14 DAY TRIAL // A recent study shows how motherhood can influence a woman's life. Scientists have primarily found that mothers who give birth to children within a less than 18 months period after a previous delivery, teenager mothers, mothers who have five or more children are more prone to die prematurely and develop both physical and mental health disorders earlier in life.
But this should not make women give up on the motherhood idea, because the study also showed that childless women are as much exposed to the above mentioned risks as their already mothers counterparts. The research was carried out by a team of researchers from the Center for Population Studies, School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. The study involved data of women born since 1911 in the USA and Great Britain.
Professor Emily Grundy, who was involved in the study, stated: "We already know quite of lot about the impact of a person's very early life or their socio-economic history on health and mortality in later life. But, in this study we were able to analyze the long-term health implications of a person's partnership and parenting experiences while taking into account education and other indicators of socio-economic status as well."
Results showed that women who have from 2 to 4 children are the safest when it comes to premature death risk and health disorder likely to appear later in life. On the other hand, childless women are 20% more likely to experience death after they turn 50 as compared to their counterparts who have already delivered 2 offsprings into this world.
Findings of the ample study also found that teenage women who go for early motherhood, before the age of 21, have a higher risk of experiencing poor mental health and neurodegenerative conditions later in life. 11% of the teenage mothers are more likely to suffer from depression symptoms after being 53 of age. Women who decided to have kids later in life, when the time was right, had only a 7% risk of depression.
"What's particularly interesting here is that our findings indicate poorer health outcomes for women who have children before age 21 regardless of their socio-economic circumstances in childhood," pointed out Professor Emily Grundy.
Short births intervals were also found to have a negative impact on the health of both the parents of babies born within a less than 18 months period. The key-factor which triggers premature death and health disorders in mothers and fathers of children delivered practically one after the other is closely connected to stress, believe the researchers.
"We show, for example, that having a short birth interval of less than 18 months between children carries higher risks of mortality and poor health. That finding is particularly interesting because, to our knowledge, it's the first time that later health consequences of birth intervals have been investigated in a developed country population," stated Prof. Grundy.
Surprisingly, women to give birth to babies later in life, after they turn 40, showed the best health outcomes of motherhood. They were found to have a reduced risk of premature death and proved to be 30% less likely to develop long-term conditions when elders. "Probably people don't decide to have children at that age unless they feel fit and healthy enough to be confident of being able to look after them," the leader of the study added.
"We have shown that partnership and parenting histories are important influences on later life health and, in many cases, are as influential as the effects of a person's socio-economic status. Overall, these findings clearly have important implications for projections of the health status of the older population as well as contributing to our understanding of life course influences on health," Dr. Grundy concluded.