A life course perspective has posited marital relationships as one of the most important relationships that define life context and in turn affect individuals’ well-being throughout adulthood (Umberson & Montez, 2010). Being married, especially happily married, is associated with better mental and physical health (Carr & Springer, 2010; Umberson, Williams, & Thomeer, 2013), and the strength of the marital effect on health is comparable to that of other traditional risk factors such as smoking and obesity (Sbarra, 2009). Although some studies emphasize the possibility of selection effects, suggesting that individuals in better health are more likely to be married (Lipowicz, 2014), most researchers emphasize two theoretical models to explain why marital relationships shape well-being: the marital resource model and the stress model (Waite & Gallager, 2000; Williams & Umberson, 2004). The marital resource model suggests that marriage promotes well-being through increased access to economic, social, and health-promoting resources (Rendall, Weden, Favreault, & Waldron, 2011; Umberson et al., 2013). The stress model suggests that negative aspects of marital relationships such as marital strain and marital dissolutions create stress and undermine well-being (Williams & Umberson, 2004), whereas positive aspects of marital relationships may prompt social support, enhance self-esteem, and promote healthier behaviors in general and in coping with stress (Reczek, Thomeer, et al., 2014; Symister & Friend, 2003; Waite & Gallager, 2000). Marital relationships also tend to become more salient with advancing age, as other social relationships such as those with family members, friends, and neighbors are often lost due to geographic relocation and death in the later part of the life course (Liu & Waite, 2014).
Married people, on average, enjoy better mental health, physical health, and longer life expectancy than divorced/separated, widowed, and never-married people (Hughes & Waite, 2009; Simon, 2002), although the health gap between the married and never married has decreased in the past few decades (Liu & Umberson, 2008). Moreover, marital links to well-being depend on the quality of the relationship; those in distressed marriages are more likely to report depressive symptoms and poorer health than those in happy marriages (Donoho, Crimmins, & Seeman, 2013; Liu & Waite, 2014; Umberson, Williams, Powers, Liu, & Needham, 2006), whereas a happy marriage may buffer the effects of stress via greater access to emotional support (Williams, 2003). A number of studies suggest that the negative aspects of close relationships have a stronger impact on well-being than the positive aspects of relationships (e.g., Rook, 2014), and past research shows that the impact of marital strain on health increases with advancing age (Liu & Waite, 2014; Umberson et al., 2006).
Prior studies suggest that marital transitions, either into or out of marriage, shape life context and affect well-being (Williams & Umberson, 2004). National longitudinal studies provide evidence that past experiences of divorce and widowhood are associated with increased risk of heart disease in later life especially among women, irrespective of current marital status (Zhang & Hayward, 2006), and longer duration of divorce or widowhood is associated with a greater number of chronic conditions and mobility limitations (Hughes & Waite, 2009; Lorenz, Wickrama, Conger, & Elder, 2006) but only short-term declines in mental health (Lee & Demaris, 2007). On the other hand, entry into marriages, especially first marriages, improves psychological well-being and decreases depression (Frech & Williams, 2007; Musick & Bumpass, 2012), although the benefits of remarriage may not be as large as those that accompany a first marriage (Hughes & Waite, 2009). Taken together, these studies show the importance of understanding the lifelong cumulative impact of marital status and marital transitions.
Gender Differences
Gender is a central focus of research on marital relationships and well-being and an important determinant of life course experiences (Bernard, 1972; Liu & Waite, 2014; Zhang & Hayward, 2006). A long-observed pattern is that men receive more physical health benefits from marriage than women, and women are more psychologically and physiologically vulnerable to marital stress than men (Kiecolt-Glaser & Newton, 2001; Revenson et al., 2016; Simon, 2002; Williams, 2004). Women tend to receive more financial benefits from their typically higher-earning male spouse than do men, but men generally receive more health promotion benefits such as emotional support and regulation of health behaviors from marriage than do women (Liu & Umberson, 2008; Liu & Waite, 2014). This is because within a traditional marriage, women tend to take more responsibility for maintaining social connections to family and friends, and are more likely to provide emotional support to their husband, whereas men are more likely to receive emotional support and enjoy the benefit of expanded social networks—all factors that may promote husbands’ health and well-being (Revenson et al., 2016).
However, there is mixed evidence regarding whether men’s or women’s well-being is more affected by marriage. On the one hand, a number of studies have documented that marital status differences in both mental and physical health are greater for men than women (Liu & Umberson, 2008; Sbarra, 2009). For example, Williams and Umberson (2004) found that men’s health improves more than women’s from entering marriage. On the other hand, a number of studies reveal stronger effects of marital strain on women’s health than men’s including more depressive symptoms, increases in cardiovascular health risk, and changes in hormones (Kiecolt-Glaser & Newton, 2001; Liu & Waite, 2014; Liu, Waite, & Shen, 2016). Yet, other studies found no gender differences in marriage and health links (e.g., Umberson et al., 2006). The mixed evidence regarding gender differences in the impact of marital relationships on well-being may be attributed to different study samples (e.g., with different age groups) and variations in measurements and methodologies. More research based on representative longitudinal samples is clearly warranted to contribute to this line of investigation.