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Sleep, Marriage and Social Engagement Among Older Adults

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Family Contexts of Sleep and Health Across the Life Course

Part of the book series: National Symposium on Family Issues ((NSFI,volume 8))

Abstract

We empirically examine how marriage and marital quality are related to sleep characteristics as measured by actigraphy and self-report in a nationally–representative probability sample of community-dwelling older adults, the National Social Life, Health and Aging Project (NSHAP). We find that married individuals experience better quality sleep compared to the unmarried. The associations are stronger for actigraphy sleep characteristics than for survey responses about sleep. Among the married, better relationship quality was associated with better sleep quality. Using data from the subset of married respondents from whom we have actigraphy data for both members of the couple, we find significant within-couple correlations for bedtimes, waking times and sleep duration estimated from actigraphy, but not for actigraphy measures of sleep quality (fragmentation and WASO). Further, we find that wives’ mental health, but not physical health, influences their husbands’ sleep. However, husbands’ mental and physical health had no influence on their wives’ sleep. These results point to a potential role for sleep in well-established disparities in health by marital status among older adults.

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Acknowledgements

Research summarized in this chapter was supported by R01AG042164 from the National Institute of Aging (NIA), the Basic Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Opportunity Network (OppNet) National Institutes of Health. We also thank Linda Waite who is a co-author of the published paper on which much of this chapter is based. Jiebiao Wang carried out the analyses of within-couple correlations presented here, and Ronald Thisted provided statistical advice for the within-couple analyses.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Diane S. Lauderdale

  2. Department of Sociology and Criminology, Howard University, Washington, DC, USA

    Jen-Hao Chen

Authors
  1. Diane S. Lauderdale
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  2. Jen-Hao Chen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Diane S. Lauderdale .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Social Science Research Institute, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA

    Susan M. McHale

  2. Department of Sociology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA

    Valarie King

  3. Department of Biobehavioral Health, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA

    Orfeu M. Buxton

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Lauderdale, D.S., Chen, JH. (2017). Sleep, Marriage and Social Engagement Among Older Adults. In: McHale, S., King, V., Buxton, O. (eds) Family Contexts of Sleep and Health Across the Life Course. National Symposium on Family Issues, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64780-7_5

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