Factors Contributing to Partner Commitment among Unmarried African Americans

The study of unmarried African Americans has received scant attention, although African American single people are proportionately the largest group of single individuals in America. The purpose of this study was to assess factors that affect relationship commitment among a group of single professional African American men and women. The study used as its conceptualization Rusbult's Investment Model of Romantic Commitment, which contends that satisfaction and investment are related positively to partner commitment, whereas available romantic alternatives are related negatively to partner commitment. Although gender differences were observed, considerable support for the investment model was obtained. Gender differences also were noted in perceptions of equity, power, and ideal partner. Implications for social work are discussed. Key words: African Americans; gender differences, investment model; relationships; romantic commitment ********** Single, or unmarried, African American individuals, in contrast to single African American parents, have received scant attention from researchers, although most African Americans are single (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1996). In fact, African Americans are proportionately the largest group of unmarried people in the United States. They are, as a group, the least likely to marry, stay married, or remarry (Cherlin, 1992). In contrast to the attention given to the study of African American premarital sex (Furstenberg, 1976; Furstenberg, Brooks-Gunn, & Morgan, 1987; Zelnik, Kanter, & Ford, 1981), few research efforts have been devoted to the study of their courtship and romantic relationships (Fairchild, 1985; Staples, 1979, 1981; Tucker & Taylor, 1996). This too is surprising, because the study of close and romantic relationships has increased dramatically as an area of study in recent decades (Ashmore & Del Boca, 1986; Brehm, 1985; Clark & Reis, 1988; Derlega, Hendrick, Winstead, & Berg, 1990; McKinney & Sprecher, 1991). Also true is the fact that the vast majority of research on African American familial relations has focused on low-income and troubled subgroups (Moynihan, 1965; Smith, 1988). Researchers interested in familial relations infrequently have given much notice to the study of "normative" affluent African American populations (Cazenave, 1979; Coner-Edwards & Spurlock, 1988; Jackson, 1978; Staples, 1981). Although rates of singleness have increased for all Americans, African Americans are least likely to be married (Bennett, Bloom, & Craig, 1989). Approximately 60 percent of all African Americans are single, compared with 40 percent of all white people (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1996). At the same time approximately one in two white marriages ends in divorce, whereas the proportion for African Americans is approximately two in three (Cherlin, 1992; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1994). Still, the majority of white people who divorce remarry; whereas the majority of African Americans remain single (Sweet & Bumpass, 1987). As a result, African Americans, compared with white people, are likely to spend a significantly larger proportion of their lives being single. Yet, despite their frequent single status, there is evidence that most African Americans express a desire to be in a romantic relationship (Tucker T Tucker & Mitchell-Kernan, 1995). More than 90 percent of the sample from this study, for instance, expressed a desire to marry. African American men and women have the worst gender imbalance experienced by any group since the beginning of the census (Guttentag & Secord, 1983). The shortage of African American men relative to women is largely a function of the high infant mortality and homicide rates among African American men (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1991). These factors, coupled with high rates of drug addiction (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 1991), incarceration (U. …