Second, the temporal dimension of couple interaction, including behavioral sequences and patterns that unfold over time, is growing less visible in the field, depriving us of access to critical features of how partners communicate with each other. As a result we are left with decontextualized behaviors displayed by, and inadvertently attributed to, just one partner, thus grossly oversimplying the emergent and dyadic character of couple interaction ( S. Duncan, Kanki, Mokros, & Fiske, 1984 ). Sequential analysis has proven to be difficult to implement—in part because repeated instances of behavioral sequences are necessary for reliable estimates of those sequences—but this problem can be overcome, e.g., by collecting continous ratings of behavior (e.g., Ross et al., 2017 ), by studying how behaviors unfold over the entire span of conversations (e.g., Kuster et al., 2015 ; Leuchtmann et al., 2019 ), and by undertaking intensive analysis of specific behavioral sequences hypothesized to be critical for problem-solving or relationship maintenance. For example, in a methodologically elegant study, Bloch, Haase and Levenson (2014) focused intensely on how spouses mutually downregulate negative emotions and experiences during a problem-solving conversation, with results suggesting that ineffective attempts to contain negative emotions, moreso than the mere presence of negative affect, are most likely to compromise wives’ relationship satisfaction. Thus it may be premature to abandon the traditional observational paradigm entirely, provided that specific and temporal patterns are the focus of inquiry.

Third, although studies of couple communication now routinely exploit longitudinal data, they are only beginning to adopt a developmental focus, and thus they do not yet address how behavioral exchanges affect other domains of couples’ relationships and, in turn, various relationship outcomes. Observations of newlywed couples do indicate that behaviors displayed in a social support task predict displays of negative emotion during a problem-solving task one year later, whereas the opposite effect is far weaker, and that negative emotions during problem-solving mediate the effects of social support behaviors on satisfaction and dissolution ten years later ( Sullivan, Pasch, Johnson, & Bradbury, 2010 ). Again, the behavioral paradigm appears to be capturing important facets of couple communication, but that information may be of limited value unless we connnect those behaviors with other behavioral domains and other emotionally engaging experiences in couples’ lives. Finer-grained analyses of the sort made possible by intensive and extensive daily studies, when they are embedded in longitudinal designs, are likely necessary for understanding dyadic interdependence in a more complete way (for a review, see Repetti, Reynolds, & Sears, 2015 ). Such an approach would permit greater access to important but fleeting moments in couples’ daily lives, such as how verbal intimacy following sexual intimacy enhances relationships (e.g., Muise, Giang, & Impett, 2014 ), or how couples enter and exit psychologically meaningful moments, including the specific sorts of exchanges that make it more or less likely for partners to devote time to the relationship or to avoid one another following conflict.

We conclude here by raising the possibility that long-standing efforts to identify and alter specific patterns of behavior, however they might be assessed, are framing the problem incorrectly. In addition to considering the unconditional main effects of couple interaction on couple outcomes (which, as we have seen, may be somewhat elusive), it may be fruitful to conceptualize dyadic processes primarily as the means by which events arising outside a relationship come to affect relationship appraisals. Thus, a couple with ostensibly poorer communication could have a better relationship than an otherwise identical couple with better communication, if fewer outside demands were placed on the quality of their communciation or if they were especially good at rising to these demands (e.g., providing symmpathy to an upset partner, or teaming up in the face of an unexpected event such as a sick child or job loss). Stress, and partners’ perceptions of one another’s stress, may influence whether specific behaviors are registered as aversive, suggesting that continued efforts to join behavioral analyses with an appreciation of the stressors that couples face (e.g., Bodenmann et al., 2015 ; Kuhn, Bradbury, Nussbeck, & Bodenmann, 2018 ; Neff & Broady, 2011 ) may go far in providing the theoretical specificity that Raush and colleages were seeking five decades ago.

Do Conclusions about Marriage Generalize? Income as a Moderator

Twenty-five years ago, the vast majority of research on marriage had been conducted on samples composed primarily of middle-class, college-educated, mostly white couples ( Karney & Bradbury, 1995 ). In the intervening years, the profile of the typical sample in marital research has expanded, but samples of convenience continue to dominate, reflecting a widespread assumption about the dynamics of marriage: that what is true for the narrow slice of couples that have been studied extensively is likely to be true for the more diverse couples that lie outside the sampling frame of most studies.

