Warner David F, Adams Scott A
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA.
Soc Ment Health. 2016 Jul;6(2):106-128. doi: 10.1177/2156869315616257. Epub 2015 Nov 25.
Examining the social context of disablement, we investigated how changes in social relations affect loneliness among married older men and women. With longitudinal data on 914 married persons from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP), we found that changes in the quality of marital and nonmarital relations moderate the effect of disability on loneliness in unexpected ways. Increases in negative marital quality buffer the effect of physical disability, while increases in nonmarital support exacerbate it. Although not predicted by existing theory, these findings are consistent with some prior work suggesting that health-related stressors, like physical disability, condition the meaning of changes in social relations. We find, however, that negative social relations ameliorate loneliness only among disabled married men; disabled married women experience increased loneliness under similar circumstances. These differences have not been previously identified. We conclude by discussing the gendered nature of the social context of disablement.
通过审视残疾的社会背景，我们研究了社会关系的变化如何影响老年已婚男性和女性的孤独感。利用来自国家社会生活、健康与老龄化项目（NSHAP）的914名已婚人士的纵向数据，我们发现婚姻关系和非婚姻关系质量的变化以意想不到的方式调节了残疾对孤独感的影响。负面婚姻质量的增加缓冲了身体残疾的影响，而非婚姻支持的增加则加剧了这种影响。尽管现有理论并未预测到这些结果，但这些发现与一些先前的研究一致，这些研究表明与健康相关的压力源，如身体残疾，会影响社会关系变化的意义。然而，我们发现负面社会关系只会减轻残疾已婚男性的孤独感；残疾已婚女性在类似情况下孤独感会增加。这些差异此前尚未被发现。我们通过讨论残疾社会背景的性别本质来得出结论。
