For those who did not read the article, the gold is at the end:
Another, perhaps more important change would be for our cultural and economic elite, who are disproportionately likely to be stably married, to preach what they practice—to not only enjoy the benefits of marriage in their private lives but also to advocate for them in public.
This is the problem in today's society. You cannot preach good values, because somebody is going to get offended. It is important that all lifestyles are tolerated. But at the same time as a society it is important to instill good values in the next generation, values that will keep them healthy, happy and productive. And the problem is, those values are going to offend someone for sure.
I come from a south Asian immigrant family in the US. Nearly every single person I know in my extended cohort of immigrants followed the script (because we were socialized to do so): we studied hard in school, pursued financially lucrative majors, eschewed dating at an early age, got married in our 20s, and had kids. My brother is having his first kid at 31–and my dad and I were frankly getting pretty antsy. And for every single one of us that followed the script it paid off, including those whose parents came here without white collar jobs.
And of course none of us talk about that in public because we want to seem illiberal to our educated white American friends. For a long time I reconciled myself to that cognitive dissonance. But my wife is American, from a deep blue state. And it’s been eye opening to watch the aftermath of the 1960s social revolution on Americans outside the economic elite. It seems like everybody’s parents are divorced. They hang around any stable family they can find. Nobody is willing to guide their kids: they’re supposed to “discover themselves” on their own. The parents are too scared to impose values: this is what we expect, this is what constitutes a good life, this is what your purpose and function and role is. It’s a mess. If American culture has been this way 200 years ago we would be living in a third world country.
Where I live is extremely left-leaning and wealthy, and there is intense hate for charters and educational reform of any kind. Yet nearly all the public schools are awful (barring a few exam schools, which these same people are trying to eliminate the exams for!) and everyone with money puts their kids in private school.
"Marriage doesn't matter" -> Everyone is married, one of the parents is usually stay-at-home
"We support the poor" -> Does everything in their power to ban multi-unit housing and density increases
It's incredible the ability for someone to hold one virtue in their head and live the exact opposite without any moral doubts.
There are trade offs to either. Your “good values” probably work out well for the majority, and are very punishing to some minority.
Mormons have strict social rules that work well a lot of the time, but hurt people who fall outside the majority. They have abnormally high average happiness compared to other groups in the US, but they also have an abnormally high suicide rate.
Eventually, almost everyone figures out for themselves what makes them happy and what doesn't. Moreover, there are plenty of unmarried people who aren't against marriage, who indeed want to get married, but their life circumstances haven't resulted in marriage, for various reasons. They don't need preachers.
Oh? How stably married has the owner of the Wall Street Journal been? As far as I know, the opinion arm of his TV network is all in favor of monogamy, at least in cases where its ideological adversaries aren't practicing it.
This article is about women, but I believe the same relationship is seen (perhaps even more strongly) in men.
My cynical view is that healthier people are more likely to attract spouses - in other words, that causality runs in the other direction than the commentaries usually imply.
"Our study’s sample population—mostly white and relatively well-off professional women deciding about marriage in the early 1990s—does limit the conclusions we can draw from it with confidence. For instance, our all-female sample cannot tell us anything about the effects of marriage on men. More rigorous work in this area is needed, since prior research indicates that marriage promotes men’s longevity and health even more strongly than women’s."
Earlier this year I was curious if I could live life as a single male for the rest of my life in a capitalistic Western society that tends to frame many issues from a partisan-listic perspective.
I'm no sociologist and did not apply any critical analysis to these works, but most of the literature and surveys I found on this topic suggested that men fare worse than women on health outcomes when it comes to marital/romantic singlehood. The speculative cause was that these women possessed deeper friendships than those men, who tended to be more isolated, especially in later stages of life.
Modern society is like a conjurer who whacks your heirloom rolex with a mallet for a trick. When all that remains is a pile of cogs, broken glass and twisted metal, it suddenly dawns on him.... he's forgotten the end of the trick.