Over the past decade, this assumption has been questioned by burgeoning lines of research on Hispanic marriages (e.g., Orengo-Aguayo, 2015 ), African American marriages (e.g., Cutrona, Russell, Burzette, Wesner, & Bryant, 2011 ; Stanik, McHale, & Crouter, 2013 ), and most recently same-sex marriages (e.g., Chen & van Ours, 2018 ), to mention only a few dimensions of diversity that the field has explored. To illustrate the consequences of broader sampling for deepening our understanding of marriage, we devote this section to reviewing one dimension of diversity that was examined at length over the past ten years: income.

The possibility that marital process may vary at different levels of income is worth highlighting because, a decade ago, this possibility was distinctly overlooked. When the federal government launched the Healthy Marriage Initiative (HMI) in the early 2000s, the goal of the program was to promote stronger, more stable relationships among lower-income couples ( Office of Family Assistance, 2012 ). Yet at the time data on the relationships of lower-income couples were scarce. Nevertheless, the development and implementation of skills-based relationship education programs proceeded apace, guided by the assumption that the conclusions of prior research on relationship processes among relatively affluent, mostly white couples would generalize to the lower-income, more diverse communities targeted by the new initiative. Within the past decade, the results of nationwide, multisite, longitudinal evaluations of these programs were released, and they were not encouraging. Despite their great cost and the sincere efforts of well-intentioned administrators and educators across the country, the impact of relationship education on the well-being and stability of lower-income couples proved to be negligible ( Lundquist et al., 2014 ; Wood, Moore, Clarkwest, & Killewald, 2014 ). Abandoning the assumption that the foundations of satisfying and stable marriage are common across income groups, leading observers called for research directly examining how basic processes contributing to successful intimacy may in fact vary among different segments of society ( Johnson, 2012 ; McNulty, 2016 ).

Research heeding this call over the last decade has revealed numerous ways that basic marital processes vary across levels of socioeconomic status. What does not vary is the value of marriage itself. Although rates of marriage are substantially lower in lower-income communities than in more affluent ones, marriage remains a cherished goal across income groups ( Garrett-Peters & Burton, 2015 ; Scott, Schelar, Manlove, & Cui, 2009 ; Trail & Karney, 2012 ). Instead, income groups can be distinguished by the sorts of challenges couples face in attempting to reach that goal. Lower-income couples, like lower-income individuals, report greater mental health problems, higher stress, and, not surprisingly, more financial strain than their higher-income peers ( Maisel & Karney, 2012 ). When asked directly about challenges in their marriages, lower-income couples are more likely to identify finances and substance abuse, rather than communication and household chores, as their most salient sources of conflict ( Jackson et al., 2016 ; Trail & Karney, 2012 ). To the extent that the problems of lower-income couples are more severe, their marital interactions are likely to be more difficult as well ( Williamson, Hanna, Lavner, Bradbury, & Karney, 2013 ). Indeed, Cutrona and her colleagues, drawing upon observer ratings of videotaped interactions between spouses, have shown that couples living in more disadvantaged neighborhoods express less warmth with each other than couples living in higher income neighborhoods ( Cutrona et al., 2003 ).

Do their greater challenges mean that lower-income couples are less satisfied with their relationships than more affluent couples? In fact, lower-income couples are not less satisfied with their relationships on average, despite their higher divorce rates and the more severe difficulties they encounter. Although perceptions of greater financial strain have been consistently associated with lower relationship satisfaction (e.g., Conger & Conger, 2008 ), household income and relationship satisfaction are unrelated ( Hardie & Lucas, 2010 ; Maisel & Karney, 2012 ). Yet poorer couples do experience their marriages differently than wealthier ones. Longitudinal research tracking marital satisfaction across the first years of marriage reveals that, although levels and slopes of marital satisfaction do not differ between more and less wealthy couples, poorer couples report significantly greater variability in their marital satisfaction across time ( Jackson, Krull, Bradbury, & Karney, 2017 ). In other words, lower-income couples experience their relationships as more turbulent than affluent couples, whose greater resources presumably buffer them from stressful events and crises (cf. Henry, Sheffield Morris, & Harrist, 2015 ).

