Sociological theory and research point to the importance of social relationships in affecting health behavior. This work tends to focus on specific stages of the life course, with a division between research on childhood/adolescent and adult populations. Yet recent advances demonstrate that early life course experiences shape health outcomes well into adulthood. We synthesize disparate bodies of research on social ties and health behavior throughout the life course, with attention to explaining how various social ties influence health behaviors at different life stages and how these processes accumulate and reverberate throughout the life course.

This article reviews recent research (1999 - 2009) on the effects of parenthood on wellbeing. We use a life course framework to consider how parenting and childlessness influence well-being throughout the adult life course. We place particular emphasis on social contexts and how the impact of parenthood on well-being depends on marital status, gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. We also consider how recent demographic shifts lead to new family arrangements that have implications for parenthood and well-being. These include stepparenting, parenting of grandchildren, and childlessness across the life course.

Many studies focus on health behavior within the context of intimate ties. However, this literature is limited by reliance on gender socialization theory and a focus on straight (i.e., heterosexual) marriage. We extend this work with an analysis of relationship dynamics around health behavior in 20 long-term straight marriages as well as 15 gay and 15 lesbian long-term cohabiting partnerships in the United States (N = 100 individual in-depth interviews). We develop the concept of "health behavior work" to align activities done to promote health behavior with theories on unpaid work in the home. Respondents in all couple types describe specialized health behavior work, wherein one partner works to shape the other partner's health behavior. In straight couples, women perform the bulk of specialized health behavior work. Most gay and lesbian respondents-but few straight respondents--also describe cooperative health behavior work, wherein partners mutually influence one another's health behaviors. Findings suggest that the gendered relational context of an intimate partnership shapes the dynamics of and explanations for health behavior work.

Scholars call for greater attention to social contexts that promote and deter risk factors for health. Parenthood transforms social contexts in a myriad of ways that may influence long-term patterns of weight gain. Life course features of parenthood such as age at first birth, parity, and living with a minor child may further influence weight gain. Moreover, the social and biological features of parenthood vary in systematic ways for women and men, raising questions about how social contexts might differentially affect weight patterns by gender. We consider how parenthood influences trajectories of change in body weight over a fifteen year period (from 1986 to 2001) with growth curve analysis of data from the Americans' Changing Lives Survey, conducted with adults aged 24 and older in the contiguous United States (N = 3617). Findings suggest that parents gain weight more rapidly than the childless throughout the study period and that this weight gain occurs for both men and women. Men and women who have their first child earlier or later than about age 27 have accelerated weight gain, living with a minor child is associated with heavier weight for men than women, and parity is associated with greater weight gain for women than men. We conclude that parenthood contributes to a long term, cumulative process of weight gain for American women and men but life course factors that accelerate this process may differ by gender.

A legacy of research finds that marriage is associated with good health. Yet same-sex cohabitors cannot marry in most states in the United States and therefore may not receive the health benefits associated with marriage. We use pooled data from the 1997 to 2009 National Health Interview Surveys to compare the self-rated health of same-sex cohabiting men (n = 1,659) and same-sex cohabiting women (n = 1,634) with that of their different-sex married, different-sex cohabiting, and unpartnered divorced, widowed, and never-married counterparts. Results from logistic regression models show that same-sex cohabitors report poorer health than their different-sex married counterparts at the same levels of socioeconomic status. Additionally, same-sex cohabitors report better health than their different-sex cohabiting and single counterparts, but these differences are fully explained by socioeconomic status. Without their socioeconomic advantages, same-sex cohabitors would report similar health to nonmarried groups. Analyses further reveal important racial-ethnic and gender variations.

