Marriage, Health and Milton

With James and Ali’s nuptials fast approaching, I keep running into items about marriage.

In the 1984 made-for-TV version of “A Christmas Carol” – the one with George C. Scott as Scrooge – Old Fezziwig catches young Ebenezer and his then-beloved Belle together at the office Christmas party, and remarks with a slight twinkle in his eye: “What a difference it makes, Ebenezer, to travel the rough road of life with the right female to help bear the burden, eh?”

As he was about so many things, Old Fezziwig was absolutely right in this observation. Studies have shown that it does, indeed, make a huge difference to travel life with the right female or, if you happen to be a woman, with the right male.

According to a recent article in the New York Times, “Is Marriage Good for Your Health?”, in the 150 years that the health effects of marriage have been studied,

scientists have continued to document the “marriage advantage”: the fact that married people, on average, appear to be healthier and live longer than unmarried people.

Contemporary studies, for instance, have shown that married people are less likely to get pneumonia, have surgery, develop cancer or have heart attacks. A group of Swedish researchers has found that being married or cohabiting at midlife is associated with a lower risk for dementia. A study of two dozen causes of death in the Netherlands found that in virtually every category, ranging from violent deaths like homicide and car accidents to certain forms of cancer, the unmarried were at far higher risk than the married.

Of course, it’s also important that we travel the road of life with the right companion, as Fezziwig so astutely notes. The Times article elaborates that rocky marriages do not produce the same health benefits as cheerful ones. In fact, health-wise, you’re better off remaining single than being married to some lout. Divorce is no help, either. All the beneficial health effects of marriage go right down the drain in a divorce; even remarriage doesn’t repair all the damage.

As early as 1643, John Milton in his Divorce Tracts was saying much the same thing about marriage (as I discovered recently in another article) without the documented evidence. In commenting on how God in Genesis saw that it was good for Adam to have a companion, Milton says, “if it were so needfull before the fall, when man was much more perfect in himselfe, how much more is it needfull now against all the sorrows and casualties of this life to have an intimate and speaking help, a ready and reviving associate in marriage….” Indeed, for Milton, marriage is the “mutual enjoyment of that which the wanting soul needfully seeks.…” The explanation given in the New York Times article is that stress over the “sorrows and casualties” of life compromises the immune system. A good marriage reduces that stress and boosts our immune response. One point for Milton.

As a footnote, this for me just underscores again the utter folly of opposition to same-sex marriage. If marriage to the right person is so good for your health, why aren’t we encouraging it for everyone, including same-sex couples? Barring this sizeable portion of the population from marriage is detrimental to gays and just adds to the health care costs of everyone.