To the extent that income has direct associations with constructs central to influential models of successful marriage, like mental health, stress, marital interaction, and trajectories of marital satisfaction, then the associations among these constructs are likely to vary across levels of income as well. Over the past decade, analyses of diverse samples that directly compare patterns of associations among more or less affluent couples confirm this prediction. For example, analyses of survey data from Florida, Texas, California, and New York reveal that stress and mental health account for significantly more variance in the relationship satisfaction of poorer couples than wealthier ones ( Maisel & Karney, 2012 ). When couples with more access to resources confront stress or struggle with mental health problems, they have options for protecting their relationships (e.g., by paying for assistance or counseling) that poorer couples facing the same challenges do not.

Ross et al. (2019) went further, showing that even basic marital processes considered fundamental to successful marriage can have categorically different implications for more or less affluent couples. Their focus was the demand/withdraw pattern of marital interaction, in which one partner, seeking change, makes a request, while the other, favoring the status quo, deflects or avoids. The ensuing cycle has been consistently associated with declines in marital satisfaction in numerous studies (e.g., Eldridge, Sevier, Jones, Atkins, & Christensen, 2007 ) and across multiple cultures ( Christensen, Eldridge, Catta-Preta, Lim, & Santagata, 2006 ). Yet the negative implications of the demand/withdraw pattern rest on the assumption that, when this pattern arises, the change at issue is possible. What makes the pattern so aversive for both sides is the idea that the partner requesting change can reasonably expect the other partner to give in, and that the partner resisting change could accede to the other partner’s request but chooses not to. But what if the requested change is impossible, as it may be for lower-income couples with less control over their circumstances? A response (withdrawal) that is maladaptive for the middle-class couples that comprise most of the samples in research on marital satisfaction may be be adaptive for lower-income couples with fewer options and resources. Indeed, across two longitudinal studies that included observational assessments of marital interactions, Ross et al. (2019) found that, whereas engaging in the demand/withdraw pattern predicts lower marital satisfaction for wealthier couples, the same pattern predicts more stable marital satisfaction for poorer couples.

Such findings begin to make sense of the failure of programs guided by research on upper-income couples to improve the outcomes of the lower-income couples to which they were targeted: the specific challenges and constraints that confront lower-income couples may moderate or negate the impact of interventions that might be helpful in other circumstances. Analyses of data from the Building Strong Families study, an evaluation of interventions designed to encourage marriage among unmarried lower-income parents, support this perspective. Although the evaluation showed that the programs had no effects on relationship quality or rates of transitioning into marriage ( Wood, McConnell, Moore, Clarkwest, & Hsueh, 2012 ; Wood et al., 2014 ), Williamson et al. (2017) reasoned that programs that included job training and professional education, in addition to relationship education, might have benefitted couples, as these programs targeted the specific problems that lower-income couples name as obstacles to marriage (e.g., Edin & Reed, 2005 ). In fact, programs that included these elements did have unique effects, but in the opposite direction: men who received professional education were less likely to transition into marriage. Further analyses revealed that men receiving additional hours of education from these programs spent less time at home with their children and contributed less money to their households, accounting for their lower marriage rates. Such unexpected findings highlight the need to understand couples’ experiences – the demands they are facing, the constraints on their time and resources, and the particular dynamics that are adaptive or maladaptive in their specific context– before attempting to develop policy or implement interventions to improve their lives.

Although the results of large-scale evaluations of programs aimed at lower-income couples were disappointing, they succeeded in raising crucial questions about how marriages succeed or fail in diverse contexts. By taking up these questions, research on marriage over the past ten years has shed light on ways that macro-level socioeconomic conditions can facilitate, constrain, and even alter marital process previously thought to be fundamentally similar across couples. As federal and local policy-makers continue their efforts to support marriages and families, it is crucial that research on marriage capitalize on the progress of the last decade, partly to continue the process of refining theory and partly to ensure that the next generation of programs has more impact than the previous one. In particular, the studies reviewed here suggest three important recommendations for further developing research on marriage that is sensitive to context.

