Relationships and Health 399depressed than men who lived with someone
else, typically a spouse, was due to a lack of
social support (Russell & Taylor, 2009). There
were fewer differences in support between
women who lived alone and women who lived
with someone else because women have ac-
cess to support from other network members.
However, observational studies of mari-
tal interactions and daily diary studies in which
men and women record their behavior on a
more momentary basis seem to show that men
and women are equally likely to provide their
spouses with social support (Neff & Karney,
2005). Yet all support is not the same. Women
may provide more effective support than men.
Neff and Karney’s study showed that men and
women provided the same amount of support,
but women’s support was better timed than
men’s. At the end of each day for seven days,
husbands and wives reported their levels of
stress, the support they provided, and the sup-
port they received. Wives were more likely than
husbands to provide support when their part-
ners were stressed. In an observational portionshows that stress is associated with a larger
increase in distress among unmarried people
than married people. That is, married people
who face high levels of stress are protected
from the large increase in distress that unmar-
ried people suffer. Here, the magnitude of the
difference between the two lines is greater un-
der high levels of stress. Next, I review some
of the research on these psychological and
behavioral links of marriage to health.Social Support. One explanation for the
effects of marriage on health involves social
support. Married women and men report
higher levels of support than unmarried per-
sons, but men may have more of an advantage
than women. Husbands receive more support
from their spouses than do wives (Goldzweig
et al., 2009; Verhofstadt, Buysee, & Ickes,
2007). This is especially the case for emotional
support. Wives, by contrast, receive more
support than husbands from their broader
network of friends. One study showed that
the reason men who lived alone were moreLow
StressHigh Low
Stress
(a) (b)HighMain Effects of Marriage Stress-Buffering Effects of MarriageUnmarriedMarriedUnmarriedMarried
Distress DistressFIGURE 11.3 (a) Main effects of marriage: Married people are less distressed than unmarried people,
regardless of their levels of stress. (b) Stress-buffering effects of marriage: Married people are especially
less distressed than unmarried people when they face high levels of stress. In other words, marriage
buffers people from the deleterious effects of stress.M11_HELG0185_04_SE_C11.indd 399 6/21/11 12:43 PM