Marital Adjustment: A Critical Review

Marriage is a socially and legally sanctioned union of sexually intimate adults. It is a socio-cultural institution. The vast majority of people continue to see marriage as important, but the standards against which they are assessing the case for marriage appear to have changed. Whereas marriage once was regarded as an inevitable and central aspect of life, now alternatives such as single parenting, cohabitation, and divorce have become acceptable. The institution of marriage originated to give legal and customary sanction to the sexual relations. Marriage is a lifelong interpersonal relationship between man and woman as husband and wife governed by legal, religious and customary principles. When spouses get along with each other to achieve harmonious working relationship in different areas of their marital life, adjustment is achieved. A huge body of research is available on the subject, yet it is not clear to what extent the psychological issues have been dealt throughout the progress of its study. One of the oldest institutions of the human civilization, marriage has always been studied from sociological context, yet in the past five to ten decades of specific psychological research, the study of adjustment has had a noticeable progress. Here is an endeavor to review the available research on marital adjustment, the gaps in the research and the scope for further research in the area of marital adjustment.