Sociodemographic facts such as the ones just cited have become well known to the public and are cited frequently by social scientists as justification for studying marriage. Since the 1970s scholars from a number of disciplines, building on the pioneering work of sociologists, have focused their attention on the diverse and complex phenomena associated with marriage – most commonly on the question of what makes marriages satisfying and stable – and their efforts have precipitated many important conceptual, methodological, and empirical advances. This work has gone through three fundamental transitions, and each has served to shape how marriage is conceived and examined.

The First and Second Transitions: Studying Interpersonal and Intrapersońal Facets of Marriage

In the first transition, which began more than two decades ago, many family scientists rejected the prevailing views that (a) marriage could be understood by studying individual spouses rather than their relationship; and (b) spouses' self-reports, when collected in the absence of other forms of data, were particularly informative.