In-law relationships can act as sources of both support and stress for couples. Independent of the nature of the actual relationships with in-laws, it may be that couple similarity in perceptions of these ties determines if they undermine or facilitate marital stability. The current study sought to examine how spousal connections to in-laws and concordance about these relationships early in marriage predicted marital stability in a sample of 355 Black and White married couples followed over 16 years. Husbands and wives reported on time spent with families, whose family they turn to for support, and closeness with families during their first year of marriage. Analyses revealed that discordance on these issues early in marriage was common. We found that even after controlling for husband and wife reports of connections with in-laws, discordance on closeness with the wife’s family predicted divorce. Thus, when conceptualizing the costs and benefits of connections with in-laws, it is important to consider not only the nature of spouses’ ties to each other’s families, but the extent to which their views of these ties are concordant.

姻亲关系可以成为夫妻的支持和压力来源。独立于与姻亲的实际关系的性质，可能是夫妻对这些关系的看法的相似性决定了它们是否破坏或促进了婚姻的稳定。目前的研究试图检查配偶与姻亲的关系以及婚姻早期这些关系的一致性如何预测 355 对黑人和白人已婚夫妇超过 16 年的样本中的婚姻稳定性。丈夫和妻子报告了他们在结婚第一年与家人相处的时间，他们向家人寻求支持，以及与家人的亲密关系。分析表明，婚姻早期在这些问题上的分歧很常见。我们发现，即使在控制了与姻亲关系的夫妻报告后，与妻子家人的亲密关系不一致预示着离婚。因此，在概念化与姻亲关系的成本和收益时，重要的是不仅要考虑配偶与彼此家庭关系的性质，还要考虑他们对这些关系的看法一致的程度。