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Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks

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Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks

#31

Post by seneca »

cauliflower2718 wrote: post #11
mmastrac wrote: post #4

"Emotional support networks among men shrink by 50% between the ages of 30 and 90, reflecting an average decrease from two to one emotional support providers" Or, to rephrase, "Men grow up with an average of two emotional support providers and lose one in mid to late adulthood"

Is this to be interpreted as most men have two parents, and in adulthood one of them dies? Or, men have a parent they are close with plus a spouse, and then the parent dies?

I interpreted it as the latter being the most common pattern. I'm sure it differs fairly widely though.

Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks

#32

Post by OldGuyInTheClub »

bombcar wrote: post #10
marssaxman wrote: post #3

> reflecting an average decrease from two to one What this really seems to be saying is more like "men generally don't have emotional support networks".

This is why there’s the joke that the miracle wasn’t Christ rising from the dead, it was having 12 close personal friends in his 30s.

Were they friends or his downline?

Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks

#33

Post by viraptor »

There are programs/orgs that try to address that. In Australia for example there's https://mensshed.org/ , https://dadlan.au/ and probably a few others I'm not familiar with. If someone's aware of the US equivalents this may be a good place to link them.

Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks

#35

Post by standardUser »

d1sxeyes wrote: post #19

> This research was limited by its all-male, predominantly White sample and its reliance on self-reported data. Additionally, the quality of emotional support and its impacts on well-being were not assessed. So: we don’t know if it’s just men, we don’t know if it’s true for all ethnicities or just white men, it’s a reduction from two to one, I don’t mean to be dismissive, but someone got funding for this?

Middle-aged white men have long had the highest suicide rates, so that may explain the narrow focus.

Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks

#36

Post by passwordoops »

dijit wrote: post #9

Only half? Thats a really wide range too. By 90 it is increasingly likely your spouse and close friends are mostly dead. My emotional support network consists of two people, my long-term partner and my parent(s). My long term partner loves me conditionally (and don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that this is abnormal). Only your parents might love you unconditionally, and they have a pretty decent head start wit…

> My long term partner loves me conditionally

I've come to learn the only unconditional love is that between parent-child

Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks

#37

Post by w10-1 »

293 Harvard men, last sampled in 2010, with “network” sizes of 2…

Pseudo-science is dressing up a few true facts as a vehicle for opinion. It’s typically relatively harmless, except perhaps when it happens to reflect a regressive zeitgeist.

My own experience suggests all men take a lot more care on this point, but the effect of that been mostly overwhelmed by increased competition.

Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks

#38

Post by wayoverthecloud »

I am doing my PhD and occasionally my supervisor and I come across papers that don't have any meaningful results/statistics but you gotta publish somehow. Like, they conclude with "We observed that the latency can be reduced by 2x-300x." I feel like the group that did this research spent a decade, and their supervisor was like, well, we gotta publish something. Choose an age interval that fits the whole data. 30-90.

Re: Emotional support across adulthood: A 60-year study of men’s social networks

#39

Post by purple-leafy »

dijit wrote: post #9

Only half? Thats a really wide range too. By 90 it is increasingly likely your spouse and close friends are mostly dead. My emotional support network consists of two people, my long-term partner and my parent(s). My long term partner loves me conditionally (and don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that this is abnormal). Only your parents might love you unconditionally, and they have a pretty decent head start wit…

This is sadly true, my long term partner left me last night. I really thought it would go the distance, and I’m almost not sad - it’s just typical
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