‘All My Worldly Goods I Share with you’? Managing Money at the Transition to Heterosexual Marriage
Year: 2006
Type: article
Abstract: Studies in the 1980s and 1990s revealed that financial arrangements in marriage tended to disadvantage women, especially those with young children. However, much of that research focused upon relatively well-established married (or remarried) couples, and we have little insight into the choices that today's newly-weds are making, or what influences their choices. To address this gap in our understanding, in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with forty-two heterosexual couples on the brink of their first marriage. We explored their monetary practices and the way that they thought about money in the relationship. The results of a grounded theory analysis showed that six couples were pooling all or most of their money, fifteen were using a partial-pooling system, twenty were using an independent management system (with separate accounts), and one couple had an arrangement where all the money was controlled and managed by one partner. A key factor was perceived ownership of money, and this influenced the extent to which finances were being merged and treated as a collective resource. Other factors included the couple's current living arrangements and beliefs about the importance of sharing and independence within the relationship.
Source: The Sociological Review
Institution: University of Exeter
Language: English
Subfield: Demography
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1924314865