Multiple Identities: Examining Gender and Marital Status Differences in Distress

Based upon assumptions that the social self is comprised of major role-identities and that role-identities reduce psychological distress, this paper examines the mental health advantage of married and unmarried men relative to comparable women as a function of multiple-role occupancy. Panel data from surveys of!, 106 adult heads of household in Chicago and 720 adults in New Haven are utilized. Possession of multiple role-identities (up to 6 in Chicago, 8 in New Haven) does significantly reduce distress in both samples. But identity summation does not consistently reduce gender or gender by marital status differences in distress. Further exploration revealed that men and women appear to experience equivalent levels of distress when they hold the same numbers and types of roles. When sex differences do occur, they appear to be a function of employment rather than of marriage, contrary to popular belief. Although structural inequalities in role occupancy appear to produce status differences in distress, future research will require deliberately stratified samples to adequately test this hypothesis.