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from the so-I-didn't-have-to-get-married??? dept.
a new study published in AJPH indicates that adults who are cohabitating have midlife health outcomes that are similar to adults in formal marriages. So in terms of the benefits specific to marriage, we can probably strike "longer, healthier life" from the list.
The study in question used 10,000 subjects from the British national Child Development Study, a birth cohort study that includes all people born in Britain during one week in March 1958. Participants were able to select their partnership status as married, cohabitating, or single. Health was measured using blood and inflammatory biomarkers, as well as respiratory capacity. The researchers controlled for previous socioeconomic status, previous health status, educational attainment, income, employment, and other demographic variables.
The study's results varied by gender. Among men, those who had never married/cohabitated displayed poorer overall health than men who were married during the observation period. By contrast, not marrying or cohabitating had less of a detrimental effect on women than on men. For women, the timing of the marriage mattered. Those who were married in their late 20s or early 30s had the overall best health, beating out both women who had married in their early 20s and women were never married/cohabitating.
Does co-habitating with cats or dogs count?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Wednesday August 12 2015, @08:26PM
Does co-habitating with cats or dogs count?
No. What's up with all the summaries lately that bring up a thought-provoking issue and then have some inane gag at the end by the submitter that totally destroys the atmosphere?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday August 12 2015, @08:35PM
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=8879 [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday August 12 2015, @08:37PM
Oh, you already know it's the submitter.
The answer is that Phoenix666 enjoys adding one-liners to the end of submissions, and posts a lot of stories.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday August 12 2015, @09:00PM
And, personally, I don't have a problem with it. If I wanted actually skilled writing, I wouldn't be at a user-submitted tech news site.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2015, @09:04PM
Especially these days when "skilled writing" means "being really good at having no ethics or journalistic integrity"
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday August 12 2015, @10:25PM
Yeah, God forbid anybody write with actual style and not like a word-regurgitating automaton.
Fuck off, control-freak.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 12 2015, @10:45PM
Oh please. While the writing skills seen in TFSs here aren't usually Oxford-level, I never see blatantly bad and error-filled writing like I see at the MSM sites these days. The typical CNN or Reuters article these days is absolutely full of spelling and grammar errors which should embarrass an 8th-grader. Journalism, in America at least, has really gone down the toilet in the last 2 decades.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday August 12 2015, @10:49PM
Not to mention that MSM sites often just do a superficial edit of the Reuters or AP release and no actual journalism.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Wednesday August 12 2015, @10:55PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday August 12 2015, @09:56PM
No. What's up with all the summaries lately that bring up a thought-provoking issue and then have some inane gag at the end by the submitter that totally destroys the atmosphere?
Because if he doesn't, people like you will bitch about the fact that there is no original content in the summary.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 12 2015, @10:42PM
Because it's entirely relevant. The divorce rate is over 50%, and the number of people in unhappy marriages (out of that other 50%) is probably significant, so surely a LOT of people are wondering, "maybe I'd be better off just staying single and living with a cat". I know I think about that a lot. The type of women who seem to be available past the age of 30 should make any man wonder that.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Wednesday August 12 2015, @10:59PM
The statistics that I have heard are:
Source: Dr. Willard F. Harley, Jr., Ph.D.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 12 2015, @11:28PM
That sounds about right from what I've seen, and tabulated that way is rather sobering about the realities of relationships.
It really makes me wonder, why do we bother? It seems to me that we as a society are really doing things wrongly. People in the good ol' days surely didn't live this way, they have a more communal lifestyle where they weren't tied down to a single partner for life, and probably didn't have any monogamy either. By "good ol' days", I mean prehistoric societies of course, before we invented agriculture and land ownership, and women became property, and marriages were invented to protect property and inheritance. The pre-European-contact society of Hawaii is probably a good model of how people used to live before modern societies developed: according to one academic paper I read, the Hawaiians did not have any such thing as marriage, nor even a concept of fatherhood really. People basically had free sex (and no STDs, thanks to isolation on an island chain), and any children resulting were simply raised by the village communally.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Thursday August 13 2015, @05:13AM
My take on it is that it might be worth it to study what those 20% successful marriages do and emulate that.
