Health work in long-term gay, lesbian, and straight couples

textCompared to men, women devote substantially more attention and effort toward enhancing the health of their spouses. Yet, scholars have been unable to explain why this gender gap persists. Women also do more unpaid work in the home than men, and a significant literature explains the origins of this gender gap. In order to better understand why women do more to enhance the health of their spouse, this dissertation maps well-tested theory on unpaid work in the home on the literature on social integration and health to develop the theoretical construct of health work. Health work is defined as the activities and dialogue concerned with enhancing others’ health habits. After developing this theoretical construct, this dissertation turns to a qualitative examination of health work dynamics in 61 straight, gay, and lesbian couples living in the United States (N = 122). Findings reveal two distinct ways that partners work to shape one another’s health habits. Respondents in all couple types describe specialized health work, whereby one partner does health work over the course of the relationship. In straight couples, women perform the bulk of health work and men were the primary recipients of health work. Individuals rely on gendered discourses of difference to explain these unequal health work dynamics. Cooperative health work, whereby both partners perform health work in mutually reinforcing ways, emerges nearly exclusively in gay and lesbian couples. Individuals rely on discourses of similarity to explain why they perform cooperative health work. Findings reveal that health work processes not only depend on gender, but also on the intersection of gender, sexuality, and the gender composition of a couple. Additionally, this dissertation finds that partners not only do health work to promote one another’s healthy habits, but that partners also attempt to promote one another’s unhealthy habits. The implications for the promotion of both healthy and unhealthy habits are discussed.Sociolog

Telling family stories : gay and lesbian couples and the performance of family

This project addresses the experiences of 30 gay and lesbian individuals in longterm relationships. Narratives are conceptualized in this study as tools used by individuals for personal and psychological purposes. My analysis reveals that disclosure narratives told by gay and lesbian individuals functionally privilege the intimate couple's resilience. In doing so, individuals perform family in a counter-hegemonic way by subverting the importance of non-supportive family of origin. I also suggest individuals tell post-disclosure life event narratives to conceptualize changes in their relationships. These narratives further illustrate how the performance of family is contextually constructed. Finally, I argue that although such narratives function to transgress hegemonic family forms, the same narrative constructions concurrently and overtly avoid challenging oppressive structures of family by allowing family member's actions to go uncontested. In this way, these narratives reinscribe meanings of family rather than act as transformative agents that could further destabilize constructions of hegemonic family.Sociolog

Relationship Dynamics around Depression in Gay and Lesbian Couples

Research on intimate relationship dynamics around depression has primarily focused on heterosexual couples. This body of work shows that wives are more likely than husbands to offer support to a depressed spouse. Moreover, when wives are depressed, they are more likely than husbands to try and shield their spouse from the stress of their own depression. Yet, previous research has not examined depression and relationship dynamics in gay and lesbian couples. We analyze in-depth interviews with 26 gay and lesbian couples (N = 52 individuals) in which one or both partners reported depression. We find evidence that dominant gender scripts are both upheld and challenged within gay and lesbian couples, providing important insight into how gender operates in relation to depression within same-sex contexts. Our results indicate that most gay and lesbian partners offer support to a depressed partner, yet lesbian couples tend to follow a unique pattern in that they provide support both as the non-depressed and depressed partner. Support around depression is sometimes viewed as improving the relationship, but if the support is intensive or rejected, it is often viewed as contributing to relationship strain. Support is also sometimes withdrawn by the non-depressed partner because of caregiver exhaustion or the perception that the support is unhelpful. This study points to the importance of considering depression within gay and lesbian relational contexts, revealing new ways support sustains and strains intimate partnerships. We emphasize the usefulness of deploying couple-level approaches to better understand depression in sexual minority populations

Same-sex Couples Devote More Attention to End-of-Life Plans than Heterosexual Couples

Engaging in end-of-life planning enhances the quality of later-life caregiving, health, and death. In this brief, Mieke Beth Thomeer, along with PRC doctoral student Rachel Donnelly, PRC director Debra Umberson, and Corinne Reczek reports on end-of-life planning among same-sex and different-sex married couples. They find that same-sex spouses devote considerable attention to informal planning conversations and formal end-of-life plans while heterosexual spouses report minimal formal or informal planning.Population Research Cente

Do Gay, Lesbian, and Heterosexual Spouses Differ in the Ways They Care for Each Other During Physical Illness?

Using data collected from surveys and in-depth interviews with same- and different-sex couples, this brief summarizes two studies that analyze gendered marital dynamics around care work for physical illness. Led by PRC Director Debra Umberson, authors include PRC NICHD Trainee Rachel Donnelly and PRC alumnae Mieke Beth Thomeer, Corinne Reczek, and Rhiannon A. Kroeger. The authors found differences by gender and union type in the ways women and men give care to and receive care from their spouses in lesbian, gay, and heterosexual marriages.Population Research Cente