Stress, Mental Health, Marriage and Parenthood: Trends, Correlates, and Consequences
This project would collect new national survey data, but mainly reanalyze existing national data, on the mental health correlates of being married and being a parent during child-rearing ages. It would take advantage of several recent national surveys in which mental health related data were collected from surveys conducted by the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), the University of Maryland, Monitoring the Future from the University of Michigan, and the General Social Survey (GSS) among others. In addition, funds are requested to repeat one key health question (about feeling rushed) on the 2004 GSS to track trend and
marriage/parent correlates of this benchmark stress measure. All of these activities would be coordinated and integrated into data sets that could easily be accessed on our website, www.webuse.umd.edu, which allows for immediate statistically-interactive Internet access. The most promising results would then form the basis of a proposal to NIH, Sloan Foundation or other funding agencies interested in the problems and improvements of marriage and parenthood.