| Marriage quality is strongly related to divorce, so a fuller understanding of the determinants of marriage quality is called for if we are to positively influence marital outcomes like separation and divorce before the fact. Although marriage quality is perhaps one of the most widely researched topics in the family literature, it is characterized by conceptual confusion, methodological criticism, and a predominant focus on Western societies. This study uses a large, representative sample of couples from urban China to examine determinants of marriage quality in a non-Western setting.;Using factor analysis, I find two dimensions of marriage quality, which I label "marital closeness" and "marital disharmony". These dimensions are examined separately for husbands and wives. In a series of Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression models, I analyze numerous predictors of marriage quality, categorized as premarital characteristics, relationship characteristics, and external factors.;I find that premarital characteristics of spouses strongly affect marriage quality, similarly for men and women and in the same way across dimensions. Characteristics of the relationship, on the other hand, particularly life course position and gendered behaviors and attitudes, illuminate the large differences between men and women and across dimensions. External factors, such as living arrangements, social support, and status characteristics have very little influence on marriage quality, probably because Chinese couples view the marriage apart from other areas of their lives, and possibly because they continue to view wider social ties and obligations as superseding the conjugal bond.;Chinese marriages have clearly undergone great changes from their historical structure and patterns in terms of the importance of freedom of mate choice as well as the increasing significance of egalitarian gender roles. With the increasing importance of the conjugal bond relative to intergenerational ties in China, marriage quality is a salient topic of investigation where once it may not have been. However, Chinese couples continue to view "love" between spouses differently than Westerners and spouses still place less exclusive focus on the marital relationship than in the West. |