Modernity: let's smash everything. What can possibly go wrong?
It's a nice image, but there's no unsmashing that watch. You can decry the destruction of tradition, but good luck re-instituting it, those traditions developed in a different world, for example the extended families living together (to take care of children and the elderly) broke up as young people moved to where work was (and various institutions took over child- and eldercare, with varying degrees of success). I think it's too easy to say that pre-modern societies were automatically happier, they were more predictable, but certainly had plenty of people who didn't have a great time. The real question for us now is how do we want to go forward, not why can't we go back.
I know that middle-brow dismissals are frowned upon but I want to write this anyway: I will never believe these types of studies without either a control group or better measuring of confounding variables. Health & happiness and marriage both have giant confounding variables like meeting a great partner and being a good partner. The authors claim that they accounted for this but I don't see how. The study is here[1].
> an unmeasured confounder would need to be associated with both incident marriage and mortality by risk ratios of 2.45 each, above and beyond the measured covariates, to fully explain away the observed association between marriage and mortality.
I may be interpreting that incorrectly and would appreciate corrections but why is it so unreasonable that meeting a great partner and having kids and thus wanting to strive to be healthier happier person would decrease all-cause mortality by a factor of 2.45 over someone who hadn't accomplished those things?
Because that was the cohort studied, not because the opposite is true for men only. As it says in the article previous studies indicate the effects may be even greater for men.
Personally, I've lived what is pretty close to the highlight of single life (dating on NYC, traveling to 20-30 countries a year, etc) and now am a boring but super happy suburban dad of 2 (and hoping for more) - you don't think someone like me can offer an insight on what works and why?
I can't read the article because of the paywall. But I have to say, when I was single several years ago, my happiness was maybe a 4-5 on a scale of 1-10. I used to feel lonely all the time. Right now I'm married and expecting our first child, and I'd rate it a 7-8 (depending on my mood). Some of that is from being more financially secure though.
I'd guess that in general, some financial security comes from a stable relationship: a shared living environment, efficiencies of scale with things like shopping/cooking, car ownership potentially, utilities from heating/cooling, common cause on other fronts.
Having kids have brought me more happiness and more pain than anything else I have ever done. Using you scale, if I was 5-7 when single and 6-8 when married with no kids, having kids changed it to 2-10.
"We also have to be cautious in generalizing across generations. The Gen-Xers in our sample were deciding for or against marriage in a different cultural setting than young adults today. In the past 30 years, for instance, norms against extramarital cohabitation have relaxed considerably."
Given that the study only concerned women during a time period where stigma was even worse than it still is I find it hard to draw any conclusions from this.
Choosing a more conventional lifestyle, regardless of what you as an individual genuinely want often takes so much pressure from you that it's hard to discern whether it is you or others who are happy about your decisions. I know a lot of women my age, early 30s, who do not want to marry or have kids but who still feel pressured by their parents. And that social pressure is enough to make them feel guilty or miserable.
I think there's a difference between "success" as a consequence of reaping social rewards because you do what is expected of you and genuine individual freedom.
> I know a lot of women my age, early 30s, who do not want to marry or have kids but who still feel pressured by their parents. And that social pressure is enough to make them feel guilty or miserable.
Or they feel like failures because they are failures in a biological sense, and they know it deep down due to their biological brain wiring, but they blame their guilt on their parents and society.
I think there is a lot of societal pressure to get married/be in a relationship. As such, I think it would be pretty hard to claim that the benefits of marriage are separate from the benefits of not fighting societal pressures in your day-to-day.
Or if you could prove that, I think it would be an interesting study.
That doesn't make sense. As a male new yorker I faced zero societal pressure to do basically anything traditional.
I am happy as a married dude because my life has infinite more meaning and impact when I am being a husband and a father, versus whatever I was up to before.
Do relationships matter? Yes, of course. We're social beings.
