Disenchantment in the Later Years of Marriage

Abstract

SINCE the time of Ernest W. Burgess's 1927 article Romantic Impulse and Family Disorganization1 there has been an interest in family research in the process of disenchantment in marriage. Willard Waller, in The Family, A Dynamic Interpretaion,2 discusses the probable consequences of idealization in mate selection, emphasizing disillusionment and the growth of conflict. Recently Charles Hobart has presented empirical information showing disenchantment effects in the early years of marriage. In independent articles and with Clifford Kirkpatrick he has shown that an index of disagreement, which measures the accuracy of one spouse's estimate of the other's response to a series of questions, shows a phase movement during courtship.3 The married phase typically shows more disagreement than the previous ones. For men, at least, there is a slight association between increases in such disagreement and the extent of premarital romanticising. E. E. LeMasters, in another recent article in the Midwest Sociologist, discusses disenchantment as an aspect of divorce.4 Among his thirty divorced couples he reports a tendency to a nonspecific disappointment in the spouse and in marriage as a cause of divorce. LeMaster's work is concerned with disenchantment effects beyond the period of early