Marriage

Marriage linked to lower risk for dementia, mild cognitive impairment

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Marriage was associated with a lower risk for dementia and mild cognitive impairment in later life, researchers reported in the Journal of Aging and Health.

“Earlier studies suggest that being married in later life protects against dementia, and that being single in old age increases the risk of dementia. We examine midlife marital status trajectories and their association with dementia and mild cognitive impairment,” Vegard Skirbekk, PhD, of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, and colleagues wrote.

Couple holding hands
Marriage was associated with a lower risk for dementia and mild cognitive impairment in later life.Source: Adobe Stock

Skirbekk and colleagues evaluated six different marriage trajectories – unmarried, continuously divorced, intermittently divorced, widowed, continuously married and intermittently married – using multinomial logistic regression. They said they looked at marital status in the 4th to 6th decades of life “as opposed to a one-time ‘snapshot’ of marital status” as well as clinical dementia and mild cognitive impairment status after age 70 years.

Study participants were garnered through a general population sample that was linked to population registries (n = 8,706). The authors estimated relative risk ratios (RRR) and then used mediation analyses, which were adjusted for education, number of children, smoking, hypertension, obesity, physical inactivity, diabetes, mental distress, as well as having no friends in midlife.

According to the authors, 11.6% of all subjects were diagnosed with dementia, while 35.3% were diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment. They found the highest prevalence of dementia among the unmarried (14.1%) and the lowest among the continuously married (11.2%).

In addition, dementia prevalence was higher for those unmarried (RRR = 1.73; 95% CI, 1.24-2.4), continuously divorced (RRR = 1.66; 95% CI, 1.14-2.43) and intermittently divorced (RRR = 1.5; 95% CI, 1.09-2.06), compared with those who were continuously married, the researchers wrote.

According to a counterfactual scenario the authors created, in which all participants had the same risk of receiving a dementia diagnosis as those who were continuously married, there would be 6% fewer dementia cases overall, they wrote.

“Our study draws further attention to marital histories as a predictor of later-life cognitive impairment and the potential mediating roles of having children, health and social risk factors,” Skirbekk and colleagues wrote. “Information on the link between marital status and later-life cognition could be useful for individuals as they consider the benefits and costs of different family forms, although we highlight that our results do not allow us to identify causal effects.”

A temporary marriage makes more sense than marriage for life.

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https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/a-temporary-marriage-makes-more-sense-than-marriage-for-life/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1653099658

Marriage Has Become a Trophy

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A wedding is no longer the first step into adulthood that it once was, but, often, the last.

The decline of marriage is upon us. Or, at least, that’s what the zeitgeist would have us believe. In 2010, when Time magazine and the Pew Research Center famously asked Americans whether they thought marriage was becoming obsolete, 39 percent said yes. That was up from 28 percent when Time asked the question in 1978. Also, since 2010, the Census Bureau has reported that married couples have made up less than half of all households; in 1950 they made up 78 percent. Data such as these have led to much collective handwringing about the fate of the embattled institution.

An illustration of husband and wife figurines on a cake, with a stroller, graduation caps, and a mailbox full of money

But there is one statistical tidbit that flies in the face of this conventional wisdom: A clear majority of same-sex couples who are living together are now married. Same-sex marriage was illegal in every state until Massachusetts legalized it in 2004, and it did not become legal nationwide until the Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015. Two years after that decision, 61 percent of same-sex couples who were sharing a household were married, according to a set of surveys by Gallup. That’s a high take-up rate: Just because same-sex couples are able to marry doesn’t mean that they have to; and yet large numbers have seized the opportunity. (That’s compared with 89 percent of different-sex couples.)