First, in light of a decade’s worth of research demonstrating how different marriages can be at varying levels of socioeconomic status, a preliminary task for the next decade is for scholars of marriage to be more precise and intentional about sampling. Large-scale studies, usually informed by sociology and demography, generally do an excellent job developing explicit sampling frames and ensuring adequate representation from all levels of income. Smaller-scale studies, usually informed by clinical and social psychology, fare less well, often relying on samples of convenience that overlook harder to reach lower-income and diverse couples. By describing samples in greater detail, and by devoting more effort to sampling couples that vary not only in socioeconomic status but in other relevant dimensions of diversity as well (e.g., race/ethnicity, religion, gender identity), future research on couples will be better able to examine and articulate limits to the generalizability of our findings.

Second, to the extent that socioeconomic contexts affect how couples pursue and maintain intimacy, research on the effects of context and research on dyadic processes within couples can no longer proceed on parallel tracks. On the contrary, research on micro-level cognitions and behaviors must account for the macro-level contexts in which those cognitions and behaviors take place. Prominent scholars are already moving in this direction, combining detailed assessments of partners’ experiences in the relationship with census data on neighborhood conditions ( Bryant et al., 2010 ) and national and local economic indicators ( Murray, Lamarche, & Seery, 2018 ). Detailed self-report interviews that assess couples’ perceptions of the concrete features of their own environments (e.g., Hammen, 2005 ) may be required to identify the proximal contexts that mediate between distal conditions and dyadic processes within couples’ relationships.

Third, in advance of the more refined models to come, the research of recent years already points out novel avenues for intervention with vulnerable couples. In particular, as evidence accumulates that disadvantaged environments can inhibit couples’ ability to interact effectively, policy-makers and scholars may consider exploring interventions that target those environments directly. Whereas relationship-education and skills-based training has proven ineffective at promoting stable unions among lower-income couples, policies that improve the circumstances of those couples, e.g., through poverty reduction, may be more successful at achieving the same ends ( Gassman-Pines & Yoshikawa, 2006 ; Mamun, 2008 ). The promise of local efforts to improve the lives of struggling couples suggests that federal policies also be reviewed for their direct and influence on marriage and families, and some have already called for such analyses to be conducted routinely ( Bogenschneider, 2013 ). The research of the past decade suggests that any program that improves the conditions of couples is likely to improve their relationships; such programs may affect a broad range of couples more efficiently than programs that target individual couples directly.

The last ten years of research on marital satisfaction and stability revealed that long-standing assumptions about marriage are either incomplete, misleading, or wrong. For most couples, satisfaction does not decline over time but in fact remains relatively stable for long periods. Contrary to the predictions of behavioral models of marriage, negative communication between spouses can be difficult to change, does not necessarily lead to more satisfying relationships when it is changed, and does not always predict distress in the first place. Dyadic processes that are reliably adaptive for middle-class and more affluent couples may operate differently in lower-income couples, raising serious questions about how well current models of marriage generalize to couples living in diverse environments. By the end of the decade, then, the assembled research of the last ten years has revealed that the tasks of understanding and promoting marital satisfaction and stability are more complicated than we appreciated at the start of the decade, raising important questions that beg to be answered in the years ahead.

The tools that led to these theoretical refinements will be the tools that continue to move this field forward. Novel approaches to data analysis hold the power to reveal new insights lying buried in current and archival data sets. Well-funded, well-powered, large-scale studies (like the Strengthening Healthy Marriage evaluation) have provided invaluable information, even when the predictions guiding those studies could not be confirmed. Progress in understanding complex, multidetermined processes of marital development require support for additional studies of similar scale and breadth. Finally, as the social psychologist Kurt Lewin (1951) observed, our basic theories of how couples succeed or fail are likely to be refined by continued efforts to develop new and more effective interventions, as doing so requires program developers to be explicit about moderators and mechanisms of their desired effects. Advances on these fronts will deepen understanding of marriage and thereby enable many more couples, regardless of their social standing, to reap the many benefits provided by our closest social bonds.

Acknowledgement:

Preparation of this manuscript was supported by Research Grant HD091832, awarded to the first author by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

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