Health habits are linked to nearly half of U.S. and British deaths annually. While a legacy of research suggests that marriage has important positive consequences for health habits, recent work emphasizes that intimate ties can also deter from healthy habits and promote unhealthy habits. However, few studies examine the mechanisms through which unhealthy habits are promoted in marriage. Moreover, little research explores how unhealthy habits are promoted in intimate ties other than marriage-such as in gay and lesbian cohabiting relationships. The present study analyzes the mechanisms through which gay, lesbian, and straight long-term partners (N = 120) contribute to one another's unhealthy habits. Three distinct mechanisms emerge. First, respondents identify a process of unilateral health habit diffusion wherein one partner's health habits directly influence the other partners' habits. Second, respondents describe bilateral unhealthy habit diffusion, wherein both partner's unhealthy habits are reinforced via mutual pleasure seeking or mutual failed motivation. Third, respondents describe a discourse of personal responsibility, wherein both partners purposefully fail to deter one another's unhealthy habits. Analysis further illustrates how these mechanisms operate differently for men and women in gay, lesbian, and straight relationships.

The majority of Americans will marry in their lifetimes, and for many, marriage symbolizes the transition into long-term commitment. However, many Americans cannot legally marry. This article analyzes in-depth interviews with gays and lesbians in long-term partnerships to examine union formation and commitment-making histories. Using a life course perspective that emphasizes historical and biographical contexts, the authors examine how couples conceptualize and form committed relationships despite being denied the right to marry. Although previous studies suggest that commitment ceremonies are a way to form same-sex unions, this study finds that because of their unique social, historical, and biographical relationship to marriage and ceremonies, long-term same-sex couples do not follow normative commitment-making trajectories. Instead, relationships can transition more ambiguously to committed formations without marriage, public ceremony, clear-cut act, or decision. Such an understanding of commitment making outside of marriage has implications for theorizing alternative forms of union making.

We develop a gendered marital biography approach-which emphasizes the accumulating gendered experiences of singlehood, marriage, marital dissolution, and remarriage-to examine the relationship between marital statuses and transitions and heavy alcohol use. We test this approach using individual-level (n = 10,457) and couple-level (n = 2,170) longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study, and individual-level (n = 46) and couple-level (n = 42) in-depth interview data. Quantitative results show that marriage, including remarriage, reduces men's but increases women's drinking relative to being never married and previously married, whereas divorce increases men's but decrease women's drinking, with some variation by age. Our qualitative findings reveal that social control and convergence processes underlie quantitative results. We call attention to how men's and women's heavy drinking trajectories stop, start, and change direction as individuals move through their distinctive marital biography.

Family researchers have long recognized the utility of incorporating interview data from multiple family members. Yet, relatively few contemporary scholars utilize such an approach due to methodological underdevelopment. This article contributes to family scholarship by providing a roadmap for developing and executing in-depth interview studies that include more than one family member. Specifically, it outlines the epistemological frames that most commonly underlie this approach, illustrates thematic research questions that it best addresses, and critically reviews the best methodological practices of conducting research with this approach. The three most common approaches are addressed in depth: separate interviews with each family member, dyadic or group interviews with multiple family members, and a combined approach that uses separate and dyadic or group interviews. This article speaks to family scholars who are at the beginning stages of their research project but are unsure of the best qualitative approach to answer a given research question.

Cigarette smoking has long been a target of public health intervention because it substantially contributes to morbidity and mortality. Individuals in different-sex marriages have lower smoking risk (i.e., prevalence and frequency) than different-sex cohabiters. However, little is known about the smoking risk of individuals in same-sex cohabiting unions. We compare the smoking risk of individuals in different-sex marriages, same-sex cohabiting unions, and different-sex cohabiting unions using pooled cross-sectional data from the 1997-2010 National Health Interview Surveys (N = 168,514). We further examine the role of socioeconomic status (SES) and psychological distress in the relationship between union status and smoking. Estimates from multinomial logistic regression models reveal that same-sex and different-sex cohabiters experience similar smoking risk when compared to one another, and higher smoking risk when compared to the different-sex married. Results suggest that SES and psychological distress factors cannot fully explain smoking differences between the different-sex married and same-sex and different-sex cohabiting groups. Moreover, without same-sex cohabiter's education advantage, same-sex cohabiters would experience even greater smoking risk relative to the different-sex married. Policy recommendations to reduce smoking disparities among same-sex and different-sex cohabiters are discussed.

