Second, in our definition of marriage we combined couples who were officially married and those cohabiting with common children. To confirm our findings with a “narrower” definition, we repeated our main analyses including only couples who were legally married. Using our standard covariates (model 2), the protective effect of marriage so defined on the risk for alcohol use disorder changed only slightly and was modestly stronger in men (hazard ratio=0.34, 95% CI=0.33–0.36) and slightly weaker in women (hazard ratio=0.32, 95% CI=0.30–0.35).