The move toward marriage has not been driven by young gay and lesbian couples rushing to the altar. In both the year before and the year after Obergefell, only one out of seven people whom the Census Bureau classified as in a same-sex marriage was age 30 or younger, according to calculations I’ve done based on the bureau’s American Community Survey. In fact, half of them were age 50 or older. The only way that could have happened, given that same-sex marriage has been legal for less than 15 years, is if large numbers of older same-sex couples who had been together for many years took advantage of the new laws. In other words, changes in state and federal laws seem to have spurred a backlog of committed, medium- to long-term couples to marry.

Why would they choose to do so after living, presumably happily, as cohabiting unmarried partners? In part, they may have married to take advantage of the legal rights and benefits of married couples, such as the ability to submit a joint federal tax return. But the legal issues, important as they are, appear secondary. In a 2013 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 84 percent of LGBT individuals said that “love” was a very important reason to marry, and 71 percent said “companionship” was very important, compared to 46 percent who said that “legal rights and benefits” are very important.

Yet the emphasis on love and companionship is not enough to explain the same-sex marriage boom. Without doubt, most of the middle-aged same-sex couples who have married of late already had love and companionship—otherwise they would not have still been together. So why marry now? Marriage became for them a public marker of their successful union, providing them the opportunity to display their love and companionship to family and friends. One reason, of course, was the desire to claim a right so long denied, but that only further underlines the way in which marriage today signals to the wider community the success of a long-standing relationship.

In this sense, these gay couples were falling right in line with the broader American pattern right now: For many people, regardless of sexual orientation, a wedding is no longer the first step into adulthood that it once was, but, often, the last. It is a celebration of all that two people have already done, unlike a traditional wedding, which was a celebration of what a couple would do in the future.

Consistent with this shift in meaning, different-sex couples, like the many of the same-sex couples who have married recently, are starting their marriages later in their lives. According to the Census Bureau, the median age at first marriage—the age at which half of all marriages occur—was 27.4 for women and 29.5 for men in 2017. That’s higher than at any time since the Census began keeping records in 1890. It is six years higher than when I got married in 1972 (at the typical age of 24). In my era, a young couple usually got married first, then moved in together, then started their adult roles as workers or homemakers, and then had children. (I scandalized my parents by living with my future wife before I married her.) Now marriage tends to come after most of these markers are attained.

The main distinction in marriage patterns today is between Americans who have attained at least a bachelor’s degree and those with less education. The college-educated are more likely to eventually marry, even though they may take longer to get around to it. In addition, nearly nine out of 10 wait until after they marry to have children, whereas a majority of those without college educations have a first child before they marry. Rates of divorce have been dropping across the board since about 1980, but the drop has been steeper for the college-educated. In the mid-20th century, people’s educational level had less impact on when, whether, and for how long they married. Today, marriage is a much more central part of family life among the college educated.

Nevertheless, the last-step view of marriage is common across all educational groups in United States. And it is being carried to the nth degree in Scandinavia. In Norway and Sweden, a majority of the population marries, but weddings often take place long after a couple starts to have children, or even after all of their children are born. The median age at first marriage in Norway is an astounding 39 for men and 38 for women, according to a recent estimate—six to eight years higher than the median age at first childbirth. In Sweden, one study found that 17 percent of all marriages had occurred after the couple had had two children. Why do they even bother to marry at such a late stage of their unions? Norwegians told researchers that they view marriage as a way to demonstrate love and commitment and to celebrate with relatives and friends the family they have constructed. This is capstone marriage: The wedding is the last brick put in place to finally complete the building of the family.

Americans have tended to rank marriage as more important than Europeans do for as long as there have been Americans. The transatlantic difference extends back to the Calvinist settlers who believed in the exalted place of marriage found in Martin Luther’s theology. And the difference has persisted: Between 2005 and 2009, the World Values Survey asked samples of people in various Western countries whether they agreed with the statement, “Marriage is an outdated institution.” Just 12.6 percent of Americans agreed, which is smaller than the proportion who agreed in any of the Western European nations surveyed, including heavily Catholic Italy (where 18.1 percent agreed) and Spain (31.6 percent).

