Gale Researcher Guide for: Changing Patterns of Intimate Partnerships in the United States

By Duncan and Melanie L.

Gale Researcher Guide for: Changing Patterns of Intimate Partnerships in the United States is selected from Gale's academic platform Gale Researcher. These study guides provide peer-reviewed articles that allow students early success in finding scholarly materials and to gain the confidence and vocabulary needed to pursue deeper research.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Aug 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781535860024

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Gale Researcher Guide for: Changing Patterns of Intimate Partnerships in the United States

Melanie L. Duncan

Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Department of Sociology

Melanie L. Duncan is an assistant professor of sociology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on the areas of families, sex and gender, sexualities, interpersonal violence, and law and policy. Recent projects have investigated how social context and legal policies shape the present state of adoption, reproductive rights, and marriage equality in the United States.

The formation and maintenance of intimate relationships in the United States has shifted over the course of the past 240 years. These shifts have spanned not only changes in demographic patterns but often addressed changing social perceptions and legal recognition of intimate relationships. To capture these shifts, sociologists have studied the marriage patterns, formation of intimate partnerships, general marriage patterns, marriage patterns specific to certain portions of the populations, and relationship dissolution.

Conceptions of intimate partnerships in the United States often center on the belief that the majority of the couples adhere to the breadwinner/homemaker model where couples marry early and are heterosexual. The reality is that this pattern of relationship formation was only relevant for a subset of the population for a small portion of time. The following will illustrate the reality of intimate partnership formation and how these patterns vary among certain portions of the population.

Formation of Intimate Partnerships

Forming an intimate relationship with another person is