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This study aimed to develop a model that explains personal attitudes toward religious groups and the role of parental religious heterogamy and homogamy. The sample included 32,595 participants from 26 countries around the world and was obtained from the International Social Survey Programme. Participants whose parents were religiously homogamous presented higher well-being, better health perception, and higher religiosity than participants whose parents were religiously heterogamous. Having had parental heterogamy or homogamy is a moderator of the relationship between religious practice and attitudes toward religious groups, with this relationship being stronger among participants who had parental homogamy. Religious variables are directly related to heterogamy/homogamy and indirectly related to well-being and personal attitude toward religious groups through parents’ religious heterogamy/homogamy. Religious variables are related to personal attitudes toward religious groups through patents’ religious heterogamy/homogamy and well-being. Participants whose parents are religiously heterogamous present a more negative attitude toward Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Jews, and participants whose parents are religiously homogamous present a more negative attitude toward atheists or nonbelievers. In the context of globalization and the merging of cultures, these results open new research questions and may support religious, spiritual, and clinical practitioners in their approach to religious discrimination.

Objectives This study aims to explore the associations between spousal religious difference (one religious and one nonreligious), marital satisfaction, and the psychological well‐being of middle‐aged and older Chinese adults. Background Both religion and marital relationships are critical in coping with aging‐related challenges. Method We adopted the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) data, which collected a nationally representative sample of Chinese people over 45 years old. The sample included 1,285 adults (714 men and 571 women). Descriptive statistics, multiple regression models, and a path analysis based on generalized structural equation modeling (GSEM) were adopted. Results Wives' marital satisfaction mediated spousal religious difference and psychological well‐being, including depression and life satisfaction. Marital satisfaction was associated with depression and life satisfaction for both genders, and wives' marital satisfaction had a stronger association with life satisfaction than husbands'. Conclusions Spousal religious difference has significant negative associations with marital satisfaction and psychological well‐being among middle‐aged and older people in China, especially among women. Implication Based on the results of this study, further research is needed to focus on the individual and interpersonal outcomes of religiosity in middle‐aged and older adults. In family therapy involving couples with different religious affiliations, counselors should pay attention to gender differences and prioritize addressing wives' marital satisfaction. Additionally, policies and services should also recognize the significant role of wives' marital satisfaction in the well‐being of such couples.

In Ghana, collectivism holds people together in marital relationships, even if partners are religiously different. Married partners still hurt, betray, or offend each other and might develop avoidance or vengeful (i.e., unforgiving) motives. We investigated whether religious homogamy moderated connections of personality and marriage variables to unforgiving motives. Heterosexual married couples (N = 176 heterosexual married couples; N = 352 individuals; mean marriage duration 10.89 years) participated. Most identified as Christian (83.5% males; 82.3% females) or Muslim (11.9% males; 14.3% females). Couple religious homogamy was related directly to lower unforgiving motives. Religious homogamy did not moderate the connection between some personality variables (i.e., agreeableness and trait forgivingness) and unforgiving motives. Religiously unmatched couples tended to have greater unforgiveness at higher levels of neuroticism and lower forbearing, marital satisfaction, and marital commitment relative to religiously matched couples. One implication is that couple therapists need to assess partner neuroticism, marriage climate (i.e., satisfaction and commitment), and the general tendency to forbear when offended. Those can combine to produce unforgiving relationships, which might make progress in couple therapy improbable.

We propose a two-sided method to simultaneously estimate men's and women's preferences for relative age, education, and religious characteristics of potential mates using cross-sectional data on married couples and single individuals, in conjunction with a behavioral model developed in game theory and discrete choice estimation methods developed for simpler, one-sided choice situations. We use fixed effects to control for characteristics that are observed by the opposite sex but are missing from our data. Estimated mean preference coefficients determine the average degree to which measured characteristics of individuals affect others' evaluations of them as marital partners, whereas the model also accounts for variation of preferences around the means and for limitations in men's and women's information about members of the opposite sex. By assuming that each individual chooses freely from the set of potential partners that he or she finds available, we estimate preferences without having to observe these sets or specify any details of the matching process. This makes our method robust to unknown features of the process. Application of the method to data from the first wave of the National Survey of Families and Households indicates roughly symmetric or complementary preferences of men and women for age, education, and religious affliation characteristics of potential mates and a much stronger preference for religious homogamy among conservative Protestants relative to mainline Protestants than was suggested by an earlier, retrospective study of religious differences in the temporal stability of marriages. Our method should be useful in many situations in which voluntary pairings have arisen through some complex process, the details of which have not been recorded. Besides marriage and cohabitation, data on employment, college attendance, and the coresidence of elderly parents with adult children often have this character, as do some biological data on nonhuman mating.

