Marriage and Couple Relationships Research on marriage and the family is central to the NICHD mission "to ensure that every person is born healthy and wanted … and that all children have the chance to fulfill their potential for a healthy and productive life, free of disease or disability." Families constitute the key environment for children's development, and family members (especially parents) are crucial to children's health. Research on families is crucial for understanding the causes and consequences of population change. Marriage has long been a cornerstone of the family, a means of providing legal recognition and institutional support to relationships in which children are born and raised. However, because of recent structural changes in the family in the contemporary United States and other societies, many children are now born outside of marriage, and many more spend some of their growing-up years outside of married-couple families, or in fragmented and unstable households. Stable couple relationships, such as marriage, provide an important context for adult development and reproductive health. Married people are healthier and happier, on average, than unmarried people, although the causal connections behind this association are not yet fully understood. Married people are also less likely to acquire sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and more likely to have healthy pregnancies. However, the current trend toward later marriage means that many couple relationships begin prior to formal marriage. Couple relationships inside and outside of marriage have important implications for mental health, healthy development, and reproductive health. The NICHD has a strong interest in supporting research that addresses topics relevant to couple relationships and families, including research on: - Marriage, cohabitation, divorce, childbearing, adoption, and other processes relevant to family formation and dissolution;
- The determinants (e.g., social, economic, psychological, cultural, etc.) and consequences (for children and adults) of varying family characteristics and patterns;
- Various aspects of parenting and their relationships to child development and child health;
- Economic processes that unfold within the family (e.g., household division of labor, allocation of time and economic resources across generations) that have implications for child/adult health and development;
- Interpersonal processes that unfold within the family (e.g., marital relationships, family violence, co-parenting) that have implications for child/adult health and development; and
- Processes that unfold within couple relationships that affect relationship stability, the formation and stability of marriages, and the likelihood that children are born into, and raised in stable two-parent households (e.g., commitment, transition to parenthood).
Two branches within the NICHD have interests in research on marriage and couple relationships:
The Child Development and Behavior (CDB) Branch has interests in research on: - Aspects of couple relationships and couple interaction in relation to parenting and child development (e.g., effects of domestic violence or marital conflict on children's socio-emotional development);
- Couple functioning, processes, and interventions (e.g., interparental and family communication, warmth, domestic and family violence) that have direct and clearcut implications for healthy child and family development. Evaluation of couple therapy is explicitly EXCLUDED from study.
- Adolescent attachment, emotion regulation, and other developmental factors in the context of romantic or other couple relationships; and
- The intergenerational transmission of developmental risk, including interpersonal relationships (e.g., peer and couple relationships), parenting behaviors, and behavioral or emotional problems (e.g., aggression or violence).
The DBS Branch has interests in: - Research on aspects of couple relationships and couple interaction in relation to stability of relationships, fertility, marriage, divorce, family structure, parenting, risk of STD/HIV, and health outcomes of children and adults (including both basic research and intervention research); and
- Family systems studies that examine how families function as a unit, in relation to the outcomes noted above.
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