The provision and receipt of emotion work-defined as intentional activities done to promote another's emotional well-being-are central dimensions of marriage. However, emotion work in response to physical health problems is a largely unexplored, yet likely important, aspect of the marital experience. We analyze dyadic in-depth interviews with husbands and wives in 21 mid- to later-life couples to examine the ways that health-impaired people and their spouses provide, interpret, and explain emotion work. Because physical health problems, emotion work, and marital dynamics are gendered, we consider how these processes differ for women and men. We find that wives provide emotion work regardless of their own health status. Husbands provide emotion work less consistently, typically only when the husbands see themselves as their wife's primary source of stability or when the husbands view their marriage as balanced. Notions of traditional masculinity preclude some husbands from providing emotion work even when their wife is health-impaired. This study articulates emotion work around physical health problems as one factor that sustains and exacerbates gender inequalities in marriage with implications for emotional and physical well-being.

The present study advances research on union status and health by providing a first look at alcohol use differentials among different-sex and same-sex married and cohabiting individuals using nationally representative population-based data (National Health Interview Surveys 1997-2011, N = 181,581). The results showed that both same-sex and different-sex married groups reported lower alcohol use than both same-sex and different-sex cohabiting groups. The results further revealed that same-sex and different-sex married individuals reported similar levels of alcohol use, whereas same-sex and different-sex cohabiting individuals reported similar levels of alcohol use. Drawing on marital advantage and minority stress approaches, the findings suggest that it is cohabitation status-not same-sex status-that is associated with elevated alcohol rates.

OBJECTIVE

Despite the demonstrated importance of intergenerational ties across the life course, few studies examine relationships between gay men and lesbians and their later life parents and parents-in-law. The present study examines how midlife to later life gay men and lesbians in intimate partnerships conceptualize these intergenerational ties.

METHODS

Qualitative analysis of 50 in-depth interviews collected with midlife to later life gay men and lesbians (ages 40-72) in long-term intimate partnerships.

RESULTS

Findings reveal 4 central ways respondents describe supportive parent-child and parent-child in-law relationships: integration, inclusion through language, social support, and affirmations. Findings reveal 3 central ways individuals distinguish strained parent-child and parent-child in-law relationships: rejection in everyday life, traumatic events, and the threat of being usurped. Findings further articulate how intergenerational ambivalence is distinguished through descriptions of a parent as simultaneously supportive (via subthemes of solidarity) and rejecting (via subthemes of strain).

CONCLUSIONS

Findings from this study provide empirical evidence of how support, strain, and ambivalence in intergenerational ties are identified and experienced by gay men and lesbian women. This study reveals a new lens to view relationships between midlife to later life adults and their aging parents and parents-in-law and further identifies linkages between solidarity-conflict and ambivalence paradigms.

Previous work on social control-the direct and indirect regulation of an individual's health behaviors by others-suggests that parent-child relationships promote healthy diet and exercise. Yet parenthood is associated with less healthy diet and exercise patterns. The authors investigated this paradox by examining social control processes in 40 in-depth interviews with mothers and fathers. They found that parenthood involves social control processes that both promote and compromise healthy behavior, contributing to contradictory perceived effects of parenthood on health behavior. Moreover, the dynamics of social control appear to unfold in different ways for mothers and fathers and depend on the child's gender and life stage, suggesting that gender and age dyads are central to understanding the seemingly contradictory consequences of parenthood at the population level. These articulations of gendered social control processes provide new insight into the consequences of the gendered organization of parenthood for diet and exercise.

