Premarital Characteristics of the Religiously Intermarried in an Urban Area

A sample of persons who married outside their faith is compared with a sample of intramarried respondents on a series of premarital variables. In general, the intermarried are found to report a lesser early tie to religion, greater dissatisfaction with early relationships with parents, greater strife in family of orientation, lesser early family integration, and greater emancipation from parents at time of marriage. Each of these differences is interpreted as representing a way in which barriers to intermarriage are removed. Differences were also found on such variables as religion, socio-economic status, and ethnicity. These differences are at least partially explicable in terms of group differences on the first set of variables.