Multiple Roles and Physical Health of Women and Men

Abstract

A survey of Detroit adults shows that employment, marriage, and parenthood are associated with good physical health for both women and men. Employed married parents tend to have the best health profile, while people with none of these roles tend to have the worst profile. Of the three roles, employment has the strongest effect, and parenthood the weakest. Multiple roles (the combination of job plus family responsibilities) have no special effects on health, either negative or positive. Thus, people with both job and family roles enjoy the health benefits of each role (main effects) and incur no special health disadvantage or benefit (interaction effect) for being so busy. This is true for both women and men. Three explanations are considered: First, health risks may actually be lower for socially active people than for nonactive ones. Second, involved people may have health attitudes which reduce their sensitivity to symptoms and their willingness to take curative health actions. Third, social selection may operate so that healthy people are able to acquire and keep roles more easily than unhealthy people. In sum, there is no evidence in the Detroit data that combining employment, marriage, and parenthood is harmful to women's health. Implications of the results for women's future health are suggested.