A new day has dawned, and with it another study of marriage misrepresented in the media. As always, the inaccuracies are in one direction only - implying that getting married results in better outcomes than it actually does. I've been at this for a while, and I have yet to find a media report that misrepresents findings in a way that makes singles look better than they actually are. (I don't even want that - I want accuracy.)
Here are some of the headlines that WERE published, supposedly as descriptions of the latest study of marriage:
• "Getting married - and staying married - is good for your health" (from Health Behavior News Service)
• "Lasting marriage linked to better health" (from Reuters)
• "Divorce hurts health even after remarriage" (from MSNBC.com)
• "Another reason to stay married" (from Newsweek)
Here are some of the headlines you did NOT see, that actually would be accurate descriptions of the results of the study:
1. People who have always been single are healthier than the previously married. (The advantage held for all four measures of health: number of chronic conditions, number of mobility limitations, self-rated health, and depression. Significance tests were not reported.)
2. People who have always been single have no more chronic health conditions than people who are currently married. (This is especially noteworthy because this is not a comparison of all people who stayed single with all people who had ever gotten married. Instead, it just compares the ever-single to those who are currently married. Anyone who got married, hated it - maybe even suffered poor health during marriage - and got divorced and stayed that way - is taken out of the married group. Do you see how this makes marriage look better than it really is?)
3. Women who have always been single report health that is just as good as women who got married and stayed married. (This comparison uses a married group that is even more selective. Single women - all of them - are compared NOT to all currently married women - a group that would include those who were previously divorced or widowed and got remarried - but just to those who married and stayed married. In the study, the continuously married represent just about 57% of all those who ever did marry. Of course, there is no comparable selection of just a particular subgroup of singles. Yet, even by this rigged comparison, the always-single women [though not the men] do just fine.)
4. Men who got married were LESS healthy the younger they married. (This was true even for those who got married and stayed married. What's especially noteworthy about this is that the authors pursued this analysis in their attempt to show that marriage is so good for you, that the more years you spend married, the healthier you will be. Surprise! The opposite was true, even for the most select group of men who got married and stayed married. Among those who married and then got divorced or widowed, the results still were not as the authors expected. Those who got married at a later age - both men and women - reported better overall health and fewer chronic conditions and mobility limitations than those who married at a younger age.)
Now consider this quote, taken directly from the original report: "Those who have married once and remained married are consistently, strongly, and broadly advantaged." Considering results #2 and #3 above, this statement simply cannot be true.
I'm making two points. One, the media got this study wrong. Two, the authors were not entirely accurate either. They report one set of findings in the tables depicting their results, then say something else about those findings when they get to the end of the article and want to sum up their findings. Perhaps it is worth noting that one of the authors is Linda Waite, co-author of "The Case for Marriage," a book with one misleading and inaccurate statement about marriage after another - as I documented in detail in Chapter 2 of Singled Out.
The Basics of the Study
The authors analyzed interview data from a national sample of 8,809 Americans between the ages of 51 and 61. They were interested not just in the participants' current marital status, but their history of staying single or married, or transitioning in or out of marriage. These are all plusses - it is a big study, a representative study, and the authors are looking at the details of marital status history, not just big blobs of current marital-status categories. Moreover, their study included not just one but four measures of health. (The study was longitudinal, but the authors only look at one-point in time, with all the resulting interpretive ambiguities.)
In their sample, some stayed single the entire time (close to 4%). Of those who ever married, about 22% got widowed or divorced and did not remarry (they are the previously married); and about 20% got remarried after their previous marriage ended; the others stayed married.
The authors wanted to show that the previously married would have worse health than the currently married - and they did. They also thought that more marital disruptions would mean worse health, but they found little evidence for that. They also found that those who divorced and then remarried had worse health than those who stayed married, but better health than those who divorced and stayed that way. (What is also evident from Table 3 is that those who stayed single did just as well or better than the remarried with regard to chronic health conditions and mobility limitations, though not the other two measures.)
What the Media Reports Got Wrong
Sadly, Newsweek's report of the study was the most egregious. Their headline was, "Another reason to stay married." Their tease was, "A new study shows that couples who split face health risks."
Reporters Barbara Kantrowitz and Pat Wingert use Governor Mark Sanford (he of Argentine soul-mate infamy) and Jon and Kate Gosselin as examples. The study, they claim, "suggests that the course the Sanfords are pursuing could ultimately work out better" because they are the ones who are trying to stay together.
In the original study, those who got married and chose to stay that way had better health than those who got divorced. What the reporters seem to be implying is that if only all those people who divorced had just stayed married, their health would be better. But that study shows nothing of the sort. Nor does it in any way suggest that the Sanfords will have better health if they stay together and the Gosselins will end up decrepit, depressed, and diseased if they stay split. The only way we could know whether divorce results in worse health than staying married would be to randomly assign people to divorce or to stay married - which of course, we can't do. We can, though, be accurate and honest in reporting and extrapolating from the studies we do conduct.
Think about the people who get to the point of considering divorce. High-profile quips to the contrary, divorce isn't something most people do offhandedly because they can't be bothered to stay together. There might be relentless infidelity, constant arguing and conflict, emotional abuse, maybe even drug or alcohol abuse or violence. It is irresponsible to suggest that if only all the married people would just stay married, they'd be healthier.
