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51 Ariz. St. L.J. 1369 (2019)
"Don't Force My Hand": Gender and Social Class Variation in Relationship Negotiation

handle is hein.journals/arzjl51 and id is 1401 raw text is: Don't Force My Hand: Gender and Social Class Variation in Relationship Negotiation Amanda Jayne Miller* & Sharon Sassier** ABSTRACT Do the relationship processes leading to cohabitation and subsequent outcomes contribute to growing social class disparities in family behaviors? Our paper explores the role played by gender and class in relationship progression, from dating, to cohabiting, to talk of marriage and proposing. Data are from in-depth interviews with 122 service-class and middle-class cohabiting individuals (sixty-one couples). We find that men initiate dating andproposals far more often than do women, though gender equality is more evident in who raises the topic of cohabiting, andwomen are more likely than men to initiate discussions of marriage. Middle-class women express greater agency in forwarding relationships than their service-class counterparts, as they f equently raise the topic of marriage and establish the general pacing and time frame of relationship progression. Middle-class men's greater receptivity to marriage also contributes to the diverging outcomes experienced by middle-class and service-class cohabitors. INTRODUCTION In the United States, cohabitation is now common across the social-class spectrum.' Young Americans increasingly defer marriage, though not intimate unions; the majority have cohabited with a romantic partner by their late twenties.2 Although the likelihood of cohabitation remains greater among those with lower levels of education, growing proportions of the college educated have lived with a romantic partner.3 Social class disparities have * Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology and Director of Faculty Development at the University of Indianapolis. ** Professor, Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University. 1. See Sheela Kennedy & Larry Buinpass, Cohabitation and Children's Living Arrangements: New Estimatesfrom the United States, 19 DEMOGRAPHIC RES. 1663, 1664 (2008). 2. See Paula Y. Goodwin et al., Marriage and Cohabitation in the United States: A Statistical Portrait Based on Cycle 6 (2002) of the National Survey of Family Growth, VITAL & HEALTH STAT., Feb. 2010, at 1; see also Wendy D. Manning et al., Two Decades of Stability and Change in Age at First Union Formation, 76 J. MARRIAGE & FAM. 247, 257-58 (2014). 3. See Manning et al., supra note 2, at 255.

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