ABSTRACT
Family ties have wide‐ranging consequences for health, for better and for worse. This decade review uses a life course perspective to frame significant advances in research on the effects of ...family structure and transitions (e.g., marital status) and family dynamics and quality (e.g., emotional support from family members) on health across the life course. Significant advances include the linking of childhood family experiences to health at older ages, identification of biosocial processes that explain how family ties influence health throughout life, research on social contagion showing how family members influence one another's health, and attention to diversity in family and health dynamics, including gender, sexuality, socioeconomic, and racial diversity. Significant innovations in methods include dyadic and family‐level analysis and causal inference strategies. The review concludes by identifying directions for future research on families and health, advocating for a “family biography” framework to guide future research, and calling for more research specifically designed to assess policies that affect families and their health from childhood into later life.
Social isolation has robust adverse effects on health, well-being, dementia risk, and longevity. Although most studies suggest similar effects of isolation on the health of men and women, there has ...been much less attention to gendered patterns of social isolation over the life course—despite decades of research suggesting gender differences in social ties. We build on theoretical frames of constrained choice and gender-as-relational to argue that gender differences in isolation are apparent but depend on timing in the life course and marital/partnership history. Results indicate that boys/men are more isolated than girls/women through most of the life course, and this gender difference is much greater for the never married and those with disrupted relationship histories. Strikingly, levels of social isolation steadily increase from adolescence through later life for both men and women.
Social relationships—both quantity and quality—affect mental health, health behavior, physical health, and mortality risk. Sociologists have played a central role in establishing the link between ...social relationships and health outcomes, identifying explanations for this link, and discovering social variation (e.g., by gender and race) at the population level. Studies show that social relationships have short- and long-term effects on health, for better and for worse, and that these effects emerge in childhood and cascade throughout life to foster cumulative advantage or disadvantage in health. This article describes key research themes in the study of social relationships and health, and it highlights policy implications suggested by this research.
Sociological theory and research point to the importance of social relationships in affecting health behavior. This work tends to focus on specific stages of the life course, with a division between ...research on childhood/adolescent and adult populations. Yet recent advances demonstrate that early life course experiences shape health outcomes well into adulthood. We synthesize disparate bodies of research on social ties and health behavior throughout the life course, with attention to explaining how various social ties influence health behaviors at different life stages and how these processes accumulate and reverberate throughout the life course.
Dyadic coping, the process through which couples manage stress together, is important for relationship well-being. However, very few studies have considered dyadic coping and its link with marital ...quality in same-sex marriages. We analyze dyadic data from a sample of midlife same- and different-sex married couples (N = 838 individuals, 418 couples) to assess gender differences in various forms of dyadic coping (i.e., received and provided positive and negative dyadic coping as well as common/collaborative dyadic coping) and the associations of dyadic coping with marital quality. Results suggest that women married to women are more likely to receive positive support and less likely to receive negative support compared to women married to men. Both men and women in same-sex marriages are more likely to cope with stress collaboratively than their counterparts in different-sex marriages. All forms of dyadic coping are equally important for the marital quality of men and women in same- and different-sex marriages.
Marriage, Social Control, and Health Behavior Umberson, Debra; Donnelly, Rachel; Pollitt, Amanda M.
Journal of health and social behavior,
09/2018, Volume:
59, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Prior research based on studies of heterosexual populations suggests that men’s health benefits more from marriage than women’s, in part because women do more than men to influence the health habits ...of their spouse. We extend this work by using dyadic survey data from 838 spouses in 419 gay, lesbian, and heterosexual marriages to consider differences in social control tactics across same-sex and differentsex couples—that is, how spouses monitor and regulate each other’s health habits. Results suggest that although gender differences in social control are common, gendered patterns sometimes differ depending on whether one is in a same-sex or different-sex marriage. Results also point to the importance of health habits as strong drivers of relationship dynamics across gay and lesbian as well as heterosexual marriages.
Abstract
Objectives
Social integration (involvement with a diverse array of social ties) has been linked to positive outcomes including better physical health. Research has not investigated whether ...encounters with diverse social ties enhance individuals’ daily behaviors. The objectives of this study were to assess whether social ties connect individuals to more diverse daily behaviors, physical activity, and nonsedentary time as well as more positive mood.
Method
Older adults (aged 65+, n = 313) provided information about their 10 closest social ties. Then they completed ecological momentary assessment (EMA) surveys every 3 hr for 5–6 days where they reported on social encounters and behaviors. They also wore Actical accelerometers to objectively measure physical activity.
Results
Multilevel models revealed that encounters with a greater variety of social ties was associated with engaging in a greater variety of behaviors, more objectively measured physical activity, and a smaller proportion of time spent sedentary. Encounters with weak ties/peripheral social ties accounted for this increased activity (compared to being alone or with close friends or family). Moreover, involvement with diverse ties or diverse behaviors was associated with better mood.
Discussion
Findings are discussed in terms of social engagement theory, network diversity, and the benefits of weak ties.
This article reviews recent research (1999–2009) on the effects of parenthood on well‐being. We use a life course framework to consider how parenting and childlessness influence well‐being throughout ...the adult life course. We place particular emphasis on social contexts and how the impact of parenthood on well‐being depends on marital status, gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. We also consider how recent demographic shifts lead to new family arrangements that have implications for parenthood and well‐being. These include stepparenting, parenting of grandchildren, and childlessness across the life course.
To document short- and long-term trajectories of depressive symptoms following widowhood and to test whether these trajectories vary by gender and anticipatory spousal loss.
Eight waves of ...prospective panel data from the Health and Retirement Study, over a 14-year period, are used to evaluate gender differences in depressive symptoms following widowhood in late midlife. Short-term trajectories are modeled using a linear regression of change in Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) score on duration of widowhood. Long-term trajectories are modeled using a mixed-effects hierarchical linear model of CES-D scores over time.
We find no gender differences in bereavement effects on depressive symptoms in either short or long term, net of widowhood duration. When spousal death is anticipated, both men and women return to their prewidowhood levels of depressive symptoms within 24 months of becoming widowed. Across marital groups, the continuously married are better off compared with the widowed even prior to spousal loss, whereas early, long-term widowhood is associated with worse outcomes compared with late widowhood.
Although men and women do not differ in trajectories of depressive symptoms following widowhood, given similar circumstances, women are distinctly disadvantaged in that they are more likely to become widowed and under less favorable conditions.
Although the meanings and rates of being married, divorced, separated, never-married, and widowed have changed significantly over the past several decades, we know very little about historical trends ...in the relationship between marital status and health. Our analysis of pooled data from the National Health Interview Survey from 1972 to 2003 shows that the self-rated health of the never-married has improved over the past three decades. Moreover, the gap between the married and the never married has steadily converged over time for men but not for women. In contrast, the self-rated health of the widowed, divorced, and separated worsened over time relative to the married, and the adverse effects of marital dissolution have increased more for women than for men. Our findings highlight the importance of social change in shaping the impact of marital status on self-reported health and challenge long-held assumptions about gender, marital status, and health.
PDF
