Shared interests or sexual conflict? Spousal age gap, women's wellbeing and fertility in rural Tanzania
Shared interests or sexual conflict? Spousal age gap, women's wellbeing and fertility in rural Tanzania
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DOI：
10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2020.08.009
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发表时间：
2021-02-16
影响因子：
5.1
通讯作者：
Urassa, Mark
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Lawson, David W.;Schaffnit, Susan B.;Urassa, Mark
年长男子与年轻女子结婚在不同文化中很常见。一方面，丈夫年长的婚姻可能符合两性的利益，这一结论与报道的择偶偏好的性别差异大致一致。另一方面，如果资历使男子能够在利益冲突中发挥主导作用，则只有男子可能从这种婚姻中受益，而妇女则要付出代价。事实上，在公共卫生领域，配偶年龄差距过大通常被视为“病态”，既是对妇女有害的两性不平等的原因，也是其后果。我们调查这些替代模型的配偶年龄差距使用的数据从横断面调查的妇女在姆万扎，坦桑尼亚西北部（n = 993）。与配偶年龄差距是性冲突的产物这一概念相一致，妇女结婚时的年龄差距通常比所称的理想年龄差距大。然而，调整潜在的混乱，配偶年龄差距与生育率或离婚风险无关。此外，与少数同龄或妻子年长的婚姻相比，丈夫年长的婚姻中妇女的心理健康和家庭决策自主性更高。除此之外，在绝大多数丈夫年龄较大的婚姻中，配偶年龄差距的大小与妇女福祉的衡量标准无关。总之，这些研究结果表明，丈夫年长的婚姻并不影响婚姻的稳定性，相对较大的配偶年龄差距既不是特别昂贵，也不利于妇女，而替代的社会人口因素在推动妇女的福祉和生殖成功的变化在这种情况下更重要。我们的研究结果既不支持互惠互利的模型，也不支持对配偶年龄差距的病态概念化。我们的结论是，鼓励进化人类科学家在未来的婚姻和交配研究中更充分地参与性冲突模型，并建议公共卫生学者考虑对配偶年龄差异进行更中立的解释。
The marriage of older men to younger women is common across cultures. On one hand, husband-older marriage may serve the interests of both sexes, a conclusion broadly consistent with reported gender differences in mate preferences. On the other hand, men alone may benefit from such marriages at a cost to women if seniority enables men to exert dominance in conflicts of interest. Indeed, in public health large spousal age gaps are generally deemed "pathological", both as a cause and consequence of gender inequalities harmful to women. We investigate these alternative models of spousal age gap using data from a cross-sectional survey of women in Mwanza, northwestern Tanzania (n = 993). Consistent with the notion that spousal age gaps are a product of sexual conflict, women typically married with a larger age gap than stated ideals. However, adjusting for potential confounds, spousal age gap was not associated with fertility or the risk of divorce. Furthermore, women's mental health and autonomy in household decision-making was higher in husband-older marriages compared to rare cases of same-age or wife-older marriage. Beyond this comparison, the magnitude of spousal age gaps was unrelated to either measure of women's wellbeing among the overwhelming majority of marriages where the husband was older. Together these findings suggest husband-older marriage does not influence marital stability, relatively large spousal age gaps are neither especially costly nor beneficial to women, and that alternative sociodemographic factors are more important in driving variation in women's wellbeing and reproductive success in this context. Our results support neither a model of mutual benefits, nor a pathological conceptualization of spousal age gaps. We conclude by both encouraging evolutionary human scientists to engage more fully with models of sexual conflict in future studies of marriage and mating, and suggesting that public health scholars consider more neutral interpretations of spousal age differences.