An enduring marriage means greater health and happiness for women, according to new research. A recent study from scholars at Harvard and Stanford that is making headlines found that women who got married and stayed married over a 25-year period lived longer, were happier, and had lower risk of heart disease than their never-married peers. They were also more socially integrated, had less stress, and were healthier on a range of measures than their peers who married and then divorced.  

As a child of divorced parents and with similarly situated extended family members, I have observed the benefits and complexities of marriage and divorce. These experiences taught me that family process matters and that future family formation decisions matter more for children than the past decisions of their parents.  

My story 

My parents divorced when I was in my early 20s – an experience that did not surprise me but rocked me. It would have destroyed me if I had lived close to home during the bulk of it all – which I didn’t at the time. Three weeks after I moved back closer to family and six months after the divorce was final, my father remarried. 

That significant restructuring greatly altered my perceptions of the stability of the married family structure. My parents’ marriage was a cornerstone, yet in one move, it was gone, and in another, it restructured into a blended family. Luckily, I can say that concerning that event’s impact on those formative years of my 20s, I only temporarily lost my confidence in marriage and my ability to have a successful one. Unfortunately, others who experience a similar loss are less fortunate and sometimes can resort to extreme and unhealthy coping mechanisms. 

My relative’s story 

With permission, I share the story of an extended family member of mine, whom I will call Mia. Her parents also divorced when she was in her 20s, and this experience also affected her negatively.  

So much of her life revolved around her parents’ marriage, and it took significant focus and energy from her. Thus, divorce brought relief. Back then, she also concluded that she didn’t want to be married because she saw marriage as exhausting – just as exhausting as her parents’ marriage. Now in her 30s, she wants marriage but doesn’t know how to get there. 

Family processes influence outcomes 

Family processes – the functions that organize families, including communication – matter for things like the possibility of divorce because they help shape how we view ourselves and our capacities to navigate the world. Research reinforces this assertion. 

Common sense and years of family science research show that family cohesion and conflict are robust indicators for adolescent social, emotional, and behavioral health and adjustment. For example, adolescents in families with higher-than-average conflict report higher levels of average depressed, anxious, and angry moods. They also report less happiness, satisfaction with life, and meaning or purpose in life. On the other hand, adolescents with higher family cohesion report feeling a more positive mood, more satisfaction with life, and more meaning and purpose in life. 

A four-year longitudinal study of 617 respondents from high school into early adulthood looked at how communication as a family process influenced their likelihood of being financially independent during young adulthood – what they termed self-efficacy. They found that the more children talked to their parents about their work, the greater their economic self-efficacy during high school.  

The researchers said that “direct communication about work between the parent and child might be the most effective form of socialization when it comes to shaping adolescents’ perceptions of their capacities to be successful in the economic realm.” They also found that higher educational attainment increased the likelihood of financial independence. The message is the same: Family process matters because it influences child outcomes. 

Differences in family process for me and my relative 

Mia and I had different family experiences, even though both of our formative family structures dissolved. Our respective life outcomes were vastly different, which has more than a little to do with different family processes. 

I was lucky enough to have parents who pushed me to problem-solve, plan and lead. They emphasized education and self-sufficiency, as evidenced by my fully funding my car and phone expenses as a teenager, paying for my health insurance since my second semester of college, and bearing the cost of my higher education since my undergraduate. 

This push, supported by intentional family processes put forth by my parents, helped me better respond to my parents’ divorce by being exposed to real-life situations and learning how to problem-solve on my own. Those experiences and skill set helped me cope with the significant structural change that happened to my family later in life. As a result, I maintained and finished my undergraduate studies, obtained graduate degrees, pursued a career, and bought a home. 

On the other hand, Mia is frustrated about her parents’ lack of family processes. She told me that “our parents didn’t teach us … our mom wouldn’t send us to school. We didn’t have any schedule or plans. It was just day in and day out, and you just did whatever you wanted. There was a lot of waiting to be parented, but never actually being parented because there were so many problems.” 

This lack of formative family processes is a source of grief and trial for Mia. In addition, the daunting burden of teaching herself life skills has made it challenging to create physical, financial and emotional stability. In her 30s, Mia is the only sibling in her family pursuing a college degree, and she struggles to maintain a permanent living situation. 

Hope 

Despite our family backgrounds, experience and research are showing that my and Mia’s futures are dictated not by the dissolution of the marriage we grew up in, but the future families we choose to form ourselves. During the Sutherland Institute-American Enterprise Institute FREE Forum, Ian Rowe, the founder of Vertex Academies, shared that in his 10-plus years of working with children from all different backgrounds, some children have been able to break the cycle of disadvantage stemming from how they grew up.  

The generally consistent factors in the lives of children who rose above their pasts include having a sense of personal agency reinforced by four critical institutional pillars: family, religion, education and entrepreneurship. The families that they chose to form were “radically different” than those they grew up in. 

This power of personal agency is what brings hope to Mia and me. Regardless of past family structures and processes, we have the opportunity and the determination to create our own families that are similar in their strengths and radically different in their shortcomings. We can determine the outcomes of our own lives. That power drives Mia to finish her schooling, me to buy a second real estate property, and both of us to find life partners. 

Conclusion 

Family processes play a critical role in child and youth development because they help children learn critical life skills to live well. For Mia and me, family processes influenced our views and capabilities to navigate the world after adolescence. With the help of supporting institutions, individuals have the personal power of agency to shape life outcomes and create families that are more than just the sum of their past experiences. 

If we can create strong processes in our own family institutions and pursue public policies that support or build on such processes, then more women (and men) will experience the benefits to health and happiness that come from strong, sustained marriage.