Looking beyond marital status: What we can learn from relationship status measures

Objective: With needed and growing attention to sexual minorities and unmarried individuals, there is a need to consider how best to capture relationships and relationship organization in family studies. Background: Traditional measures of marital status are commonly used to examine differences in relationships and socioeconomic outcomes, but they do not adequately capture the diversity of relationship experiences and leave certain types of relationship experiences invisible. Method: This article examines the inclusion of a relationship measure in the American Marriage Survey, a national probability-based sample of 2806 adults in the United States, to provide a more diverse and expansive perspective on relationships and relationship organization. While there is a great deal of overlap between those who are married or cohabiting (marital status) and those who are in an exclusive relationship (relationship status), there is also potential for variation in what kinds of relationships, if any, people are in. Results: We find that the relationship measure is particularly useful in showing that a majority of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and pansexual individuals are in an exclusive relationship and also that gender and sexual minorities are more likely than cisgender and heterosexual individuals to be in consensual nonmonogamous relationships. This article also provides direction on re-coding open text responses from the relationship status measure. Conclusion: We conclude that a relationship status measure allows for greater inclusivity and visibility of sexual minorities and unmarried persons, including but not limited to queer individuals, families, and communities, as well as consensual nonmonogamous relationships.