Far from encouraging men to patronise a local pub to escape from domestic duties, marriage actively reduces their alcohol intake, according to research being presented at the American Sociological Association today. However, the effect on women of walking down the aisle appears to be the opposite. The researchers found that married women generally drink more heavily than single women, widows or divorcees. By contrast, men who are happily married drink less than their bachelor friends and significantly less than divorced men. The reason, the researchers conclude, is that while women can help keep their husbands' drinking habits under control, men are simply a bad influence on their wives. Previous studies have shown that, overall, married people tend to drink less than non-married people, suggesting that a more settled home life can promote good health. But past research has not further separated married and non-married groups by gender. A group of sociologists led by Corinne Reczek, an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati, reviewed data from a long-running study of behaviour involving thousands of people in Wisconsin. They also looked at a separate set of 120 interviews with married, divorced, widowed and single people about their lifestyles. They found that while, overall, men consistently drink more than women and were more likely to have an alcohol problem, married men tended to drink significantly less than their male counterparts in every other marital status group. They concluded that getting married or divorced had a "dynamic relationship" on drinking habits, but in