American Family Types & Marital Happiness

The research reported here estimates the frequency of twenty-five husband and wife family types and examines the differences between six of the most prevalent and important family types in the American population in the 1980\u27s. The variables used for comparisons are age at first marriage, income, fertility rates and marital happiness. To further clarify the relationship between marital happiness and family types, analyses were performed controlling for fertility, and income. The data used were part of the General Social Survey of 1980, 1981, 1983, and 1984 conducted by the National Opinion Research Center. The results show that the traditional family types (wife not working) are the most frequent family types and the husband career-wife job family type (HC-WJ) report the highest percentage of marital happiness