That said, and not to get off topic, my theory is we'll eventual discover that there is a gut microbiome component to couples living longer than singles. For much the same reason studies say people with pets live longer. Yes, there's the emotional companionship (that impacts the physical) but there is also the exposure to another's bacteria.
Again, just a theory. But the more I read about "the gut" the more important and influential it's becoming.
*based on readings, often here on HN, I'm not a medical professional
A cursory google search suggests that cohabitating couples converge on the same gut biome among various other things like good habits but also bad habits.
The paper also points out that because of all the concordances, couples tend to share the same downfalls, not just the good things: disease risks, bad diet, bad sleep, emotional turmoil.
Yeah. We increasingly want to believe that there exists a viable substitute for everything, that we can have it all.
For example, there are clear health benefits associated with long term relationships and marriage. Some antisocial people would like to believe that that doesn't matter because they can replicate these benefits if only they eat clean, exercise, abstain from alcohol, etc. Well, turns out, there are health benefits to LTRs that cannot be replicated otherwise. Your theory is one possibility. But simply eating clean, working out, getting a lot of sleep, drinking water, and having clean bills of health and good blood tests isn't enough. You will still die earlier than someone who's not single. You won't have the discipline to maintain this lifestyle until the end of your life.
But you can't enjoy the benefits of singlehood and the benefits of LTRs at the same time. This is controversial. But you can't have it all. You can't optimize your life for everything at the same time. We're disgusted at the idea that we may have to pay a cost or sacrifice something. In this case, sacrificing the freedom of choice and the flexibility that comes with singlehood for the health benefits of LTRs. But no. We want the freedom of choice, the flexibility, and the benefits of LTRs.
Similarly, you can't become rich quickly without taking an incredible amount of risk that will in all probability leave you worse off. Other than luck, the true and tried path to long term wealth is to grind for decades at a job or a profession that brings money. Being a doctor, or a FAANG SWE, or starting a business. This all takes hard work and patience. But some people would rather try their hand at get rich quick schemes with cryptocurrency, options trading, or other scams. Very few succeed. That's luck. Most fail.
> there is a gut microbiome component to couples living longer than singles.
Fascinating hypothesis. I wouldn't be surprised that shared diet, living space and activity leads to a converging of gut bacteria. But how would this lead to health and happiness?
Look I don't think that "hookup culture" is the future, but it is practically speaking impossible to expect women to be full-time employed AND have time to be homemakers. And yet the productivity of our modern economy is based on women's place in the labor market. There are absolutely emotional and psychological benefits of having a committed partner, but how often do marriages end in divorce, how often are people just putting up with each other, and how much sexual frustration and violence on account of it has been generated by socially enforced monogamy? I don't see why we can't aspire to building a better society where women aren't competing tooth and nail for the men who are fighting tooth and nail for the best social status?
A truly free society would not be one that is either polyamorous or monogamous but one where the fulfillment of sexual needs is considered a social necessity just like the fulfillment of any other physical need and is addressed as a social problem. Women would participate co-operatively with men in both the social labor of sex and of child-rearing, and their would be no need for the strict delineations which create the social contradictions we have today.
> Women would participate co-operatively with men in both the social labor of sex and of child-rearing, and their would be no need for the strict delineations which create the social contradictions we have today.
I don't even know what that means. People are forced to have sex and rear children?
Isn’t this really just because married partners can share health care? /jk
But really, I’d like to see more attention to how many of these effects are due to the ways in which marriages are legally recognized and respected in ways that other monogamous long term relationships are not.
I’d also like to know why, if LIBERALS HATE MARRIAGE so much, they spent decades fighting for the right to gay marriage?
The only part of marriage that bothers me is not about marriage itself, but how it is codified into legislation and being married can have significant financial implications
> Isn’t this really just because married partners can share health care?
j/k not needed: being single can be an adversely selected by poor health - or other things that can cause poor health, such as drug addictions and poverty.
