Rachel Ann Augustus

The ‘ring by spring’ (RBS) phenomenon entails pressures for college seniors on Christian campuses to become engaged by the spring semester of their senior year. These marital pressures often run counter to national trends in the USA as the median age at first marriage continues to climb. The social clock theory suggests that society places a normative timetable on major events such as marriage. But the social clock may not happen the same way for all people, and influences on Christian campus may represent deviations from most normative social clocks. This study investigated RBS awareness, experiences, pressures, and perceptions, along with assessing for differences in gender and religiosity across multiple universities, both Christian and not, across two different states. Results show wide awareness and experience with RBS at many universities along with some notable differences by gender and religiosity. Implications are provided for researchers and practitioners based on study findings.

The following chapter overviews recent research advances in the area of family communication during emerging adulthood. This review is focused on the multiple systems of communication during emerging adulthood and their impact on healthy and unhealthy individual and family development. These systems include family systems, peer systems, and communication with romantic partners. The role technology has played in shifting both the method and the context of family communication during emerging adulthood is also highlighted. Technology has created avenues to both strengthen and weaken family communication during emerging adulthood and both perspectives are considered. Family life course and social learning theories are then suggested as potential avenues for continued theoretical advancement. Finally, empirical limitations and directions for future scholarship are overviewed.

While links between pornography use and couple relational well-being have been the subject of multiple research studies, less attention has been paid to the associations between pornography use and specific sexual behavior within the relationship. This study aimed to explore associations between each partner's pornography use, sexual desire, sexual satisfaction, and intercourse/non-intercourse sexual behavior. The confounding and moderating role of religiosity was also explored. A dyadic sample of 240 heterosexual couples was used. Measurement assessed pornography use, sexual desire, sexual satisfaction, and sexual behavior. Sexual satisfaction as well as intercourse and non-intercourse sexual behaviors were examined. Results suggested consistent gendered differences where female pornography use was directly associated with higher reports of female sexual desire, whereas male pornography use was directly associated with more male but less female partner desire and lower overall male sexual satisfaction. Male pornography use was also indirectly associated with sexual satisfaction for both partners and non-intercourse behaviors within the relationship through sexual desire. Overall, religiosity had little impact on the results of the study. The complex associations between pornography use, sexual desire, and sexual behaviors suggested by our results highlight the importance of comprehensive and systemic assessment and education around sexuality when working with individuals and couples. The main strength of this study is the use of dyadic data. The main limitation is the cross-sectional nature of the data CONCLUSION: The associations between pornography use and a variety of outcomes are highly nuanced. This study provides an important step forward in more fully accounting for the complications of pornography use in a relationship. Willoughby BJ, Leonhardt ND, Augustus RA. Associations Between Pornography Use and Sexual Dynamics Among Heterosexual Couples. J Sex Med 2021;18:179-192.

Research exploring the correlates, moderators, and potential consequences of viewing pornography for romantic couples has surged in recent years. Research in this area has primarily focused on the question of whether viewing pornography for either partner (or together) is related to enhanced, diminished, or has no effect on relational well-being. However, this narrow scholarly focus and the continued methodological limitations of research in this area have made synthesizing or drawing broad conclusions about pornography use from this scholarship difficult. One specific limitation of this area is the lack of any broad organizational framework that could help scholars categorize existing research while also laying the groundwork for future scholarship. In this paper, we argue for such a framework and suggest that relational pornography scholarship could be organized across five broad dimensions: the nuances of the content viewed, individual background factors, personal views and attitudes, a couple’s relational context, and couple processes. We provide a justification for these five areas and then discuss how this framework could help organize and structure the research in this area moving forward.

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