Breakpoint: Relationships are key to long-term health

Since 1938, the Harvard Study of Adult Development has followed two groups of men: 456 boys from Boston's most troubled families and roughest neighborhoods, and 268 Harvard students selected by a hygiene professor for their particular likelihood of becoming healthy, well-adjusted adults. The focus of this longitudinal study is to determine which factors best predict a long, healthy life.

Researchers who have been following these young people for 80 years have maintained an astounding participation rate of 84%. They've made home visits, spoken to their parents and siblings, tracked their health checks, and followed their marriages and careers. Now following a second generation of participants, the study has produced a wealth of important data. But in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, director Dr. Robert Waldinger and deputy director Dr. Mark Schultz pointed to the factors that contribute most to physical health, mental health, and longevity.

“Intimate personal connections are so important that we could take all 85 years of Harvard research and boil it down to one principle to live by, one life investment that has been backed up by a variety of other studies: good relationships keep us healthier and happier. That's it. If you want to make one resolution to ensure your health and happiness, it's to nurture warm relationships of all kinds.”

In fact, the importance of relationships to long-term health increased as participants got older: For older adults in particular, “loneliness is twice as unhealthy as obesity, and chronic loneliness increases the odds of death in a given year by 26 percent,” Waldinger and Schultz continued.

Modern life puts significant strain on our most important relationships, especially family ones. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly four in ten adults ages 25 to 54 are not married or living with their partner, and the average age of marriage continues to rise. The United States is also the world leader in single-parent households, with nearly one in four American children living with one parent and no other adults.

Given this data and the fact that Americans spend an average of seven hours a day looking at screens, it's not surprising that roughly 58% of adults report feeling lonely, including 79% of 18-24 year olds.

In fact, these trends are shaping expectations: According to a Pew Research Center survey, 98% of parents say it is extremely or somewhat important that their children become financially independent and have a job they love, but only 21% say it is extremely or very important that their children get married, and only 20% say it is extremely or very important that their children have children.

Given the overwhelming evidence of the long-term value of marriage to both individuals and society, this is not just an unfortunate development; it is a denial of reality: because human beings are made in the image of the Triune God, relationships are as much a part of our created design as eating, sleeping, working, and breathing.

In his masterful essay, “The Weight of Glory,” C.S. Lewis argued that this relational aspect of human nature holds eternal significance.

“It is possible for any one of us to think too much about our own glory in the next life, but it is almost impossible for us to think too much about the glory of our neighbor. The load, the weight, the burden of my neighbor's glory must be borne on my back every day, a load so heavy that only humility can bear it and the backbone of the arrogant will break. Living in a society of possible gods and goddesses is a serious business. We need to remember that the most boring and uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature that you would now love to worship, or that may become such a horror and depravity that you would only encounter in your nightmares, if at all. All day long, to one degree or another, we are helping one another toward one of these destinations. In light of these overwhelming possibilities, we should conduct every interaction with one another, every friendship, every love, every play, every politics, with the reverence and prudence that they deserve. There is no such thing as a normal human being. You have never spoken to a normal human being. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations, these are mortal things, their lives are to us the lives of gnats. But it is the immortals with whom we joke, work with, marry, scorn, and exploit, the immortal horrors, or the eternal splendor.

After all, staying in your marriage, raising your children, investing in your church, and maintaining lifelong friendships may be the most important things you do for yourself and others, today and forever.

from Breakpoint, July 8, 2024 (First published January 30, 2023) Reprinted with permission from the Colson Center. breakpoint.