Saturday, October 12, 2013

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of October 6, 2013

1. Happy Marriage May Depend on Your Genes, CBSNews
A UC Berkley and Northwestern University study found that people who have a certain gene variant, known as the HTTLPR allele, were more likely either to be extremely happy or extremely miserable in their relationships.

2. Janet Yellen’s Husband on Men, Marriage, and Fatherhood, National Review Online
In other words, men who get and stay married earn markedly more than unmarried men from similar backgrounds because marriage makes men work harder, more strategically, and with greater success.

3. How America's Marriage Crisis Makes Income Inequality So Much Worse, The Atlantic
In a strange twist, marriage has recently become a capstone for the privileged class. The decline of marriage, to the extent that we're seeing it, is happening almost exclusively among the poor.

4. What Do You Call the Person You Are Probably Never Going to Marry? Your Fiancé, Slate
But since many can’t afford that fancy wedding and don’t want to go “downtown”—a term women in the book use to describe a marriage on the cheap—they just stay engaged.

5. Married Cancer Patients Are More Likely to Survive, USA Today
Married people with cancer were 20% less likely to die from their disease, compared to people who are separated, divorced, widowed or never married, according to study published online Monday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

6. Marriage The Secret to Good Health, Study Finds, Telegraph
[T]he researchers concluded that couples who spoke of planning specific activities strengthen their marriage – such as so-called “date nights” – appeared not only to have stronger relationships but also better health on average.

7. Will Getting Divorced Make Me Ill?, The Guardian
A report in the Journal of Men's Health lays out the evidence that divorced men have more health problems than their married counterparts: more heart attacks, high blood pressure and strokes, more cancer and even colds.

For more, see here.

Monday, October 7, 2013

The M.Guy Tweet, Week of September 29, 2013

1. Gender and Parenthood: Biological and Social Scientific Perspectives, Columbia University Press
Contributors describe what happens to brains and bodies when women become mothers and men become fathers; whether the stakes are the same or different for each sex; . . .

2. Cohabitation and the Uneven Retreat from Marriage in the U.S., 1950-2010, EconPapers
Marriage is the commitment mechanism that supports high levels of investment in children and is hence more valuable for parents adopting a high-investment strategy for their children.

3. Baumgardner: Belief in Marriage is Key to Success, Times Free Press
The median length of marriage today is eight years. Three out of four people say that marriage isn’t about family, it’s about me.

4. Executive Summary: The World Family Map 2013, Child Trends
The inaugural World Family Map essay concludes by noting the anomaly of the increasing fragility of two-parent families in most middle- and high-income countries even as the evidence shows that such households give children a hand up in excelling educationally.

5. The Strongest Relationships, Maybe I Do: Modern Marriage and the Pursuit of Happiness
Couples who gratify each other’s sexual needs are 65 per cent more likely to be satisfied in their pairing than those who don’t, says a 2011 study in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy.

6. As the Middle Class Morphs, So Does the Idea of Marriage, Bridge
“If they weren’t able to save $5,000 for a wedding, they believed it was out of reach,” Smock said. “They talked about how marriage represented buying a house, basically having a lawn and picket fence. …They would say, ‘I don’t want to just go downtown or to the justice of the peace.'"

7. A Healthy Marriage, a Healthy Life? UNL Professor's Study Bolsters Connection, Omaha.com
The research seems to back up two other recent studies: one that showed married people are more likely to survive cancer, and another that indicated married people, both men and women, have better chances of surviving a heart attack and having a long, healthy life.

For more, see here.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013