Citation

Reczek C, Pudrovska T, Carr D, Thomeer MB, Umberson D. J. Health Soc. Behav. 2016; 57(1): 77-96.

Affiliation

University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0022146515628028

PMID

26957135

PMCID

PMC4785832

Abstract

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.

© American Sociological Association 2016.

Language: en