Stressful family contexts and health in divorced and married mothers: Biopsychosocial process

Abstract

Past research suggests that social, psychological and biological processes underlying common health problems are highly interrelated and may be comonents of a larger biopsychosocial process. This process may be influenced by marital status. The current study investigated a biopsychosocial process involving social, psychological and physcial health problems over the second half of the life course, comparing women who were mothers with different marital histories (e.g., consistently married, married to divorced) and investigated the association between this biopsychosocial process and marital stress for consistantly maried women over the middle years. The current study used structural equation modeling to assess this biopsychosocial process longitudinally using prospective data over 25 years from a sample of 416 women. The results showed that compared to being married, divorcing in early midlife contributed to an adverse biopsychosocial process for women, including physical pain, physical limitations, and depressive symptoms over their mid-later years, regardless of later recoupling. For consistently married mothers, both marital stress and financial stress uniquely influenced biological and psychological problems throughout their mid-later years, and these health problems also selected mothers into further escalating financial and marital stress. Elucidating differential short- and long-term health influences of competing marital and financial stressors for divorced and married mothers provides valuable information for targeted economic and relationship intervention efforts and policy formation. Such interventions can reduce family stressors and develop resiliency factors, thereby preventing the escalation of biopsychosocial processes in middle-aged mothers.