Research-backed
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Did you ever hear anyone say, ‘Parenting is a cake walk’? Maybe not! Parenting is all about learning a new lesson every day, and as they say, it’s a series of ‘trial and errors’. As a parent myself, I most often sway on the extreme ends of the spectrum.
There are days when I go to the extent of proclaiming, “God, why did I ever have kids”, and then there are days when I feel, “God, I am so blessed to have kids, what would life be without them.”
You see, kids bring about an emotional upheaval in your life. While they may have the power to turn your life upside down, they can also overwhelm you with love and affection. The good news is that if you have kids, you might just live longer. Wondering how on earth will having kids help one live longer? See what this study has to say.
A study, Payback time? Influence of having children on mortality in old age (1), done at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden suggests that being a parent makes you live longer. The researchers used the National Registry data of Sweden of 1.4 million parents from 1911 to 1925 to conduct the study.
They observed that at 60 years of age, fathers with children lived two years longer than men without children, and mothers lived one and a half years longer than non-mothers, at that age.
The study also indicated that at the age of 80, fathers were expected to live for another 7.7 years, while men without children could live seven years. At 80, women could live for 9.5 years, while childless women had a life expectancy of 8.9 years.
The study observed lower death risk in parents with at least one child, than their childless counterparts, and the death risk was seen to be lower in men than women.
The researchers studied the relationship between the lifespan and parenthood and mapped it to see if it grew with age or not. Factors such as education were also considered to see the variation in the death risk among parents and non-parents and if it increased with age. For example, men without children had 17.7 percent death-risk at age 90, and fathers of the same age had a death risk of 16.2 percent.
However, Dr. Modig, the principal investigator of the study, said that more research was required to investigate other influencing factors such as the kids’ education levels affecting parents’ lifespan.
This study published in the Journal of Epidemiology And Community Health said that, “At 60 years of age, the difference in life expectancy was two years for men and one and a half years for women.”
The study indicated the following reasons for increased life expectancy of parents:
- Parents with kids are low-risk takers and were healthier than couples without kids
- Parents with kids are taken care when old
- Children provide emotional and financial support to the aging parents
It can be safely said that no matter how hard parenting may seem to be, the clouds will pass. Your kids grow up and one fine day they are young and mature enough to support you, take care of you and stand by at all times. They are in fact adding more years to your growing age. Happy parenting!
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