[+] [-] neonate|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] numbers_guy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|3 years ago|reply
And of course none of us talk about that in public because we want to seem illiberal to our educated white American friends. For a long time I reconciled myself to that cognitive dissonance. But my wife is American, from a deep blue state. And it’s been eye opening to watch the aftermath of the 1960s social revolution on Americans outside the economic elite. It seems like everybody’s parents are divorced. They hang around any stable family they can find. Nobody is willing to guide their kids: they’re supposed to “discover themselves” on their own. The parents are too scared to impose values: this is what we expect, this is what constitutes a good life, this is what your purpose and function and role is. It’s a mess. If American culture has been this way 200 years ago we would be living in a third world country.
[+] [-] monero-xmr|3 years ago|reply
"Marriage doesn't matter" -> Everyone is married, one of the parents is usually stay-at-home
"We support the poor" -> Does everything in their power to ban multi-unit housing and density increases
It's incredible the ability for someone to hold one virtue in their head and live the exact opposite without any moral doubts.
[+] [-] jjj123|3 years ago|reply
Mormons have strict social rules that work well a lot of the time, but hurt people who fall outside the majority. They have abnormally high average happiness compared to other groups in the US, but they also have an abnormally high suicide rate.
[+] [-] lapcat|3 years ago|reply
Eventually, almost everyone figures out for themselves what makes them happy and what doesn't. Moreover, there are plenty of unmarried people who aren't against marriage, who indeed want to get married, but their life circumstances haven't resulted in marriage, for various reasons. They don't need preachers.
[+] [-] cafard|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nathan_compton|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kar5pt|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway8127|3 years ago|reply
My cynical view is that healthier people are more likely to attract spouses - in other words, that causality runs in the other direction than the commentaries usually imply.
[+] [-] guiambros|3 years ago|reply
"Our study’s sample population—mostly white and relatively well-off professional women deciding about marriage in the early 1990s—does limit the conclusions we can draw from it with confidence. For instance, our all-female sample cannot tell us anything about the effects of marriage on men. More rigorous work in this area is needed, since prior research indicates that marriage promotes men’s longevity and health even more strongly than women’s."
[+] [-] _gmax0|3 years ago|reply
I'm no sociologist and did not apply any critical analysis to these works, but most of the literature and surveys I found on this topic suggested that men fare worse than women on health outcomes when it comes to marital/romantic singlehood. The speculative cause was that these women possessed deeper friendships than those men, who tended to be more isolated, especially in later stages of life.
[+] [-] realjhol|3 years ago|reply
Modernity: let's smash everything. What can possibly go wrong?
[+] [-] blacksmith_tb|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xyzelement|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Atheros|3 years ago|reply
> an unmeasured confounder would need to be associated with both incident marriage and mortality by risk ratios of 2.45 each, above and beyond the measured covariates, to fully explain away the observed association between marriage and mortality.
I may be interpreting that incorrectly and would appreciate corrections but why is it so unreasonable that meeting a great partner and having kids and thus wanting to strive to be healthier happier person would decrease all-cause mortality by a factor of 2.45 over someone who hadn't accomplished those things?
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259011332...
[+] [-] snvzz|3 years ago|reply
For Women, specifically.
This is very important and omitted from the HN headline.
[+] [-] doitLP|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ra1231963|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xyzelement|3 years ago|reply
Personally, I've lived what is pretty close to the highlight of single life (dating on NYC, traveling to 20-30 countries a year, etc) and now am a boring but super happy suburban dad of 2 (and hoping for more) - you don't think someone like me can offer an insight on what works and why?
[+] [-] neilv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] worrycue|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tlogan|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jfowief|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m-watson|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xyzzy4747|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prawn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dagw|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Barrin92|3 years ago|reply
Given that the study only concerned women during a time period where stigma was even worse than it still is I find it hard to draw any conclusions from this.
Choosing a more conventional lifestyle, regardless of what you as an individual genuinely want often takes so much pressure from you that it's hard to discern whether it is you or others who are happy about your decisions. I know a lot of women my age, early 30s, who do not want to marry or have kids but who still feel pressured by their parents. And that social pressure is enough to make them feel guilty or miserable.
