Thomas B. Holman – författare

This text represents a serious attempt to carry out a large-scale longitudinal study of pre-marital factors that predict breakup and marital quality. The author develops a theoretical rationale for predicted paths and tests those paths with the best statistical tools. Practitioners should find the results useful in their attempts to help individuals and couples make decisions about marriage, marital stability and childrearing.

This book should be of interest to scholars, researchers, students, and practitioners alike. Scholars, researchers, and students of personal relationship development will recognize in this book the first serious attempt in over 40 years to do a large-scale, longitudinal study of premarital factors that predict premarital breakup and marital quality; they should also appreciate our attempt to develop a theoretical rationale for predicted paths and to test those paths with the best available statistical tools. Practitioners-while generally not as interested in the intricacies of the statistical results-will find much that is useful to them as they help individuals and couples make decisions about their intimate relationships, their readiness for marriage, and how to increase the probability for marital success. Teachers, family life educators, premarital counselors, and clergy will find helpful our “principles for practice,” particularly as described in Chapter 9, as they teach and counsel couples in any premarital situation. My interest in the development of relationships from premarital to marital probably began when I got married in 1972 and started to notice all of the characteristics my wife and I brought from our respective families and how our “new beginning” as a married couple was in many ways the continuation of our premarital relationship, only more refined and more intense. My professional interest began when I did my doctoral dissertation in 198 1 on premarital predictors of early marital satisfaction (the results of that study are reported in Chapter 8).

A remarkable team of contributors based across 19 countries explores and explains events worldwide affecting the natural family—married father and mother with biological children —detailing concepts and benefits of natural family that have been taken for granted across centuries, but are now being challenged in many ways. These scholars—many admittedly taking stands that may be deemed politically incorrect—conclude that natural family is being threatened, and is vital to provide common ground among all societies, cultures and religious traditions. Psychologists, sociologists, economists, theologians, lawyers, health care professionals and award-winning journalists are among the chapter authors, as are Nobel Prize Laureate Gary Becker, U.S. Department of Health Assistant Secretary for Children and Families Wade Horn, and former Prime Minister of Malaysia Mahathir Bin Mohamad. Whether or not you agree with their arguments, science and conclusions, you'll want to know what these influential figures are saying.Addressing many lightning-rod issues, from divorce and abortion to euthanasia and same-sex marriage, writers here span the world from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom to Australia, Turkey, India, and China. Intellectuals included are associated with institutions from Brigham Young University, Georgetown School of Medicine and the Boston College School of Law, to the University of Geneva, and the Maxim Institute in New Zealand.

For years, many have observed the notion that there are a number of distinctive differences in the mate-selection process of Latter-day Saints (LDS) and other North Americans. Because of the strongly held values espoused by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in regard to marriage within the larger picture of American cultural patterns, there are many Mormon sub-cultural differences. Unique LDS culture patterns have been found to be an expression of a young adult LDS Church member's paradigms of life's meanings. This book combines cutting edge scholarly research with items of popular interest analyzing and summarizing data and research already collected. Making commitments is vital to LDS life and affects the mate-selection process. Parental attitudes, values, and interpretations of accepted codes within the Church have developed into traditions that constitute a complex Mormon lore. Therefore, the book's approach is a detailed, comprehensive report of the author's research that uniquely incorporates folklore data.This volume defines the formation of heterosexual relationships culminating in marriage of LDS couples from 1960 to 2005, and compares this pattern to that of other cultural courtships. The study will assist future researchers in their analysis of the family, and have a direct influence on further exploration of what constitutes successful LDS families.