Jeremy B. Kanter

• Associate Professor at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Although relationship education (RE) programs aim to improve parents' communication with one another with the hope that it will enhance children's mental health, few studies have investigated if such spillover actually occurs. Therefore, drawing from a sample of 431 families from the Supporting Healthy Marriage Project, the present study examined t...

The benefits of leisure for older adults are well-documented, as is the key role that social networks play in facilitating more opportunities for leisure. However, it is unclear if these opportunities are uniformly beneficial over time or if engaging in leisure with certain social ties (or alone) are more advantageous, particularly when barriers to...

Parental illicit substance use is associated with increases in both interparental conflict frequency and children’s externalizing behaviors. There is a paucity of research examining the pathways linking these constructs. Assessing parental illicit substance use and interparental conflict frequency simultaneously can illustrate a process that potent...

Negative communication between partners can impede the enactment of prosocial, relationship maintenance behaviors. These processes are especially critical to consider for Latine young adults who hold cultural values, like familism, which emphasize the great importance of personal relationships. Using a sample of 475 Latine young adults (M = 24.8 ye...

Relationship satisfaction is among the most popular constructs in family science. As the study of families and romantic couples continues to include more diverse samples, it is imperative to ensure the measures scholars use do not significantly vary in psychometric quality across groups. The goal of this study was to examine the psychometric utilit...

The current study examined the relations among socio-cognitive attitudes such as right-wing authoritarianism (submission to authority figures, aggressive behavior in the name of those authority figures, and conformance to social conventions) and moral disengagement (the justification of harmful actions) as they relate to teen bullying perpetration...

After months of social distancing, widespread vaccine availability gave hope to older adults that they could resume social activities. However, as new variants emerged, it was not always clear how safely older adults could connect with others. Thus, the current study examined how older adults’ leisure with others changed as they reintegrated using...

Singular risk factors elicit negative relational outcomes for couples, yet the accumulation of risk factors can be especially detrimental to relationship functioning. Few studies, however, have explored the long-term effects of cumulative risk exposure on intimate relationships as well as examined whether relationship education (RE) protects couple...

The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant upheaval for couples and families, particularly in terms of living arrangements. Emerging adults had to make quick decisions about where and with whom to shelter in place. In this grounded theory study, we explored how 22 young adults, predominantly living in the United States, navigated relationship decisio...

Objective The goal was to determine if time spent in specific Healthy Marriage Initiative program components (relationship education courses, supplemental activities, and family support services) was associated with future relationship satisfaction and to examine if effects differed depending on the degree of economic disadvantage. Background Heal...

People report positive moods and enhanced well-being when they socialize with friends and other close ties. However, because most people routinely have more encounters with acquaintances and strangers (social connections known as weak ties) than with close friends or kin (strong ties), we deemed it important to examine whether interaction with weak...

The COVID‐19 pandemic created significant strain on both mental health and romantic relationships. Therefore, we examined longitudinal associations between romantic relationship quality, relationship loneliness, and depressive symptoms over 6 months of the COVID‐19 pandemic. We surveyed 122 couples ( n = 244 individuals) in approximately May, Septe...

The coronavirus (COVID‐19) pandemic resulted in economic concerns and disruptions in daily life for many families, which may amplify relational strains and create new tensions between romantic partners. Economic stressors may be particularly salient to later relationship quality in the context of more negative relationship functioning. This study i...

Lower income couples tend to report more difficulty sustaining high‐quality intimate relationships. As a result, policy initiatives have been enacted to fund relationship education (RE) programs that aim to increase lower income couples' relationship satisfaction. Generally, these programs demonstrate small, albeit statistically significant improve...

The current study examined associations of intersectional social identities on Black women’s (N = 126) career self-efficacy and interests at a Historically Black College and University (HBCU). Structural models examined associations of different aspects of gender and racial identity on Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) predictors (i.e., learnin...

Objective To estimate the overall effect between positive and negative communication behaviors and later relationship quality and dissolution. Background Behavioral models of relationship development argue that the quality of couples' communication is key to understanding later relational outcomes. However, longitudinal studies have yielded incons...

Intergenerational poverty and scarce financial resources can create and sustain detrimental behaviors and outcomes among adolescents. Efforts to increase financial literacy and job-related skills, however, can offer youth from low-income households knowledge, skills, and opportunities otherwise unavailable to them. Targeted interventions that combi...

How romantic partners respond to stress has important implications for the well-being of their relationship. In this study, we examined the effects of three types of stress on relationship instability and evaluated individuals’ perceptions of their partner’s dyadic coping as a mediator in a sample of 117 different-gender couples (N = 234) across 6...

Marital functioning is associated with individuals’ psychological functioning. However, it is unclear if the association between marital and individual functioning extends to socioeconomically disadvantaged newlyweds (those with low educational attainment/income), and if changes in psychological distress differ between husbands and wives. Using thr...

