Marital Stability and Spouses' Shared Time

Abstract

Given the prominence of marital dissolution in American life in recent decades, it is important to understand what contributes to or deters it. This article focuses on spouses' shared leisure activities as a possible deterrent. An “attachment hypothesis”— that spouses' shared leisure time is a form of pleasurable interaction that strengthens the attachment between them and helps prevent marital break-up at the time and into the future—is tested in the context of controls for a variety of hypotheses. The empirical tests are supportive of the attachment hypothesis and suggest that, because couples with children have less shared leisure time, children can contribute to marital break-up as well as help prevent it.