I think there's a difference between "success" as a consequence of reaping social rewards because you do what is expected of you and genuine individual freedom.
[+] [-] jfowief|3 years ago|reply
Or they feel like failures because they are failures in a biological sense, and they know it deep down due to their biological brain wiring, but they blame their guilt on their parents and society.
[+] [-] xracy|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xyzelement|3 years ago|reply
I am happy as a married dude because my life has infinite more meaning and impact when I am being a husband and a father, versus whatever I was up to before.
[+] [-] chiefalchemist|3 years ago|reply
That said, and not to get off topic, my theory is we'll eventual discover that there is a gut microbiome component to couples living longer than singles. For much the same reason studies say people with pets live longer. Yes, there's the emotional companionship (that impacts the physical) but there is also the exposure to another's bacteria.
Again, just a theory. But the more I read about "the gut" the more important and influential it's becoming.
*based on readings, often here on HN, I'm not a medical professional
[+] [-] hombre_fatal|3 years ago|reply
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6458105/
The paper also points out that because of all the concordances, couples tend to share the same downfalls, not just the good things: disease risks, bad diet, bad sleep, emotional turmoil.
Seems to defeat your theory.
[+] [-] GalenErso|3 years ago|reply
For example, there are clear health benefits associated with long term relationships and marriage. Some antisocial people would like to believe that that doesn't matter because they can replicate these benefits if only they eat clean, exercise, abstain from alcohol, etc. Well, turns out, there are health benefits to LTRs that cannot be replicated otherwise. Your theory is one possibility. But simply eating clean, working out, getting a lot of sleep, drinking water, and having clean bills of health and good blood tests isn't enough. You will still die earlier than someone who's not single. You won't have the discipline to maintain this lifestyle until the end of your life.
But you can't enjoy the benefits of singlehood and the benefits of LTRs at the same time. This is controversial. But you can't have it all. You can't optimize your life for everything at the same time. We're disgusted at the idea that we may have to pay a cost or sacrifice something. In this case, sacrificing the freedom of choice and the flexibility that comes with singlehood for the health benefits of LTRs. But no. We want the freedom of choice, the flexibility, and the benefits of LTRs.
Similarly, you can't become rich quickly without taking an incredible amount of risk that will in all probability leave you worse off. Other than luck, the true and tried path to long term wealth is to grind for decades at a job or a profession that brings money. Being a doctor, or a FAANG SWE, or starting a business. This all takes hard work and patience. But some people would rather try their hand at get rich quick schemes with cryptocurrency, options trading, or other scams. Very few succeed. That's luck. Most fail.
[+] [-] testfoobar|3 years ago|reply
Fascinating hypothesis. I wouldn't be surprised that shared diet, living space and activity leads to a converging of gut bacteria. But how would this lead to health and happiness?
[+] [-] DiscourseFan|3 years ago|reply
A truly free society would not be one that is either polyamorous or monogamous but one where the fulfillment of sexual needs is considered a social necessity just like the fulfillment of any other physical need and is addressed as a social problem. Women would participate co-operatively with men in both the social labor of sex and of child-rearing, and their would be no need for the strict delineations which create the social contradictions we have today.
[+] [-] jfowief|3 years ago|reply
I don't even know what that means. People are forced to have sex and rear children?
[+] [-] JoeJonathan|3 years ago|reply
But really, I’d like to see more attention to how many of these effects are due to the ways in which marriages are legally recognized and respected in ways that other monogamous long term relationships are not.
I’d also like to know why, if LIBERALS HATE MARRIAGE so much, they spent decades fighting for the right to gay marriage?
[+] [-] klysm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sangnoir|3 years ago|reply
j/k not needed: being single can be an adversely selected by poor health - or other things that can cause poor health, such as drug addictions and poverty.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] smitty1e|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]