Here are 2 news articles. One is saying that married couples live longer and healthier.
Another article is saying women are happier and healthier without being being married and having kids.
There are 2 sides to every story.
Feb. 24, 2017 "Looking to married couples for longer- and healthier-living": Today I found this article by Lisa Rapaport in the Globe and Mail:
Married couples may be healthier than single, divorced or widowed adults, at least in part because they have lower levels of a stress hormone associated with a variety of medical problems, a recent study suggests.
Previous research has linked marriage to a longer life and other health benefits, which could be because of the relationship itself or to other factors such as higher household income, better medical insurance or improved access to care.
The current study, however, offers fresh insight into another possible benefit of marriage: less stress.
For the study, researchers tested levels of cortisol, a hormone released under stress, in 572 healthy men and women aged 21 to 55. They found married individuals consistently had lower cortisol levels than people who never married or who were previously married.
“Our findings provide new and important initial insights into how our most intimate social relationships can ‘get under the skin’ to impact physical health,” said lead study author Brian Chin, a psychology researcher at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
“We aren’t able to draw any strong conclusions from our study about exactly how this happens, but we are able to make some educated guesses based on earlier research,” Chin added by e-mail.
It’s possible, for example, that married people might have better access to care than single individuals because they have good health insurance through a spouse or more funds available to pay for care, Chin said.
Being married might also help encourage people to stick to a healthier lifestyle or avoid behaviours that can lead to illness such as smoking or excessive drinking.
To assess stress levels based on marital status, Chin and colleagues collected multiple cortisol samples throughout the day from each participant on three separate days.
The 292 people who never married were younger, averaging around 29 years old, compared with about 37 years old for the 160 married individuals in the study and an average age of 40 for the 56 adults who were previously married.
In addition to looking at overall cortisol levels, researchers also analyzed fluctuations in participants’ cortisol levels during the course of a day.
Typically, cortisol levels peak when a person wakes up and decline as the day progresses, the study team writes in Psychoneuroendocrinology.
Married people in the study had faster drops in cortisol levels during the day, a pattern that’s associated with health benefits including a lower risk of heart disease and longer survival among cancer patients, researchers note.
Differences in cortisol during the day between married and unmarried people were not because of variations in participants’ starting levels of cortisol at the beginning of the day.
Instead, it appeared that married people had a more rapidly accelerating decline in cortisol during the afternoons than people who were never married, though not individuals who had been previously married.
Married people might have lower cortisol levels and steeper declines in the hormone during the day because they’re more satisfied with their relationships and lack the kind of stress that’s associated with being in a poor relationship or being unmarried, the authors speculate.
However, the researchers note that some previous studies have not found a relationship between marital quality and changes in cortisol levels over the course of a day.
The current study isn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove how marriage influences cortisol or stress levels or to assess any related health benefits, the researchers add.
“This study is exciting because we know being married is associated with better health but we don’t know why this association occurs,” said Kira Birditt, a researcher at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor who wasn’t involved in the study.
“Cortisol is a measure of stress response and may provide interesting insights into how relationships affect health,” Birditt added by e-mail.
“Unfortunately, this study did not include assessments of daily stress exposure or daily social interactions to understand if these associations may be accounted for by variations in the daily lived experiences of married versus unmarried individuals.”
Jun. 1, 2019 "Women Are Healthier And Happier Without A Spouse Or Kids: Expert": Today I found this article by Charmaine Noronha on Yahoo news:
Unmarried and childless? Congratulations! You might just be among the happier, healthier population, according to a behavioural and happiness expert. That is, if you identify as a woman.
Paul Dolan, professor of behavioural science at the London School of Economics, told the Hay Festival on Saturday that women who decided against walking down the aisle are the happiest. They are also more likely to live longer than their married and child-rearing peers.
“Married people are happier than other population subgroups, but only when their spouse is in the room when they’re asked how happy they are,” he said, according to the Guardian.
“When the spouse is not present: f***ing miserable.”
Dang, that’s some real talk.
Most of us have been raised with the idea that getting married and having children is the somewhat expected path in life, especially for women who are often fed a social narrative about the factors that lead to happiness.
However, according to Dolan, it’s women who have the most to lose getting hitched.
“We do have some good longitudinal data following the same people over time, but I am going to do a massive disservice to that science and just say: if you’re a man, you should probably get married; if you’re a woman, don’t bother.”
He draws his evidence from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), which compared levels of pleasure and misery in unmarried, married, divorced, separated and widowed individuals.
Dolan’s assertions align with those of expert Elyakim Kislev, a research fellow and assistant professor at Hebrew University in Israel and author of Happy Singlehood: The Rising Acceptance and Celebration of Solo Living.
Kislev previously told HuffPost Canada there are many benefits to being single including not finding yourself in an unhappy marriage because you felt pressured to get married.
As well, single folks are among the most educated after co-habitants when compared to married people and divorced people.
“There is a huge misconception that being alone and lonely are the same,” he said.
And expert Bella dePaulo said at the 2016 American Psychological Association’s 124th annual conference that single people may have more robust social lives and experience greater psychological growth than some married people, according to a 2016 article in the Guardian.
The researcher presented data showing that single people are more connected with family and friends, whereas married couples tended to spend the most time with each other, the Guardian reported.
She also found that highly self-sufficient single people were less likely to experience negative emotions.
However stress and difficulty were actually tied to self-sufficient married people.
So in spite of all of these findings, why might single folks find themselves unhappy?
Because of that age-old narrative that marriage and children were signs of success, said Dolan.
“You see a single woman of 40, who has never had children – 'Bless, that’s a shame, isn’t it?
Maybe one day you’ll meet the right guy and that’ll change.'
No, maybe she’ll meet the wrong guy and that’ll change.
Maybe she’ll meet a guy who makes her less happy and healthy, and die sooner."
Well, there you go. Dolan does not mess around with words.
- 4 days ago
Don't stop there, men too. Oh, if I only had it to do over again. The biggest change, never would have married ever. - 4 hours ago
Being married and having children requires maturity, acceptance, selflessness which a lot of people don’t have anymore and above all love in action always and you will never regret the day you married or the day you had children and truly live a more fulfilling life which is even greater then just a happier life. - 5 hours ago
- 4 days ago
Why is it then most woman who have no partner of any kind are lonely? Getting drunk with girlfriends may be all well and good occasionally but not all the time. Don't want kids don't to have them and do not want to have a partner then don't. Most people I have met that are single are not all that happy! Depends on the person I guess. But the day I believe anything Puffpost has to say will be the day I jump off a cliff.
My opinion: If you want want to be happy, you have to marry the right person. If you want to have friends, you have to find the right people.
I have read that if you have a toxic person in your life, he or she can bring you down. I have experienced that.
I have to say Homer Simpson from The Simpsons said it the best:
Homer: Being a dad is just a job. Long hours, no pay, and at the end, someone tells you "You screwed me up."
"We're on the Road to D'ohwhere":
"When Homer is on his way to Vegas to meet up with his friends, he has to make a detour to take Bart to an education camp. Meanwhile, Marge has discovered a surprising source of income."
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