Justice Anthony Kennedy reflected this high American regard for marriage when he wrote for the majority of the Court in Obergefell, “Rising from the most basic human needs, marriage is essential to our most profound hopes and aspirations.” Although many on the cultural and political left applauded the Court’s decision, Kennedy’s language was quite traditionalist. In fact, plenty of Americans view marriage as, at best, one of many lifestyle choices and, at worst, a deeply flawed heterosexual institution that should be transcended. Some go as far as to argue that families headed by married couples should be replaced by networks of friends and past and present romantic partners.

The alternative visions are far from replacing marriage. It is an open question, however, how much longer marriage will continue to dominate American family life. According to the General Social Survey, a national survey of Americans conducted every other year, the percentage of Americans who agreed with the statement, “It is alright for a couple to live together without intending to get married,” increased from 41 percent in 1994 to 57 percent in 2012, the last time the question was asked. Moreover, the material foundations of marriage have weakened. America is well past the heyday of the farm family in which a husband and wife united in labor and raised children to help work the land. Marriage seems to operate best today for parents who pool two incomes and invest heavily in their children’s development. Yet these investments could be made by parents in long-term cohabiting relationships. The dominance of marriage may simply be due to what the sociologist William Ogburn called “cultural lag”: the tendency of attitudes and values to change more slowly than the material conditions that underlie them.

There may soon be a slowdown in the proportion of same-sex couples who choose to marry. Sometime soon, the backlog of same-sex couples wishing to marry will be depleted. At that point, marriage rates among same-sex couples will depend largely on what younger people in recently formed relationships do. Many of them may do the same things that younger different-sex couples are doing: live together in cohabiting relationships, postpone marriage, and ultimately choose marriage less frequently than their parents’ generation did. If that happens, the rate of same-sex marriage will slow. But it will surely persist—more, to be sure, as a common last step into adulthood than as a first.

How I’m Surviving My Threeway Marriage: Me, My Husband, and My Depression

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You don’t get rid of mental illness through communication. You don’t get rid of it at all.

When I was 26 years old, I almost killed myself. It was at once both impulsive and entirely thought out — a decision that, if I’m being honest, had been a long time in the making. I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety at 23, right after I got married, but looking back, I can see signs that extend back to my teens. In my mind, killing myself was a tidy solution to a never-ending sadness. It seemed like a way to help Matt, my husband, who was mired in a marriage in which he’d once spent Valentine’s Day trying desperately to help me off the couch and out of an interminable crying jag.

Thanks to some lingering last-minute doubts and a mercifully quick-thinking friend who figured out that I wasn’t OK, I ended up in a psychiatric ward, and I stayed there for a week. I know now that being there saved my life. But while finally getting real help felt beyond relieving, it didn’t quite feel that way for Matt. That’s because, in an attempt to protect him, I’d kept my suicidal thoughts a secret. Until I was hospitalized, he’d had no idea.

THE TRUTH IS THAT YOU DON’T GET RID OF MENTAL ILLNESS AT ALL.

When I left the hospital, still alive and equipped with a new regimen of antidepressants and regular appointments with my therapist, Matt and I decided that our only choice was to start over. We moved to a new house in a new town and practiced saying all the things we’d learned to say, like, “I’m feeling really anxious” and “Don’t worry, I’m here for you”. We high-fived each other over our newfound relationship awesomeness and felt like we’d dodged all the bullets. But the truth is that you don’t get rid of mental illness through communication skills and extra high-fives. The truth is that you don’t get rid of mental illness at all. It stays with you like a third person in your marriage, and you both have to agree to cater to its needs.

When winter came that year, I began longing for my bed. Bed has always been my depression gateway drug, sucking me in so that the sadness can take hold. It wasn’t long before I found myself pulling the covers over my head each morning as Matt dressed for work, no longer bothering to pretend like I wasn’t fully intending on going straight back to bed as soon as he left. I was desperate to hide from the feelings of numbness and dread I had to contend with whenever I was awake. I toyed with the idea of admitting what was happening just like I promised I would, but I didn’t. Once again, it started to feel easier just to keep it to myself.

