Gale Researcher Guide for: Patterns of Intimate Partnership Termination

Gale Researcher Guide for: Patterns of Intimate Partnership Termination

Melanie L. Duncan

Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Department of Sociology

Melanie L. Duncan is an assistant professor of sociology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on the areas of families, sex and gender, sexualities, interpersonal violence, and law and policy. Recent projects have investigated how social context and legal policies shape the present state of adoption, reproductive rights, and marriage equality in the United States.

The dissolution of an intimate relationship in both legal and social realms has often focused on the marital relationship between husband and wife. Nonmartial or nonheterosexual relationships were often treated similar to a dating relationship in which couples had little to no protections. However, over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, a noticeable shift has taken place in social and legal approaches to relationship dissolution. This can be seen in the patterns of divorce, changes in laws pertaining to divorce, legal relationship termination for cohabitating and same-sex partners, spousal support, and mediation. These changes are discussed in the context of past and present relationship dissolution