The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier and Better Off Financially

Christian Century, Feb 21, 2001 by Don Browning, Kelly Brotzman, David Clairmont

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By Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher: Doubleday, 256 pp., $24.95.

RECENTLY Time magazine published a cover article titled "Who Needs a Husband?" It chronicled, if not celebrated, the trend of women "flying solo"--never getting married, and even learning to like their single state. The article reported that currently 40 percent of all adult females are single, up from 30 percent in 1960. In 1960, 83 percent of all women between 25 and 55 were married; today, that figure has dropped to 65 percent. Are women panicked by such statistics? Apparently not the women interviewed by Time.

These women say that they are enjoying their space, their freedom, their ability "to be themselves," their money, their travels, their friends and, indeed, sex with some of those friends. Many still want to marry, but only if the right man comes along. The Time article makes it seem that the majority of single women are living the life depicted in Sex and the City, HBO's hit series about single women in the fast lane. The article's portrait of single life is consistent with the recent report on singles from the Rutgers University National Marriage Project called "Sex without Strings, Relationships without Rings." The Time essay quotes Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, one of the report's authors: "The reality is that marriage is now the interlude and singlehood the state of affairs."

Of all the reasons it gives for why women are marrying less, Time does not include one of the most common--the belief, popularized 30 years ago by sociologist Jessie Bernard, that marriage is a bad deal for women. And it turns out this is one of those social science Factoids that is being contradicted by new research, including that presented by sociologist Linda Waite and journalist Maggie Gallagher.

Waite broke ground on this subject in her 1995 presidential address before the Population Association of America, when she argued that marriage pays off in big ways. Married people live longer, are healthier, have fewer heart attacks and other diseases, have fewer problems with alcohol, behave in less risky ways, have more sex--and more satisfying sex--and become much more wealthy than single people. There was one exception to this rosy picture: cohabiting couples do have more frequent sex. But they enjoy it less.

And single women--how do they fare? Not as well as Time implies. When one examines the big picture and the large data sets that sociologists love to analyze, married women come out far ahead of women who have never married or who are divorced. True, marriage is still slightly better for men than for women, but it is a much better deal for women than Jessie Bernard led people to believe.

Waite and Gallagher's book is neither theological nor philosophical. It never defines marriage or traces its origins and development in Western society and thought. This is a book about data--lots of it--on the consequences of marriage.

Take health: mortality rates are 50 percent higher for unmarried women and 250 percent higher for unmarried men than they are for married women and men. Married surgical patients are less likely to die than the unmarried. Of men matched in every respect except marital status, nine out of ten married men who were alive at age 48 made it to 65; only six out often bachelors lived to the usual retirement age. Nine out of ten married women alive at age 45 made it to 65, while only eight of ten unmarried women did.

The selection effect--that is, the likelihood that healthier people get married and less healthy people don't--explains some of the difference, but not all. According to Waite and Gallagher, the evidence shows that married people start practicing healthier lifestyles after they marry. "Researchers find that the married have lower death rates, even after taking initial health status into account. Even sick people who marry live longer than their counterparts who don't." Marriage is also better for your health because married people take more responsibility for one another even than those who cohabit. They nag each other more, remind their partners of appointments and take care of each other when sick. Marriage also generally reduces stress and boosts the immune system.

What about sex? Many people believe that marriage dampens the sex life, and for some it doubtless does. But most married couples have much better sex and more of it than singles. According to a University of Chicago National Sex Survey, 43 percent of married men reported having sex at least twice a week, while only 1.26 percent of single men not cohabiting had sex that often. Single men were 20 times more likely to be celibate than married men. Familiarity does not dampen sexual ardor; indeed, Waite and Gallagher argue that marriage facilitates sexual activity. Sex is easier for married couples. Any single "act of sex costs them less in time, money and psychic energy. For the married, sex is more likely to happen because it is so easy to arrange and so compatible with the rest of their day to day life."