But while I was quickly sliding back into my old habits, Matt had somehow found a better way to shake my fog. On one particularly rough day, I had spent hours hiding out in our bedroom, binge-reading a blog I’d found about an American expat in Finland. The more I read, the more my depressed mind began thinking that life seemed so much better there. And by the time Matt got home that night, I’d convinced myself that my misery wasn’t actually about depression at all. It was just that we didn’t live in a magical place like Finland where everyone was happier than we were.

“You need to get up,” Matt said, after he walked into our room and saw me in the same pajamas I’d been wearing when he left that morning. His face was tense with worry and frustration. “You can’t stay in bed like this. It’s not good for you.”

“We should move to Finland,” I blurted out. Of all the things he may have expected me to say in reply, I’m sure that certainly wasn’t one of them.

I tried to simultaneously explain myself and sell him on the idea. “I mean, I just think we live in the wrong place. We’re doing all the stuff you’re supposed to do, we’re trying so hard, and we’re still miserable. Let’s move to Finland. It would be an adventure.”

My abrupt suggestion hung in the air for a moment, before he sighed, exasperated. “Alana, we’re not going to sell our house and move to Finland. We have a life here. We can’t just throw that away.”

I didn’t expect him to take my request seriously, yet I could feel my irrational, inner depression voice bubbling up to the surface. He doesn’t get it, the voice said. If he cared about your happiness, he’d say yes. Tears quickly welled in my eyes.

“Why don’t you understand that living here is killing me?” I fired back. I could see his face tightening, wanting to scream at me while also trying to be there for me.

The sight of his frustration unnerved me, because in the past I knew Matt would have immediately surrendered. He would have seen that I was depressed and overreacting, and would have opted to give up quickly and wait for it to blow over. Fighting my irrational thinking didn’t seem worthwhile to his logic-driven mind. But this time he understood that what he actually needed to do was stand up for us.

“You’re struggling. I get that,” he said, slowly. “I know you’re getting worse and I want to help you, but when you talk like this I don’t even know what to say.”

It surprised me to hear him admit it. Most often, we had let my illness be the elephant in the room, neither of us wanting to speak about it. But this time, he kept talking.

“I hate that this is a thing that happens to you. I hate that your brain makes you want to hide in bed all day. I hate that you don’t want to tell me when it happens, and I hate that you think you wouldn’t still feel this way if we moved to Finland. But this isn’t you. This is just the stuff you say when you’re depressed. The things your brain says are not true. You need to realize that.”

MY STAY IN THE PSYCH WARD FORCED ME TO LET HIM IN, BUT I HADN’T YET LET HIM STAND BY MY SIDE.

My first instinct was to scoff at his completely sane response. I didn’t want to hear him confirm my worst fears about what was happening: that once again I was really not OK.

Thankfully though, the real meaning of his words hit me next. I saw that he wasn’t trying to say that I was a burden. He was actually saying that depression was the burden — and more importantly that it was our burden. I let my illness tell me that my marriage couldn’t hold under the weight of my struggles. But just as my depression is not who I am, it’s also not my responsibility to fix single-handedly. The deal we’d made was that we’d face life together. And while my stay in the psych ward may have forced me to let him in, I still had yet to give him the opportunity to stand by my side.

Matt and I saw my doctor together again, and after having my medication adjusted, I began in time to feel the haze lifting. We both breathed a sigh of relief as our lives began to resemble something that felt normal, yet we also knew this wouldn’t be the end.

We don’t have it even close to all figured out (who does?), but what we do have is the knowledge that we’re in it together. We’ve kept depression from dividing us, even though that’s an active, constant struggle. Ours might not be the marriage I dreamed of pre-diagnosis, but it’s somehow more glorious, more beautiful, more frustrating, and so much more alive than I ever imagined. And that’s not at all depressing.

