Date of Award

1989

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Art

First Advisor

Susan Myers

Second Advisor

James D. Evans

Third Advisor

Michael Kramer

Abstract

There are many components involved in creating healthy marriages. This search examined one of these components: Establishing functional priorities within marriage. Therefore, this research was a study of the priorities in marriage, priorities which will provide moral direction, a certain amount of structure, and a balanced approach to handling activities and relationships.

These priorities were, in order of importance: (a) Moral or spiritual values; (b) the dyadic (husband-wife) relationship; (c) the triadic (husband-wife/child) relationship; and (d) occupation. It was the thesis of this study that these priorities offered most to a marriage unit when maintained in the order prescribed here.

A corollary of this concept was that if any of these priorities was moved out of position (e.g, item (c) replacing item (a), etc.) then there usually would be negative, and measurable consequences. Therefore, placement of these four priorities (labelled variable "X") was measured against five other items: (a) Marital happiness; (b) marital intimacy; (c) marital stability; (d) personal and spousal morality; and (e) marital dependability. (These five items were labelled variable "Y".) A survey was created for this study, and was given to a group of 36 married and 54 divorced individuals. The purpose of the survey was to measure the four priorities against their impacts on marital happiness, intimacy, stability, morality, and dependability.

The hypothesis of this project was that divorced individuals would tend to report greater variance than married individuals from the listing of priorities in order (a), (b), (c) and (d). It was further postulated that the data would reveal that marriages were more happy, intimate, stable, and dependable, when the priorities were maintained in the prescribed order.

This hypothesis was confirmed by the results which showed that married subjects obtained significantly higher mean scores than divorced subjects, in X and Y variables. Within the four priorities (values, spouse, children, and occupation), married subjects scored X=l7.40, and divorced scored X=9.24.

Within the five quality of relationships (happiness, intimacy, stability, morality, and dependability), married subjects scored Y=44.61, and divorced subjects scored Y=34.41, also a significant difference.

Also consistent with the hypothesis was the finding that divorced subjects reported a significant shift in their priorities in connection with the deterioration of their marriages. Finally, significant correlations were obtained between priorities and the quality of relationship measures.

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