Who Decides on Marriage? The Role of Partners’ Intentions in the Progress of Relationships

Dominika Perdoch Sladka , Masaryk University

Marriage is not a matter of course in most western developed countries anymore. Like other issues in the relationship, partners have to negotiate progress from one stage of the relationship to another, while their marital intentions may not be the same. What happens in the relationship in case partners' plans for marriage differ depends on their relative bargaining power and attractions/barriers of the relationship. This paper aims at uncovering the outcomes of heterosexual unmarried partners' marital plans. It will answer the question what is the role of men's and women's marital intentions in the progress of romantic relationships or their dissolution and who has more power to affect the relationship progress. I will analyze the effects of different combinations of marital intentions (e.g., the man wants marriage, the woman does not) on the risk of subsequent transition to marriage or dissolution using couples' panel data from the German Family Panel (pairfam). This paper will contribute to the growing body of research focusing on the factors that lead some couples to marry and others to break up. I expect to find differences in the effects of the intentions of men and women on both risks of marriage and dissolution, concerning women’s and men’s uneven bargaining power and different attractions/barriers of the relationship for men and women.

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 Presented in Session P1. Postercafe