Why Chinese Couples Are Divorcing Before Buying a Home.

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Long queues of happy couples waiting to get married might be a common sight in Las Vegas. But lines of happily married couples waiting to get divorced? Only in China.

In major cities across the country last month, thousands of couples rushed to their local divorce registry office to dissolve their marriages in order to benefit from fast-expiring tax breaks on property investments for unmarried individuals. Local media reported long waits at registries in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and elsewhere as savvy investors sought to buy or sell a second home before the government introduced strict new regulations that would force married homeowners to pay hefty taxes on the sale of second properties.

The new regulations are designed to cool speculation in China’s feverish property market and are part of a package of measures that would require couples to pay up to 20% capital gains tax on the sale of second homes. But for determined investors, nothing gets in the way of a good bargain, and some quickly noticed that the 20% impost didn’t apply if the second home was bought before the couple were married — or after they got divorced.

China’s marriage law allows for divorce if couples simply sign an agreement to divorce, present themselves at the registry office and pay a fee of just $1.50. Weighed against the prospect of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars of profit from property investments, many couples are deciding the $1.50 charge is worth it.

According to media reports, in March the number of couples getting divorced in Tianjin, a large city on the eastern seaboard, soared to 300 per day — more than triple the normal amount. In Beijing, too, realtors reported a boom in divorcing couples seeking out new houses. “Half of the deals I made last month were cases where the couples were getting divorced,” a Mr. Jin, who works as an agent at one of the biggest realtors in Beijing, tells TIME. “These were all young couples between 25 and 35 years old, and all of them were looking to buy another house as an investment.”

As an emerging middle class accumulates wealth, more and more young families are finding that they have limited options to make good use of their money. With overseas investment options closed off by complex regulatory barriers, banks offering measly interest-rate returns on deposits and the stock markets on a never ending losing streak, there aren’t many attractive investment choices.

Some choose to invest in gold and other precious metals. Indeed, when gold prices fell sharply last week, shops in mainland China and Hong Kong quickly reported stock shortages and empty shelves. But China’s savvy purchasers have long had an affinity for putting their money into bricks and mortar, not least because property prices in most cities have soared over the past decade and continue to rise sharply.

With a seemingly endless supply of money flowing into the country’s property sector, and prices on a constant upward trajectory, regulators have long been worried about the frothy market giving rise to major property bubbles, especially in the most populous cities like Beijing and Shanghai. But it seems that canny investors are quick to spot ways around the cooling measures, hence the new vogue for divorce.

It’s not only profiteers who are choosing the divorce route. Many couples who simply want to trade up from their current home have realized that they can save tens of thousands of dollars by splitting up before making their next purchase. According to media reports, one couple in the southern city of Guangzhou, who already owned two apartments, saved $32,000 by getting divorced and selling one of their houses before buying another.

The divorce solution is extreme but it’s the kind of solution to which China’s put-upon middle classes have become accustomed. Civil-servant couples, for example, are subject to a particularly strict version of the one-child policy that would require them to give up their jobs if they had a second child. Some have decided to circumvent those rules by getting divorced and having a second child out of wedlock, registered under either parent’s name as a “first” child.

Of course, the country’s regulators have also taken notice of the long queues outside divorce registries and have acted to put a stop to the practice. In recent weeks, the government revised its regulations to increase the taxes payable by unmarried individuals selling a secondhand property, effectively cutting the most speculative investors out of the market.

Others, though, are still happy to break the knot, if only because they need not stay divorced for long. Realtor Jin advises his clients who are considering the process that they can be back in happy matrimonial bliss within as little as three weeks. “If you pay the full price in cash up front, the whole transaction can be completed in as little as 10 days — and even if you’re taking out a mortgage, it only takes about six weeks,” Jin says. “Once that’s done, you can go and get remarried right away.”

Source: time.com

 
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