We use longitudinal data on religious affiliation in Finland to examine childbearing behavior. All analyses are based on detailed fertility information from the Finnish national register of each person’s religious denomination for men and women born in 1956–1975. We identify higher fertility according to parity among members of the Evangelical Lutheran state church and other Protestant churches, and lower fertility among individuals with no religious affiliation. Most other religious groups—Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims, and adherents of Eastern religions—have intermediate levels of fertility. We also find that religious converts, that is, those observed with more than one religious denomination over their life course, typically are similar to the non-converts of the group they convert to, though with more distinct deviations from the Finnish population. Women show larger differences by religious affiliation than men. We find the largest differences across religions when we examine the proportion of childless men and women. Overall, differences between religious groups are rather modest, and childbearing patterns are quite similar. Our results provide, to our knowledge, the first examination of religion and fertility using national-level longitudinal data.

Objective This study examines the extent to which homogamy and heterogamy in husband–wife religious denomination are associated with initial levels of marital satisfaction and slopes of marital satisfaction over 17 years examining whether those associations are moderated by husbands' and wives' religious intensity. Background Longitudinal studies on religion and marital outcomes that incorporate a dyadic component are relatively rare, and few studies have examined couple‐level religiosity with respect to long‐term marital outcomes. Method On the basis of six waves of the Longitudinal Study of Generations data between 1988 and 2005, we selected 173 married couples in the baby boom generation and analyzed their musing dyadic growth curve modeling. Results Husbands' and wives' religious denomination homogamy was significantly associated with initial levels and slopes of both husbands' and wives' marital satisfaction. In addition, husbands with highly religious wives of the same denomination exhibited greater initial levels of marital satisfaction than those who had wives of weaker religious intensity with a different denomination. Conclusion In this research, denominational similarity between spouses was not only beneficial to marital satisfaction but was also paired with the degree of religious intensity. Implication Family researchers and practitioners are encouraged to acknowledge the characteristics of couples' religious contexts and their influences on marital outcomes over the family life course. Because the LSOG couples represent mostly White and underrepresented families from other ethnicities, there should be caution in generalizing these findings to the general population.

This paper compares two aspects of the social reproduction of religion: parent-to-child transmission, and religious homogamy. Analysis of a survey of immigrants in France shows that for parent-to-child transmission, immigrant status/generation is not the central variable — rather, variation is across religions with Muslim families showing high continuity. Immigrant status/generation does directly matter for partner choice. In Christian and Muslim families alike, religious inpartnering significantly declines in the second generation. In turn, the offspring of religiously non-homogamous families is less religious. For Muslim immigrants this points to the possibility of a non-trivial decline in religiosity in the third generation.

Results of numerous studies have demonstrated a positive relation between religiosity and marital well-being. In this study, the authors examined direct effects on marital satisfaction of religious homogamy, prayer for spousal well-being, and forgiveness. They also examined the degree to which religiosity buffered against risks to marital well-being. The results indicated significant positive linear relations between each indicator of religiosity and marital satisfaction. Furthermore, religiosity moderated, or buffered against, the negative effects of risk factors; specifically, religious homogamy buffered against previous divorce; prayer buffered against having a high-stress marriage; and spousal forgiveness buffered against cohabitation before marriage, previous divorce, and stressful marriage.

This paper examines the association between the level of similarity in the “Big Five” personality traits of the partners in different-sex couples and their risk of union dissolution. Prior research has mainly focused on homogamy in socio-economic, demographic, and cultural characteristics, such as age, education, employment, and religion. The few studies on the effects of homogamy in the personalities of the partners on separation find mixed results. We extend on this by analysing the moderating effect of education. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the 2005–2019 period, we follow 3958 coresidential couples and observe 534 separations. Personality is measured via the “Big Five” personality traits. We estimate discrete-time event history models for union dissolution. In addition to reporting the main effects, we calculate interactions between personality and the level of education of the partners. Our results indicate that greater dissimilarity with regard to the personality trait “openness” is associated with a higher probability to separate. However, analysing interaction effects reveals that this is relevant mainly among medium educated men. Moreover, persons with high education seem to be less likely to separate if they are dissimilar from their partner in their level of “extraversion”. These findings suggest that relationship dynamics differ across educational groups.