Five types of African-American marriages

Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, Jul 2001 by Allen, William D, Olson, David H

This study developed a marital typology based on a nonrandom, national sample of 415 African-- American couples who took the Enriching Relationship Issues, Communication and Happiness (ENRICH) marital assessment inventory. Five types of African-American marriages were identified through cluster analysis using the positive couple agreement (PCA) scores in 10 relationship domains. Relationships between marital satisfaction, marital stability, and the five marital types were then analyzed. The five types (from highest marital satisfaction to lowest) were labeled as vitalized, harmonious, traditional, conflicted, and devitalized. The results were similar to findings in studies of ethnically mixed (predominantly European-American) marital samples including the number and characteristics of marital types.

Major changes in marital quality and stability have occurred in the African-American community in the last century. As recently as the late 1950s, nearly all African Americans married and raised their children in traditional, two-parent households. However, an increasing number of African Americans postpone or forego marriage (U. S. Bureau of the Census, 1996). Currently, only 4% of African-American males and 36% of African-American females report being married (Olson & DeFrain, 2000). African-American marital quality and stability have garnered relatively little empirical scrutiny given the societal ramifications of these major relational shifts. In addition, much of the existing literature ignores the potential for similarities or differences in couples' characteristics based on ethnic diversity. Several recent researchers have explored the potentially divergent marital experiences of African-American couples within cultural and sociohistorical contexts (see Tucker & Mitchell-Kernan, 1995.)

Marital typologies that explicitly deal with ethnicity may better explain the factors that promote or hinder successful African-American marriages. The main objective of this study was to develop a typology of African-American marriages. We were also interested in comparing these marital types with those found in predominantly European-American samples of couples who had taken the Enriching Relationship Issues, Communication, and Happiness (ENRICH) marital assessment inventory (Olson, Fournier, & Druckman, 1987). This study used a cluster analytical approach previously reported by Olson and Fowers (1993) in a much larger study of nearly 7,000 couples that described five marital types. The four specific research questions in this study were:

1. Did African-American marriages exhibit relational patterns or types?

2. Were African-American marital types related to marital satisfaction and marital stability?

3. Were three traditional characteristics of African-American marriages related to marital types?

4. Were African-American marital types similar to those found in samples of predominantly European-American marriages?

By focusing exclusively on African-American marriages, we hoped to provide an appropriate sociocultural context for type development. This was important given the diversity within the African-- American community (diversity that often is obscured in multiethnic samples). The ethnic focus also was intended to enhance the authors' ability to uncover unique ethnic differences in these marriages when contrasted with ethnically mixed or predominantly European-American marital samples, or conversely, to highlight similarities in the types. By extending the typological approach to an African-American sample, we hoped to provide further evidence of the general utility of marital typologies and a further exploration of their utility in an increasingly diverse society.

Typologies of Couples

Marital researchers and therapists began developing typologies in the early 1960s to uncover "natural" groupings of married couples. Typologies represented a balance between economy and the need for attention to unique characteristics (Miller & Olson, 1990). Type developers tried to make intelligent choices about which individual case characteristics to include or emphasize in the typological development process. The lack of explicit attention to contextual sociodemographic factors (e.g., ethnicity) could compromise a typology's utility.

Researchers have attempted to improve the stability and reliability of empirically developed marital types (Lavee & Olson, 1993; Olson & Fowers, 1993; Snyder & Smith, 1986). Miller and Olson (1990) identified two basic approaches in marital type research: Intuitive and empirical. The intuitive approach integrates the observations of clinical and nonclinical samples as the bases for typologies. Examples of this approach include Cuber and Haroff (1965), who found five types based on the interactional styles of affluent couples, and Lewis, Beavers, Gossett, and Phillips (1976), who based their typology on the extent of conflict in the marriages of their subjects.

Empirical approaches to marital types have become more popular as researchers employ increasingly powerful statistical analysis on larger and more representative samples. Ryder (1970) and Fitzpatrick (1988) each developed typologies based on factor analysis of individual, rather than dyadic, characteristics. A growing number of studies have used cluster analysis to integrate multiple relational factors and thus more accurately account for marriages and their complexity (Fowers, Montel, & Olson, 1996). Gottman (1979), using the Couples Interaction Scoring System (CISS), and Miller and Olson (1990), using the Inventory of Marital Conflict, are two examples of cluster analysis of observational data.