title: Marital Histories and Heavy Alcohol Use among Older Adults.
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.
authors.affiliation: The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA Reczek.2@osu.edu.
authors.forename: Corinne
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Reczek
authors.affiliation: University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Tetyana
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Pudrovska
authors.affiliation: Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.
authors.forename: Deborah
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Carr
authors.affiliation: University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA.
authors.forename: Mieke Beth
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: Thomeer
authors.affiliation: University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Debra
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Umberson
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000523:psychology*; D004243:Divorce / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D017533:Marital Status; D008393:Marriage / Q000523:psychology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D008960:Models, Psychological; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors
keywords: Health and Retirement Study; alcohol; gender; health behavior; marital dissolution; marriage