Yours, Mine, and Ours: Childhood Disadvantage and Late-Life Social Connectedness in Marital Dyads

Life course theory describes each person's trajectory as intertwined with others, with the family serving as a key conduit through which resources and experiences, including those in childhood, are exchanged. We apply the framework of "linked long arms" that extends the linked lives perspective within intimate dyads, allowing for the early-life experiences and resources of one partner to affect both their own experiences and resources and those of their partner later in life. Using dyadic models with couple-level data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (N=1,214 couples), we estimate how childhood disadvantage is associated with one's own and one's partner's later-life social connectedness. Results show that people carry the influence of childhood socioeconomic and family disadvantages, but not that of violence, into their family social lives many decades later. Older women who experienced disadvantage in childhood, particularly low parental education and family unhappiness, report having fewer friends and fewer confidants, less frequent socializing, and lower participation in community organizations than others. Husbands of women whose families were unhappy report fewer friends than others, but we see no other spillovers from the wife's early disadvantage to the husband's later social life. In contrast, the wives of men who experienced disadvantage in childhood, especially lower parental education, report fewer friends and less frequent formal community participation. Older adults who grew up in families that were socially, economically, or emotionally disadvantaged show diminished late-life social well-being, and often so do their spouses, with women particularly sensitive.