Measurement opportunities for studying sexual and gender diverse partnerships in population-based surveys

A national portrait of the well-being of remarried and previously married cohabiting older adults

OBJECTIVES

Mounting evidence signals that cohabitation operates as an alternative to remarriage in later life. However, others have maintained that cohabitation is an incomplete institution marked by less favorable outcomes than remarriage. We appraise these two frameworks by examining the well-being of remarried and previously married cohabiting older adults.

METHOD

Drawing on the 2010-2020 Health and Retirement Study, we assessed whether remarried and previously married cohabiting older adults differed in their depressive symptoms and loneliness. We also tested whether the association between relationship quality and well-being varied by union type.

RESULTS

Among women, cohabitors reported higher levels of depressive symptoms than their remarried counterparts. In contrast, union type was not appreciably associated with men's depressive symptoms. Meanwhile, among men, cohabitors reported less loneliness, on average, than did those in remarriages. No corresponding union-type differential emerged among women. Additionally, the association between relationship quality and psychological well-being did not differ by union type for both men and women.

CONCLUSION

Our study largely aligns with the notion that cohabitation functions as an alternative to remarriage in later life. The growth of cohabitation among older adults, coupled with its distinct purpose during this life stage, underscores the importance of advancing this nascent line of inquiry into its role in older adults' well-being.

Marginalized Identities, Healthcare Discrimination, and Parental Stress about COVID-19

Objective

This paper assesses stress disparities among marginalized parents in 2020-21 during the COVID-19 pandemic through the mechanism of healthcare discrimination.

Background

The pandemic upended the lives of American families and had particularly stark mental health consequences for women, racial and ethnic minority (REM), and sexual and gender minority (SGM) parents. Scholars have been called to understand these unequal experiences via marginalizing mechanisms rather than using race, gender, and sexual identities as proxies for racism, sexism, and cis-heterosexism.

Method

Structural equation modeling was used to test associations between marginalized identities and parental stress about COVID among partnered parents using healthcare discrimination, a marginalizing mechanism, as a mediator. The data come from The National Couples' Health and Time Study, a population-representative study of couples in the U.S.

Results

Findings indicate that compared to non-marginalized parents, Black parents, women, transgender and non-binary parents, and gay, lesbian, and bisexual parents experienced higher levels of parental stress about COVID through heightened healthcare discrimination. When accounting for healthcare discrimination, only one marginalized identity-that of women-was directly associated with parental stress about COVID along with the indirect relationship through healthcare discrimination.

Conclusion

These findings highlight healthcare discrimination as a process that puts marginalized parents at risk for heightened stress. Parental stress has the potential to accumulate across the life course and crossover to children and communities.

Responses to Sexual and Gender Identity Measures in Population-Level Data by Birth Cohort: A Research Note

The measurement of sexual and gender identity in the United States has been evolving to generate more precise demographic estimates of the population and a better understanding of health and well-being. Younger cohorts of sexual- and gender-diverse adults are endorsing identities outside of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) labels. Current population-level surveys often include a category such as "something else" without providing further details, and doing so inadequately captures these diverse identities. In this research note, our analysis of the most recent federal data source to incorporate sexual and gender identity measures-the Household Pulse Survey-reveals that younger birth cohorts are more likely to select "something else" for their sexual identity and "none of these" for their gender identity. The observed sexual and gender identity response patterns across birth cohorts underscore the importance of developing and applying new strategies to directly measure sexual- and gender-diverse adults who identify with identities outside of those explicitly captured on surveys. The integration of sexual and gender identity measures in population-level surveys carries broader implications for civil rights and for addressing health inequities and therefore must be responsive to cohort differences in identification.