On another note, you might be very interested in A Short History of Man [mises.org] by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. (I see an audio edition [mises.org] is now available.)
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2015, @06:43AM
*pukes*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mises.org [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2015, @03:22PM
Care to explain your apparent revulsion over mises.org and/or the ideas behind it?
From where I sit, you could simply be a Communist, authority-worshipping Republocrat, CEO of a crony-capitalist (mercantilist) corporation, or someone who Ludwig Von Mises once angered over what would have turned out to be a simple misunderstanding.
Ideas that are based in the fundamentals of mathematics, reason, and/or law (natural or otherwise) are often intruiging, and I see mises.org as an interesting vehicle for several such ideas.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Thursday August 13 2015, @05:10PM
My take on it is that it might be worth it to study what those 20% successful marriages do and emulate that.
Oh please. That's like telling poor people to go look at lottery winners and emulate them so they can get out of poverty.
Face it, some people just get lucky and find someone who works well for them, and on top of that, they're both people who work well together in a relationship. Most people just aren't that lucky, to both be a good relationship partner, and to also find someone else who is also a good relationship partner, and who is also a good partner *for them*. Add to that that people do better when they find the right person early on, so they adapt to each other; after you get older, you get more set in your ways so it becomes impossible to find someone suitable.
So, if you find the right person when you're 21, that's great. If you pass 25 and you haven't found him/her, it's very unlikely you will.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Thursday August 13 2015, @05:20PM
Oh please. That's like telling poor people to go look at lottery winners and emulate them so they can get out of poverty.
Right, or studying people who live longer and are healthier and emulating their diet and exercise regimen. Face it, if you aren't born with good genes, you're not going to be healthy, so pass me another Big Mac.
Fact is, Dr. Willard Harley has actually studied the 20% of marriages that go well and has distilled the results into a regimen that does lead to a good marriage for 100% of couples that follow it. Getting them to follow it is sometimes quite a trick, though.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @02:26AM
The biggest problem I have is finding a partner with whom to practice it. :(
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday August 14 2015, @03:44PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday August 15 2015, @01:43AM
I'll bet he doesn't have any good information on where to actually meet these prospective partners so you can show them your "value proposition". As a nerd/engineer, that's the biggest problem I've had. There just aren't any women in places I frequent (school, work, etc.).
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Saturday August 15 2015, @02:12AM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Saturday August 15 2015, @02:18AM
In all seriousness I've heard him make a lot of recommendations on that front including online, Facebook, traditional newspaper personals, speed dating, taking a community college course, moving to a bigger city with more single people, getting into new hobbies with clubs or associations, and probably others I can't remember. He and his wife actually used to run a dating service - I'm not sure when that was but I think it was after he retired from practice and before he started his present endeavors. What they basically did in the service was teach men how to better meet a woman's typical emotional needs and teach women how to better meet a man's typical emotional needs. The clients typically found someone, but not someone from the service, because in learning how to meet those emotional needs they became much more attractive to someone of the opposite sex.
You could always hunt him down online and ask his current recommendations. He's out there and does answer questions.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by naubol on Friday August 14 2015, @01:22PM
20% of people win the lottery?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by acid andy on Wednesday August 12 2015, @11:11PM
There was a discussion about it a week or two ago. The point was made that some of the very scientific or technical topics get very few comments (especially when compared to political topics or others that stir up subjective opinions) and someone said it's sometimes hard to think of a worthwhile comment and it was agreed that ending the submission with a thought provoking question or quip will often help kickstart at least some extra comments.
I agree personally. I think almost any input from the submitter and / or an editor is better than a mindless copy / paste that adds nothing to the story that wasn't already available elsewhere.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 12 2015, @11:36PM
Believe it or not, it was not an attempt at levity, but an honest question. My brother lives alone but has a cat. He has a solid job as an automotive engineer, has a fine house, has lots of income and toys and would make someone a catch. But the longer he goes single, the more it seems he's likely to remain that way. This article had me wondering about the effects of that isolation on his health, because your sense of mental well-being would seem to affect your physical condition quite a bit. So, if your social isolation seems likely to continue and even deepen, can having a pet that you interact with like a dog or cat ameliorate the health risks?
