SALT LAKE CITY — New research debunking the “ball and chain” myth of marriage for men was released Tuesday.
According to a research briefpublished by the Institute of Family Studies, the idea that marriage creates more unhappiness than happiness for men just isn’t true.
Nicholas H. Wolfinger, a researcher at the University of Utah, and W. Bradford Wilcox, a researcher at the University of Virginia, say that more education is needed in order to ensure that people understand marriage and the truth behind it.
“Contrary to the notion that marriage is detrimental to men, it turns out that the benefits are substantial by every conceivable measure, including greater financial well-being, higher quality of sexual life, and significantly better physical and mental health outcomes,” wrote Wilcox and Wolfinger in “Men & Marriage: Debunking the Ball and Chain Myth.”
Married men, the research argued, are often less depressed than their bachelor counterparts.
“Marriage is broadly beneficial to men and women alike, and many of these benefits appear to be causal,” Wolfinger said. “In other words, they’re a direct benefit of marriage itself, and not simply a benefit of the fact that happier, healthier, and wealthier men are more likely to get married in the first place.”
According to Pew Research, men are more likely than women to never have been married, but marriage for both men and women have been in a steady decline since 1960.
