Relationships may affect health years away
DALLAS – Whom you live with and whether you’re single, married, divorced or widowed can offer clues to your health decades later, studies suggest.
Research comparing the health and well-being of varied states of pairings and singledom suggests that living with aging parents or grandchildren takes a toll on adults’ health. And the research shows that any disruption to marriage, such as divorce or a spouse’s death, can have repercussions years later.
“Talk about a scar on people’s health,” sociologist Linda Waite of the University of Chicago told about 1,700 marital therapists, marriage educators and others at the ninth annual Smart Marriages conference. She says marriage’s benefits derive from social connection, risk sharing, specialization of household tasks and economies of scale.
Her analysis is an update of research published five years ago in her book “The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially.”
Divorce or widowhood creates stress, which is associated with chronic health problems, she says. Couples who live alone or with their own children have equal health advantages.
But couples or singles living with parents or grandkids show damaging effects on physical, emotional and cognitive health. She says researchers presume the stress of caregiving is responsible for the effects, but more research is needed.
But a happy remarriage offers about the same health benefits as an undisrupted one, she says.
Seattle researcher John Gottman also put a new twist on findings from his largely academic 2002 book, “The Mathematics of Marriage: Dynamic Nonlinear Models.” In it, Gottman outlines how, using interviews, videotapes, questionnaires and physiological monitoring, researchers can score and graph data according to mathematical models to predict whether couples will stay together or split up. Now the emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Washington is writing a new book “explaining his idea to the masses. “
“The research is based on seven studies of about 700 couples, including one study of 160 couples that has continued for more than 20 years. Another 12-year study is devoted to gay and lesbian couples.
The next step, which Gottman says he’ll release in the fall, is an at-home service for couples who are considering marriage. They’ll be able to make a videotape, fill out questionnaires and be interviewed via telephone so their relationships can be evaluated.
“We won’t say to them, ‘Don’t get married,’ but we will say, ‘According to our research, here are the strengths in the relationship and here are the areas that need improvement,’ ” he says.