Families are navigating an unstable economy due to COVID-19. Financial stressors have the potential to strain intimate relationships and exacerbate prior inequities across lower-income families. Notably, the economic impact of COVID-19 disproportionately influenced Black and Latinx families. As a response to families' economic adversity during the...

Although therapy, relationship education, and online relationship resources may help alleviate relational distress, many adolescents and adults eschew help. Deciding to seek help for relationship concerns involves mental processes that reflect behavioral intentions and information-seeking behaviors. The present paper examines the prevalence of adol...

Divorce is considered distressing for many individuals (Sbarra et al., Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2015, 24, 109); however, individuals in poor-quality relationships may experience certain benefits of leaving an unstable union (Amato & Hohmann-Marriott, Journal of Marriage and Family, 2007, 69, 621). On-off relationship cycling, or...

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of a youth relationship education program (YREP) on psychological functioning and to understand the mechanisms associated with change in distress. Background: Successfully (or unsuccessfully) navigating romantic relationships is a robust predictor of adolescent mental health. Youth relationship education pro...

Previous research suggests that ruminating on social media content is associated with greater mental distress (Yang et al., 2018). This study examined whether materialistic value orientation (MVO)—prioritizing values and goals related to consumerism, consumption, and social status—predicted social media rumination in a sample of diverse adolescents...

The engagement period is a critical window to understand stay–leave decisions because it marks a stage when individuals are moving toward lifelong commitment, but do not have the obligations of legal marriage that make dissolution more difficult. According to Inertia Theory, felt momentum can propel couples through relationship transitions without...

The present study examines older adult married couples’ friendship support and strain trajectories. Friendship is essential across the life course. However, most studies examining friendship within the context of long-term marriages have not examined how friendship quality develops over time and have not treated the dyad as the unit of analysis. Gr...

Objective The purpose of this study was to explore how vulnerabilities, stressors, and adaptive processes influenced early adults' (N = 1,073) future relational desires and topic preferences in relationship education (RE). Background There is great diversity in pathways to relationship formation. Early adults are exposed to risk factors from their...

Recent research has identified significant differences in how satisfaction in newlywed relationships progress, with the majority of spouses reporting relatively high marital satisfaction. However, most studies have focused on white, middle class, childless couples, and it is not clear whether these findings hold for socioeconomically disadvantaged...

Many adolescents avoid seeking psychological help despite the increasing prevalence of mental disorders. The current study investigated whether distress and stigma exhibit differential relationships to decisions to seek online mental health information among a sample of predominantly racial/ethnic minority U.S. adolescents. In this investigation, 1...

Contemporary research has used group-based trajectory modeling to uncover distinct trajectories of marital conflict behaviors after childbirth. However, most studies have focused on conflict frequency, not characteristics of conflict; used stringent sample inclusion criteria, which might not capture contemporary family complexity; and have not trea...

Crowdfunding is a resource that allows individuals or groups to raise funds while simultaneously engaging relevant communities and, thus, is an important tool for Extension specialists. We provide recommended steps for successful crowdfunding, including tips for identifying a website, developing or refining a proposal, and crafting a marketing and...

Objective Following a training in relationship and marriage education (RME), examine whether applying information at 2 months is associated with application at 6 months and how participants' confidence, utility, and self‐efficacy is associated with learning transfer and application at 2 months posttraining. Background Child welfare professionals a...

Objective The goal of this study was to understand the implications of omitting versus retaining individuals known to eventually divorce in the longitudinal modeling of marital quality trajectories. Background Change in marital quality has been the focus of basic and applied research as well as policy initiatives for the past several decades. Scho...

Parenting stress can negatively impact mothers and the family unit. Previous research has identified spousal supportiveness as a critical resource in helping reduce maternal parenting stress, whereas other research demonstrates that parenting stress may reduce supportive behaviors over time. However, it is unclear whether the association between sp...

Objective To review brief couple interventions (BCIs), with a focus on contributions to theory, development, and implications for practice. Background For decades, scholars have observed the individual and societal costs of relationship instability. Due to these costs, state and federal agencies have invested millions of dollars in relationship an...

Contemporary research has shown that divorce education programs are becoming mandated or recommended in numerous states throughout the nation. Cooccurring with the popularity of these programs is the variation in content of divorce education programs. The focus of this project was to systematically explore the research literature on factors related...

The predominant view in both the research literature and practice is that marital quality declines over time. Although the majority of research using variable-centered approaches such as latent growth curve modeling supports this view, contemporary research using person-centered group-based trajectory modeling techniques suggest a variety of trajec...

In this study, we evaluated the content and instructional processes of an online coparenting education program for parents who are separating or divorcing. In addition, we provide results of posttests from parents (N = 1,543) who participated in the program between August 2011 and March 2012. The findings revealed that parents’ perceptions of their...