Marriage Findings: Dubious Tool of Compulsory Heterosexuality?

You be the judge. Check out this, uh, thought-provoking article on CareerBuilder.com, entitled “Are Married People More Successful?”
An examination of myths and realities relating to marital status and career success, the piece sums up “the case for marriage” thus: “On balance, research indicates that marriage has a strong positive effect on career success and life fulfillment — especially for men. It also shows that women no longer need to sacrifice their education and career aspirations to improve their chances of getting married.”
It seems wedded individuals are paid more, less likely to use drugs and alcohol, viewed as being more stable and reliable, and generally live longer than single people. Apparently smug marrieds are smug for a reason!
Is it just me, or is our culture more obsessed with marriage and breeding right now than it has been in quite some time? I’m not saying these findings are bullshit, necessarily, and I’m definitely not knocking marriage and family, but I’m just personally reeeaaally tired of feeling like they are being aggressively hyped and promoted as mandatory life goals.
It’s this cultural climate that makes me dubious of the study’s finding that “[f]orty percent [of married people] say they are ‘very happy’ with their lives, compared to 25 percent of single people.” I wonder if this discrepancy is solely a result of the fact that married people enjoy “better mental health” than single peeps do (as the article reports), or if it might also be related to the ubiquity of cultural images and messages that suggest that a person’s life is not complete until he or she has found someone to share it with.
Then again, I’m a raving lunatic. But I imagine I’m not alone in objecting to the phrasing of one of the article’s more poorly articulated conclusions:
“Thanks to wives’ nagging, married men also are less likely to catch colds and more likely to monitor blood pressure, cholesterol and weight than their single counterparts.”
Yes, that’s right. Nagging. Because where would compulsory heterosexuality be without restrictive gender roles? Ah, good times.
Thanks to my muse, Gary, for the article.
–Contributed by Lauren