For better or for worse: Marital status transitions and sexual life in middle and later life

Abstract

Marital status and marital status transitions have known implications for adults’ mental and physical quality of life. Less attention has been paid, however, to the implications of marital status and transitions for sexual quality of life, particularly among the aging population. The present study analyzed three-wave longitudinal data from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the U.S. (1995–2014) in order to examine the effects of marital status/transitions on adults’ frequency of sexual activity, sexual satisfaction, effort put into sexual life, and control over sexual life. Further, this study assessed whether the implications of marital status/transitions for adults’ sexual quality of life varied according to (a) pre-transition reports of sexual quality of life, (b) gender, and/or (c) age. Multilevel lagged dependent variable models analyzed 2,869 observations drawn from 1,769 midlife and older adults over a two-decade span. Results indicated that the implications of marital status and marital status transitions for sexual life (a) were contingent upon baseline context across all four sexual quality of life outcomes, (b) varied by gender across three of the four sexual quality of life outcomes, and (c) varied only slightly by age concerning frequency of sexual activity. Overall, findings indicated that marital status transitions may be either beneficial or detrimental for adults’ sexual lives, depending on prior context; marital status transitions were most beneficial for sexual quality of life when baseline reports of sexual life were poor. Moreover, women were less likely to reap the potential rewards of marital status transitions such as divorce and widowhood, reflecting stronger social and normative constraints upon unmarried women’s sexuality, particularly for older women. We situate these findings within the growing literature concerning marital status transitions, the “graying of divorce,” and sexual life among the aging population.