There are no clear answers as to how people from different class backgrounds
construct their appreciation for their spouse. Empirical studies tend to measure
class only at the level of adulthood class position, not also childhood one. This
overlooks that individuals say they appreciate others with similar dispositions,
tastes, and worldviews (Illouz 1997; Johnson and Lawler 2005), but that individuals
who grow up in different social classes—even if they share a class position as
adults—tend to harbor dissimilar dispositions, tastes, and worldviews (Granfield
1991; Karp 1986; Lubrano 2004; Streib 2015; Stuber 2005; Van Eijck 1999). It also
ignores that most Americans marry at an age when they have spent more time in
their class origin than their class destination (Manning, Brown, and Payne 2014)—
making the class of their past potentially salient to accounts of appreciation. Theories
of heterophily also fail to provide clear answers as to why people say they
appreciate a person who was raised in another class. Theories either explain heterophily
but not actors’ accounts of it (Davis 1941; Merton 1941; Zeng, Schwartz,
and Xie 2012), or explain what accounts individuals use to avoid heterophily but
not to engage in it (Bourdieu 1984). Given that heterophily by class origin is no
longer rare, theories are needed that can explain how actors account for its presence
as well as its absence.