Marital Strain, Support, and Alcohol Use: Results from a Twin Design Statistically Controlling for Genetic Confounding

Abstract

Background: Marriage is one of the most frequently examined sources of social support and has been shown to protect against alcohol use and abuse. This study examines the relationship between perceived marital strain and support, and alcohol use controlling for additive genetic influence. Methods: Data from monozygotic (MZ) (n = 320) and dizygotic (DZ) (n = 464) twin pairs from the second wave of the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS II) were used to test whether past year marital strain and support were associated with recent alcohol use. Generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) were estimated, allowing us to control for additive genetic and shared environmental influences as variance components. Results: Marital strain and support had positive, statistically significant associations with alcohol use. However, only the relationship between marital strain and alcohol use remained after controlling for variance in alcohol use attributed to genetics. Conclusions: After accounting for genetics, midlife adults still appear to cope with marital strain via alcohol use. However, this coping is unlikely to result in heavy episodic drinking or alcohol use disorder without other compounding factors.