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A 1970 national sample of white ever-married females is used to explore the process of the intergenerational transmission of marital instability. The research examines the possibility that mate-selection outcomes operate as intervening variables between parent and child generation marital instability. Partial support is found for this: about one-half of the effect of parent instability is mediated by mate-selection outcomes, with the high-risk circumstances of early and limited-education marriages being the most important. The relevance of these mate selection circumstances in the transmission process is interpreted within the framework of social control and economic rationales.
Mueller et al. (1977) studied this question.