Relationships and Health 393Why would the qualitative dimensions
of support be more strongly related to wom-
en’s than men’s health? One explanation is
that women’s identities are more strongly
tied than men’s identities to their connection
to others. Variability in an identity-relevant
domain is more likely to have implications
for health. It may also be that supportive
networks benefit women more than men
because they facilitate women’s coping with
distress. Women are more likely to seek sup-
port during times of stress; thus if others are
supportive, women’s needs are met.TAKE HOME POINTS
■ Women have more support available to them compared
to men, and women provide more support to others
than men.
■ Quantitative, or structural, measures of relationships
seem to have a stronger effect on men’s than women’s
health.
■ One reason for these findings is that relationships are a
double-edged sword for women—a source of support
and a source of stress.
■ Qualitative, or functional, measures of relationships may
have a stronger effect on women’s than men’s health.Effect of Marriage on Health
“I now pronounce you man and wife.”
Those are the words of the traditional mar-
riage ceremony. Historically, marriage for
women meant they became defined by their
relationship to their husband; marriage for
men meant they had someone to take care of
the home and the children. Today, however,
marriage may have a more similar meaning
for women and men: gaining a partner, asick days nine years later, whereas women
who provided more support than they re-
ceived had fewer sick days nine years later
(Vaananen et al., 2005).
Thus it appears that women are more
likely than men to reap the benefits of a so-
cial network but also to suffer the costs of
network involvement. Women are more
likely to have social support available but
also more likely to have problematic social
relations and conflict. The positive and nega-
tive effects of social networks for women
may cancel each other out in terms of health:
Supportive relations decrease depression, but
unsupportive relations and caregiver burden
increase depression.Functional Indices. Some evidence—but
not all—suggests the functional aspects of
support are more strongly related to health
among women than men. Support has been
more strongly related to better perceived
health and less functional disability (Denton &
Walters, 1999), good health practices (Jackson,
2006), and positive health perceptions (Cheng
& Chan, 2006) among women than men. A
study of opposite-sex dizygotic twins showed
that social support predicted a reduction in the
onset of major depression over the next year
among females but not males (Kendler et al.,
2005). By contrast, a study of people with heart
disease showed social support was equally re-
lated to life satisfaction and mood for women
and men (Rueda & Perez-Garcia, 2006), and a
study of elderly people in Japan showed that
social support was more strongly related to
positive health perceptions among men than
women (Okamoto & Tanaka, 2004). One way
that the effect of functional support on health
has been examined is in the context of stressor
reactivity studies. See Sidebar 11.1 for a discus-
sion of how support buffers one from labora-
tory stressors.M11_HELG0185_04_SE_C11.indd 393 6/21/11 12:43 PM