Yahoo News: “In Sickness, Marriage May Not Boost Health”:
Marriage is good for the health, but it isn’t so beneficial “in sickness,” new research finds.Previous studies have consistently found that people who are married report better health than people who aren’t. But marriage may not do much to help people who are seriously ill, the study finds. On top of that, married people overestimate how healthy they are. ...
Married people don’t rate their health as poor until they’ve developed more severe health problems than unmarried people, the researchers found. So someone who is married and says they’re in poor health may actually be worse off than a singleton in poor health. The difference could help explain why the benefit of marriage seems to vanish in the poor-health category.
NYT Motherlode blog: “Pregnant Without a Policy in Graduate School”:
Pregnancy during graduate school could make sense for many women, and, if studies correlating a variety of increased risks with maternal (and paternal) age are correct, encouraging couples to have children younger could have broad benefits. Women in graduate school also have decreased responsibilities to clients, employers or patients. If a pregnant medical or graduate student is “not a bad idea,” then should graduate schools better support pregnant women — and how?
Zach Stafford at the Huffington Post: “‘Monogamish’: Two Is Company, But Is Three Really a Crowd?”:
Dr. Jeffrey T. Parsons, director of Hunter College’s Center for HIV Educational Studies and Training (CHEST), worked with a team of researchers to investigate a relatively unexplored area of social research: monogamy and commitment among gay and bisexual men. After surveying over 800 gay and bisexual men in the New York City area, Dr. Parsons and his team found that “the diversity in types of non-monogamous relationships was interesting.... Typically gay men have been categorized as monogamous or not, and our data show that it is not so black and white.” CHEST explains on its website:CHEST’s survey indicated that about 60% were single. Of those partnered, about 58% were in monogamous relationships. Of those that were non-monogamous, 53% were in open relationships, and 47% were in “monogamish” relationships (i.e., couples that have sex with others as a couple such as “threeways” or group sex).These findings are not unique, and New York City’s gay and bi men aren’t the only ones engaging in these behaviors. In 2010 researchers at San Francisco State University carried out a similar study that revealed just how common open relationships are among partnered gay men and lesbians in the Bay Area. As The New York Times reported, “The Gay Couples Study ... followed 556 male couples for three years — about 50 percent of those surveyed have sex outside their relationships, with the knowledge and approval of their partners.” That figure is remarkably similar to what CHEST found. ...
Dr. Parsons added, “Our findings suggest that certain types of non-monogamous relationships — especially ‘monogamish’ ones — are actually beneficial to gay men, contrary to assumptions that monogamous relationships are always somehow inherently better.”
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