We used logistic regression on nationally representative data (General Social Survey, N = 10,668 and N = 6680) to examine how sexual minority status related to happiness. We considered two central dimensions of sexual minority status-sexual behavior and sexual identity. We distinguished between same-sex, both-sex, and different-sex-oriented participants. Because individuals transition between sexual behavior categories over the life course (e.g., from both-sex partners to only same-sex partners) and changes in sexual minority status have theoretical associations with well-being, we also tested the associations of transitions with happiness. Results showed that identifying as bisexual, gay, or lesbian, having both male and female partners since age 18, or transitioning to only different-sex partners was negatively related to happiness. Those with only same-sex partners since age 18 or in the past 5 years had similar levels of happiness as those with only different-sex partners since age 18. Additional tests showed that the majority of these happiness differences became non-significant when economic and social resources were included, indicating that the lower happiness was a product of structural and societal forces. Our findings clearly and robustly underscored the importance of taking a multi-faceted approach to understanding sexuality and well-being, demonstrating that not all sexual minority groups experience disadvantaged happiness. Our study calls for more attention to positive aspects of well-being such as happiness in examinations of sexual minorities and suggests that positive psychology and other happiness subfields should consider the role of sexual minority status in shaping happiness.

We work from a life-course perspective to explore how relationships with parents affect adult children's marital quality. We further ask whether the effects of parents on adult children's marital quality depend on the adult child's gender, age, marital duration, and childhood family experiences. Growth-curve analysis of national, longitudinal data (Americans' Changing Lives) indicated that relationships with fathers (n = 336) and mothers (n = 520) differentially affected the marital quality of adult children over time. Findings suggest that the effects of the parent - adult child relationship on adult children's marriages depend on age, marital duration, and levels of family stress experienced in childhood.

A growing body of research suggests that maternal exposure to discrimination helps to explain racial disparities in children's health. However, no study has considered if the intergenerational health effects of unfair treatment operate in the opposite direction-from child to mother. To this end, we use data from mother-child pairs in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 to determine whether adolescent and young adult children's experiences of discrimination influence their mother's health across midlife. We find that children who report more frequent instances of discrimination have mothers whose self-rated health declines more rapidly between ages 40 and 50 years. Furthermore, racial disparities in exposure to discrimination among children explains almost 10% of the black-white gap but little of the Hispanic-white gap in self-rated health among these mothers. We conclude that the negative health impacts of discrimination are likely to operate in a bidirectional fashion across key family relationships.

Two key components of end-of-life planning are (1) informal discussions about future care and other end-of-life preferences and (2) formal planning via living wills and other legal documents. We leverage previous work on the institutional aspects of marriage and on sexual-minority discrimination to theorize why and how heterosexual, gay, and lesbian married couples engage in informal and formal end-of-life planning. We analyze qualitative dyadic in-depth interviews with 45 midlife gay, lesbian, and heterosexual married couples ( N = 90 spouses). Findings suggest that same-sex spouses devote considerable attention to informal planning conversations and formal end-of-life plans, while heterosexual spouses report minimal formal or informal planning. The primary reasons same-sex spouses give for making end-of-life preparations are related to the absence of legal protections and concerns about discrimination from families. These findings raise questions about future end-of-life planning for same- and different-sex couples given a rapidly shifting legal and social landscape.

Research on intimate relationship dynamics around depression has primarily focused on heterosexual couples. This body of work shows that wives are more likely than husbands to offer support to a depressed spouse. Moreover, when wives are depressed, they are more likely than husbands to try and shield their spouse from the stress of their own depression. Yet, previous research has not examined depression and relationship dynamics in gay and lesbian couples. We analyze in-depth interviews with 26 gay and lesbian couples (N = 52 individuals) in which one or both partners reported depression. We find evidence that dominant gender scripts are both upheld and challenged within gay and lesbian couples, providing important insight into how gender operates in relation to depression within same-sex contexts. Our results indicate that most gay and lesbian partners offer support to a depressed partner, yet lesbian couples tend to follow a unique pattern in that they provide support both as the non-depressed and depressed partner. Support around depression is sometimes viewed as improving the relationship, but if the support is intensive or rejected, it is often viewed as contributing to relationship strain. Support is also sometimes withdrawn by the non-depressed partner because of caregiver exhaustion or the perception that the support is unhelpful. This study points to the importance of considering depression within gay and lesbian relational contexts, revealing new ways support sustains and strains intimate partnerships. We emphasize the usefulness of deploying couple-level approaches to better understand depression in sexual minority populations.

