New study examines egalitarianism, religion in 21st-century relationships
Both religion and egalitarianism have something to offer those seeking a happy marriage in a world of shifting mores-though religion leads to more children-a new report on international perspectives on marital happiness shows.
The report, a joint project of the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatley Institution, uses data from two surveys of respondents in eleven countries: Argentina, Australia, Chile, Canada, Colombia, France, Ireland, Mexico, Peru, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The authors set out to examine the now standard bromide that progressive, secular social values lead to happier marriages.
As study authors W. Bradford Wilcox, Jason S. Carroll, and Laurie DeRose
wrote in the
New York Times, the recipe for a happy marriage is either being religious or being egalitarian -
those stuck in the middle are consistently the worst off.To reach this result, the study's authors looked at roughly 5,000 couples surveyed in the Global Family and Gender Survey (GFGS). Based on frequency of religious attendance, these couples were classified as either secular, religious, or mixed.
What the survey data show is that high religious couples report higher rates of marital and sexual satisfaction than their mixed or secular peers.
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