Women’s family choices have impact on later health

Not having children, having five or more children, giving birth in adolescence, and spacing pregnancies less than 18 months apart could be detrimental to a woman’s health later in life, researchers said on Tuesday.

In addition, though women have a harder time conceiving after 40, those who do seem to have fewer medical problems as they age.

“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 socioeconomic status,” said Professor Emily Grundy of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

In research funded by Britain’s Economic and Social Research Council, Grundy and her team used three separate sets of data from Britain and the United States on women born in 1911 or later to assess the impact of having children on their risk of death and poor health.

“We got consistent results using these three data sets,” Grundy said in an interview.

To account for the better health seen in women who gave birth after the age of 40, Grundy speculated that “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.”

Short intervals between births had negative health impacts on both mothers and fathers, which research suggests may be due to the physiological and psychosocial stresses of having children very close in age.

“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,” said Grundy.

The research also shows stable relationships contribute to long-term help in both sexes, although women many not always realize it.

When women were asked to assess their health, married women reported poorer health than single women. But Grundy said mortality rates are higher for unmarried women.

“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,” she added.

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