Union Status and Sexual Risk Behavior Among Men in Their 30s

Research since the early 1990s has consistently found that sexual risk behavior declines as people get older.1,2 For example, the most recent National Survey of Family Growth, conducted in 2006–2010, found that the prevalence of sexual risk behavior declines monotonically from 15% among males aged 20–24 to less than 10% among men older than 40.2 Why do risk profiles change with age? Some research suggests that the propensity for risky behavior may decline in adulthood for biological reasons, including changes occurring during adolescent and young adult brain development.3 The focus of this article, however, is on a different set of possible explanations for sexual risk—social and behavioral ones, particularly union status. Married people are less likely than others to engage in sexual risk behavior,4 and older people are more likely than younger individuals to be married. Taylor and colleagues found that the greater risk for STDs among blacks than among other races or ethnicities was reduced when they controlled for marriage status.5 Moreover, associations have also been found between nonsexual risk behaviors and being unmarried. For example, blacks in long-term stable unions are less likely to smoke or use illegal drugs, and black women in such unions are less likely to drink heavily, than blacks who are not in such unions.6 In a series of studies of long-term outcomes among young men who were at risk of criminal behavior in childhood, Laub and colleagues have argued that getting married is associated with desistance from crime,7–10 and others have found this as well.11 The transition to marriage has also been associated with desistance from binge drinking and marijuana use.12 Several hypotheses may help to explain why marriage is associated with relatively low levels of and desistance from risky behavior. Proponents of the selection hypothesis argue that people with a low propensity to engage in risky behavior are more likely than others to marry and vice versa.12 This hypothesis has been tested using longitudinal data and examining change within individuals. For example, in a long-term cohort study, Green and colleagues identified distinct latent marriage trajectories and found that after premarital substance use was controlled for, being stably married was associated with low levels of legal and illegal substance use.6 Duncan and colleagues argued that their finding of a relationship between marriage and desistance from risk behaviors was unlikely to be due to selection since they focused on ever-married people and assessed behavior change shortly after marriage and over the longer term.12 Another hypothesis regarding marriage and sexual risk behavior is the monitoring hypothesis. Proponents suggest that since coresidential partners spend more time together than partners in visiting unions, the former have fewer opportunities to engage in covert behavior. The prevalence of widespread nonmarital cohabitation provides an opportunity for testing the monitoring hypothesis. If the association between marriage and sexual risk behavior is largely due to the ability of coresidential partners to observe and inhibit each other’s risk behavior, then we should see no difference in behavior between married and cohabiting individuals. A third hypothesis focuses on role socialization,13,14 and posits that strong norms regulate appropriate behavior for married couples. These norms proscribe any behavior that puts one at risk and prescribe behavior that is future-oriented, cautious and responsible. The underlying idea is that the transition to marriage marks both an end to parental willingness to bail adult children out of trouble and the beginning of a time when the welfare of others depends on one’s own behavior. Role socialization has most often been invoked to examine the association between marriage and substance use,12,14 yet it is even more applicable to the study of sexual risk behavior, since getting married involves taking vows of sexual exclusivity. The role socialization hypothesis has a long history, but recent applications have been somewhat different from those of the past. In older formulations, the hypothesis was tested by examining differences between being single and being married.13–16 Now, researchers are more likely to assess differences between two groups of coresidential couples: those who cohabit (i.e., outside of marriage) and those who are married.12 A number of investigators have called cohabitation “an incomplete institution.”17–19 That is, it is an arrangement not yet characterized by widely agreed upon norms of behavior or consistent expectations about role performance—certainly it does not involve vows of sexual exclusivity, as marriage does. If the role socialization hypothesis is correct, then we should observe higher levels of sexual risk behavior among individuals who are cohabiting than among those who are married. In the current study, we consider how coresidential unions, including marriage, are associated with risky sexual behavior. We examine the sexual behavior of a nationally representative sample of men who have been followed since late adolescence, and focus on behavior when they were in their middle to late 30s. This is a key age range, since it is a period when risk behavior has typically declined to low levels;1,2 furthermore, because age and marriage are correlated,12 holding the age-group constant is an analytic advantage for isolating associations between union status and sexual risk behavior. The use of longitudinal data allows us to emulate some of the best studies on marriage and substance use. These researchers employed a longitudinal design to better understand the selection hypothesis.6–12 In addition, because these data include information on cohabitation as well as marriage, we are able to test both the role socialization and monitoring hypotheses.