A main conclusion of previous research on homogamy among romantic couples is that “matching partners are far from random”; this paper disagrees

Homogamy in Gender Role Attitudes Among Young Couples: Evidence from Germany. Ansgar Hudde. KZfSS Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Oct 6 2020. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11577-020-00711-1

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1313507262556766208

Abstract: Romantic partners’ similarity in gender role attitudes affects important outcomes such as sharing of housework, relationship stability, or fertility. However, there is little knowledge about how similar romantic partners are in these attitudes. Using dyadic panel data from German couples (sourced from pairfam), this study puts the degree of homogamy in gender role attitudes among young couples into perspective by comparing real couples with two types of counterfactuals. To create these counterfactuals, I re-mate couples in two ways: (a) randomly and (b) in such a way that similarity in attitudes between partners is maximized. Real couples differ only slightly from randomly mated couples, which suggests rather weak attitudinal similarity. Using longitudinal information, I further test the mechanisms that determine the degree of homogamy: there is strong evidence for alignment over time and for lower rates of separation among homogamous couples, but no evidence for homogamy as a by-product of assortative mating on other variables. This paper offers methodological and substantial contributions to the literature: it presents a method for intuitive assessment of the degree of homogamy with multiple variables simultaneously. It also shows that in Germany, macro-level diversity in attitudes largely translates into dissimilar attitudes between partners—with important implications for relationship dynamics.

Conclusion

A main conclusion of previous research on homogamy among romantic couples is that “matching partners are far from random” (Schwartz 2013, p. 452). This study puts the degree of homogamy in gender role attitudes among young couples into perspective and shows that, in fact, mating is not so far from random. The degree of homogamy is low to moderate. I test whether similarity in gender role attitudes is a by-product of assortative mating on education or religiosity and find very little evidence for such indirect assortative mating. This study finds clear evidence for alignment over time: fixed-effects panel models show that partners’ attitudes become substantially more similar over time. Further, partners with dissimilar attitudes are substantially more likely to separate.

These results strengthen our understanding of processes in partner selection. Among observed couples with an average relationship duration of 2.4 years, similarity in attitudes is moderate. Clear evidence for alignment suggests that the observed couples might have been more dissimilar at the beginning of the relationship. Evidence for differential separation further suggests that some of the dissimilar couples might not be observed anymore, because they have already separated. If we could observe couples on day 1 of their relationship, their similarity in attitudes would be substantially lower. Even though there are good reasons to choose a partner who has similar attitudes—it improves the odds of having high relationship satisfaction and stability—many young people in Germany do not. This could be because people have different priorities during the dating process, e.g. appearance, hobbies or social status, or because people just do not have sufficient information about the attitudes of the people to whom they are getting closer. From a practical perspective, this could be motivation to gather better information about the attitudes of a potential partner, e.g. through explicit discussion of gender roles and relevant scenarios.

Many studies on homogamy test whether homogamy is statistically significant, but do not provide an intuitive understanding of the degree of homogamy. Such studies show that real similarity is significantly higher than randomness would predict; however, they do not discuss how much more similar they are. This paper presents a novel methodical approach to doing exactly this: giving an understanding of the degree of homogamy. This contributes to social science research that focuses not only on statistical significance but on substantive meaning of observed differences and association (Bernardi et al. 2017). A main advantage of this method is that it allows the assessment of homogamy on multiple dimensions simultaneously. This method can help scholars in future studies on homogamy concerning diverse traits.

This study has limitations. The stated goal of our sample selection was to get very close to initial mating. Even though pairfam is the largest data set of young couples of which I am aware, the sample size becomes small when restricting the maximum duration of relationship to low levels. To produce a reasonable sample size, I analysed couples with an average relationship duration of around 2.4 years. The sample analysed underrepresents two groups. First, couples that do not live together. Previous research on the selectivity of partner participation in pairfam showed that partners living in a different household are less likely to participate. Therefore, couples with a lower degree of institutionalisation are underrepresented in the data. Second, I only studied childless couples. Therefore, this study is not representative of (the rather small group of) couples that become parents very early.

In sum, this paper shows that even though there are good reasons why people might want to choose a romantic partner who has similar gender role attitudes, many people do not. These results have important implications for relationship dynamics and macro-level patterns of fertility and union status. Previous research showed that the partners’ match in attitudes influences their relationship and sharing of housework, childcare and the partners’ approach to paid work (Nitsche and Grunow 2018). Further, couples with dissimilar attitudes have lower relationship satisfaction, relationship stability and fertility (Hohmann-Marriott 2006; Arránz Becker 2013; Hudde and Engelhardt 2020). At the aggregate level, couple dissimilarity can lead to higher rates of separation and divorce, and contribute to the overall low level of fertility in countries like Germany. To understand such macro-level outcomes, we need to understand the processes of partner selection.