I understand there are some who don't like the style I employ in the stories I submit. Some expect the BBC, and get Phoenix666 instead. For those, there is an actual BBC with paid journalists and editors who have a style guide to aid them in presenting a "polished" and "professional" tone. That is the place for them to get that sort of thing. Me, I am a guy in Brooklyn. I post articles I find interesting and that perhaps others on Soylent might find interesting, too. I often crack wise. I will continue.
For those who want less of what I do and more of something else, there is a simple solution: submit it. Step up, and provide it. Give the editors a big pool of submissions to choose from. Dilute the percentage of what I submit to whatever threshhold you deem acceptable. I know I would enjoy that, because I would see more from sources I don't normally see, instead of always having seen everything from the places I frequent. Let's see tangomargarine stock the queue through the rest of August with articles from the sites he or she likes and I'll happily kick back and watch how the pro's (or those who want pro-style) do it.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2015, @12:58AM
Not everyone is an extrovert. Some people are almost entirely socially isolated and like it that way.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Thursday August 13 2015, @04:20AM
Being socially isolated and/or an introvert doesn't mean you necessarily *like* it that way. A lot of people have social anxiety disorder, or just aren't very good at socialization, but that doesn't mean they actually want to spend all their free time alone, or go without a romantic/sex partner.
Considering the audience here, I really shouldn't even have to be typing this, it should be understood....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2015, @09:28AM
Being socially isolated and/or an introvert doesn't mean you necessarily *like* it that way.
Yes, it does. That's the definition of introvert.
A lot of people have social anxiety disorder, or just aren't very good at socialization, but that doesn't mean they actually want to spend all their free time alone, or go without a romantic/sex partner.
Those are extroverts with a social anxiety disorder, not introverts.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Grishnakh on Thursday August 13 2015, @04:36AM
My brother lives alone but has a cat. He has a solid job as an automotive engineer, has a fine house, has lots of income and toys and would make someone a catch. But the longer he goes single, the more it seems he's likely to remain that way. This article had me wondering about the effects of that isolation on his health
How old is he? And what metro area/region does he live in?
Also, is he religious? Does he drink? (I'm guessing the answers to both questions is "no".)
The big problem with him, as I see it, is that he has nothing that women want, except maybe money. First, he's an engineer, and women **hate** that. Second, he has a cat, and not a big sloppy dog, and women absolutely *hate* that too, because women hate cats, and they especially hate men who like cats. Finally, he has his shit together, and women hate that too, because they want someone who has a lot of drama and they need to "fix".
BTW, I don't know where the stereotype about women and cats ever came from, because it isn't true. Women love giant dogs, not cats. I see it all the time on OKCupid: every single women on there has a picture of herself with some big dog, and in their bio talk about how much they love dogs. Now keep in mind, the women I'm looking at may not be representative of *all* women, but they're all in their 30s, with some in their late 20s and early 40s. I suspect your brother is much like me, and is probably in my age range and would be looking at this same demographic of women. The women who like cats and engineers are probably all happily married before they're 30, so what's left over are either loud-mouthed hags who have dogs and drink a lot, or religious nuts.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Grishnakh on Thursday August 13 2015, @04:40AM
Oh yeah, the money thing isn't a big help either, unless he's really flashy with it (which, as an engineer, he probably isn't). If he isn't wearing Armani suits, Rolex watches, driving really expensive cars, etc., then women won't be interested. Women don't like frugal men who manage their money carefully. He probably could land some really desperate woman with 4 kids by 4 fathers, though. I get messages from women like that all the time. I also get lots of messages from women in Philippines....
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Thursday August 13 2015, @03:03PM
Aren't there a bunch of studies that show people with pets live longer? I thought I had read that before.