UNASSIGNED

We consider emotion- and instrumental-focused care work and marital stress during significant physical health events in midlife gay, lesbian, and heterosexual marriages.

UNASSIGNED

We employ the factorial method, an extension of the actor-partner interdependence model, to analyze survey data from 808 midlife gay, lesbian, and heterosexual spouses in 404 unions.

UNASSIGNED

The amount of emotion- and instrumental-focused care work provided during physical health events, and the associations between care work and marital stress, depends on the gender of the respondent, gender of the spouse, and whether spouses are in a same-sex or different-sex union. For example, in both same- and different-sex marriages, women report providing more emotion-focused care work during their own health event than do men, and respondents report more health-related marital stress when the patient is a woman.

UNASSIGNED

Investigating how midlife same-sex and different-sex spouses care for each other during a spouse's health event expands understandings of gendered aging experiences within marriage. Findings can elucidate health policies and clinical strategies that best support the health of men and women in same- and different-sex marriages.

It is well established that married heterosexual women do more intergenerational caregiving for aging parents and parents-in-law than married heterosexual men do. However, gay men and lesbian women's recent access to marriage presents new questions about the gendered marital dynamics of intergenerational caregiving. We use dyadic data with gay, lesbian, and heterosexual spouses to examine the marital dynamics of intergenerational caregivers. Results show that gay and lesbian spouses provided intensive time and emotional support for an intergenerational caregiver. In contrast, heterosexual women described their intergenerational caregiving as rarely supported and at times even undermined by their spouse. Dyadic data on heterosexual men corroborate women's accounts; heterosexual men rarely reported providing intergenerational caregiving, and thus heterosexual women rarely described providing spousal support. These findings provide new insight into the intermingled roles of "greedy" marriages and "needy" parents, wherein marital negotiations around caregiving vary by gender for gay, lesbian, and heterosexual marital dyads.

There is a well-established relationship between union status and health within the general population, and growing evidence of an association between sexual identity and well-being. Yet, what is unknown is whether union status stratifies health outcomes across sexual identity categories. In order to elucidate this question, we analyzed nationally representative population-based data from the National Health Interview Surveys 2013-2014 (N = 53,135) to examine variation in self-rated health by sexual partnership status (i.e., by sexual identity across union status). We further test the role of socioeconomic status and gender in these associations. Results from logistic regression models show that union status stratifies self-rated health across gay, lesbian, and heterosexual populations, albeit in different ways for men and women. Socioeconomic status does not play a major role in accounting for these differences. Findings highlight the need for specific interventions with lesbian women, who appear to experience the most strident disadvantage across union status categories.

Intergenerational ambivalence-the simultaneous presence of both positive and negative dimensions of a parent-child tie-is a concept widely used in family studies. Scholars have clarified the measurement of psychological ambivalence, or an individual's own feelings of ambivalence towards others. Yet research has yet to demonstrate whether-and, if so, how-individuals characterize others as ambivalent. Moreover, relatively little is known about ambivalence in gay and lesbian families. In the present study 60 in-depth interviews were analyzed to identify what the author calls perceived ambivalence in the parent, sibling, extended kin, and "in-law" relationships of gay and lesbian adults. Perceived ambivalence is revealed through gay and lesbian adults' characterizations of family members' simultaneous positive and negative overt and covert beliefs and behavior. In addition, the author refines the concept of collective ambivalence, wherein perceived ambivalence typifies an entire family unit. The findings further revealed the importance of broader sociological factors, such as homophobia, in structuring perceived ambivalence.