Testosterone and Men's Marriages

Abstract

We examine the relationship of testosterone to tendencies to marry and divorce, and to the quality of marriage, of a large representative sample of men. The analysis shows that men producing more testosterone are less likely to marry and more likely to divorce. Once married they are more likely to leave home because of troubled marital relations, extramarital sex, hitting or throwing things at their spouses, and experiencing a lower quality of marital interaction. Sociological models that might be informed by thisfinding are examined, and its implications for subsequent research are discussed. Studies of the relation between testosterone and marital relations have focused on coital frequency but little else. For example, Morris et al. (1987) showed that female testosterone is related to increases in sexual intercourse. One exception to this focus of testosterone studies is a study by Julian and McKenry (1989) of 39 middle-aged men which showed that testosterone and marital happiness have a negative relationship. Despite the paucity of research, there are important reasons to examine the relation between testosterone and marriage in more detail. Because testosterone has consistent and moderately strong links with aggression (see Meyer-Bahlburg 1981 for summary), dominance (Gray, Jackson & McKinlay 1991), sensation seeking (Daitzman & Zuckerman 1980), depressed occupational achievement (Dabbs 1992), and antisocial behavior such as fighting, nontraffic arrests, and drug use (Dabbs & Morris 1990), it would appear that elevated testosterone has the potential to affect marriages adversely. The purpose of the investigation reported here is to examine the relation between * We are indebted to Paul Amato, Lynn White, Harriet Presser, Philip Morgan, and David Johnson for their comments on an early version of this manuscript. A draft of this article was presented at the Population Association of America meeting in May, 1992. This research was supported in part by grantMMH442525from theAntisocial and Violent Behavior Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Population Research Institute, Pennsylvania State University, with core support from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant 1-HD28263. The data was originally gathered as part of the Vietnam military experience study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control, U.S. Public Health Service, under a cooperative agreement with the Veterans Administration. Direct correspondence to Alan Booth, Sociology Department, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA