Thesis advisor: Bernard O'Brien / This study investigated factors associated with stable marriages among twelve African-American, working-class couples who had been married for a minimum of twenty years, with children who were at least 18 years of age. The researcher conducted an in-depth interview with each spouse separately, and explored aspects of three different stages of their marriages: the early years, child rearing years, and post-child rearing years. Factors that were examined to determine their impact on marital stability included relationship variables, external factors and the influence of respondents' parents' marriages on their relationships. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 1993. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Education.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how race-related stress influenced marital satisfaction among ten African American married couples. Each couple participated in a 60 to 90 minute interview and completed a measure of marital satisfaction. Using phenomenology, symbolic interactionism, and family systems theory as a theoretical lens, this study described how African American married couples came to understand if and how the phenomenon of race-related stress influenced their marital satisfaction, and what meanings they created from this experience. Using modified analytic induction, couples discussed how their individual factors influenced their perceptions of race-related stress. Race-related stress couples also discussed how the phenomenon strengthened and challenged their marital satisfaction. It was also discovered that couples with race-related stress developed ways of coping with race-related stress in an effort to protect their marital satisfaction. One of the ten couples reported not experiencing race-related stress. A conceptual model, future research, and clinical implications from these findings are discussed. / Master of Science