More signs of the benefits of marriage?
There's new evidence about the benefits of marriage. Women who are married suffer less partner abuse, substance abuse or post-partum depression around the time of pregnancy than women who are cohabitating or do not have a partner, a new study has found.
Unmarried women who lived with their partners for less than two years were more likely to experience at least one of the three problems. However, these problems became less frequent the longer the couple lived together.
The problems were most common among women who were separated or divorced, especially if the couple parted less than 12 months before their child was born.
Dr. Marcelo Urquia, an epidemiologist at the Centre for Research on Inner City Health at St. Michael's Hospital, said that as more children are being born to unmarried parents, he wanted to delve deeper into the risks and benefits of not just single vs. cohabitating parents but the various kinds of relationships.
The results of his study were published today in the American Journal of Public Health.
"What is new in this study is that for the first time we looked at the duration of unmarried cohabitation and found the shorter the cohabitation, the more likely women were to suffer intimate-partner violence, substance abuse or post-partum depression around the time of conception, pregnancy and delivery," Dr. Urquia said. "We did not see that pattern among married women, who experienced less psychosocial problems regardless of the length of time they lived together with their spouses."
Dr. Urquia said knowing the differences between married and cohabitating partners was important as the number of children born outside marriages rises. Thirty per cent of children in Canada are born to unmarried couples, up from 9 per cent in 1971. In several European countries, births out of wedlock outnumber those to married couples.
Dr. Urquia found about one in 10 married women (10.6 per cent) suffered partner or substance abuse or post-partum depression in his study of data from the 2006-07 Canadian Maternity Experiences Survey, a nationwide sample of 6,421 childbearing women compiled by the Public Health Agency of Canada.
He found 20 per cent of women who were cohabitating but not married suffered from at least one of those three psycho-social conditions. The figure rose to 35 per cent for single women who had never married and to 67 per cent for those who separated or divorced in the year before birth.
Dr. Urquia said it was unclear whether problems such as partner or substance abuse were the cause or result of separations.
Journal reference:
American Journal of Public Health
Provided by
St. Michael's Hospital
-
Intimate abuse study finds clear links with poor health and calls for holistic primary care approach
Jul 06, 2009 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Study finds few well-being advantages to marriage over cohabitation
Jan 18, 2012 |
not rated yet |
0
-
'Never married' men still more likely to die from cancer
Oct 14, 2011 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Marriage is good for the health: global study
Dec 15, 2009 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Canadian teen moms run higher risk of abuse, depression than older mothers
Jun 18, 2012 |
not rated yet |
0
-
Motion perception revisited: High Phi effect challenges established motion perception assumptions
Apr 23, 2013 |
3 / 5 (2) |
2
-
Anything you can do I can do better: Neuromolecular foundations of the superiority illusion (Update)
Apr 02, 2013 |
4.5 / 5 (11) |
5
-
The visual system as economist: Neural resource allocation in visual adaptation
Mar 30, 2013 |
5 / 5 (2) |
9
-
Separate lives: Neuronal and organismal lifespans decoupled
Mar 27, 2013 |
4.9 / 5 (8) |
0
-
Sizing things up: The evolutionary neurobiology of scale invariance
Feb 28, 2013 |
4.8 / 5 (10) |
14
-
Classical and Quantum Mechanics via Lie algebras
Apr 15, 2011
- More from Physics Forums - Independent Research
More news stories
Prenatal exposure to traffic is associated with respiratory infection in young children
Living near a major roadway during the prenatal period is associated with an increased risk of respiratory infection developing in children by the age of 3, according to a new study from researchers in Boston.
Health
1 hour ago |
not rated yet |
0
Combined wood and tobacco smoke exposure increases risk and symptoms of COPD
People who are consistently exposed to both wood smoke and tobacco smoke are at a greater risk for developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and for experiencing more frequent and severe symptoms of the disease, ...
Health
1 hour ago |
not rated yet |
0
Having a nighttime critical care physician in the ICU doesn't improve patient outcomes, research finds
With little evidence to guide them, many hospital intensive care units (ICUs) have been employing critical care physicians at night with the notion it would improve patients' outcomes. However, new results from a one-year ...
Health
1 hour ago |
not rated yet |
0
Study finds air pollution and noise pollution increase cardiovascular risk
Both fine-particle air pollution and noise pollution may increase a person's risk of developing cardiovascular disease, according to German researchers who have conducted a large population study, in which both factors were ...
Health
1 hour ago |
not rated yet |
0
Early IV nutrition for certain patients does improve survival or reduce ICU length of stay
The early (within 24 hours of intensive care unit [ICU] admission) provision of intravenous nutrition among critically ill patients with contraindications (a condition that makes a particular procedure potentially inadvisable) ...
Health
1 hour ago |
not rated yet |
0
Do salamanders hold the solution to regeneration?
Salamanders' immune systems are key to their remarkable ability to regrow limbs, and could also underpin their ability to regenerate spinal cords, brain tissue and even parts of their hearts, scientists have ...
Scientists identify molecular trigger for Alzheimer's disease
Researchers have pinpointed a catalytic trigger for the onset of Alzheimer's disease – when the fundamental structure of a protein molecule changes to cause a chain reaction that leads to the death of neurons ...
Study shows premature birth interrupts vital brain development processes leading to reduced cognitive abilities
Researchers from King's College London have for the first time used a novel form of MRI to identify crucial developmental processes in the brain that are vulnerable to the effects of premature birth. This new study, published ...
Leading explanations for whooping cough's resurgence don't stand up to scrutiny
Whooping cough has exploded in the United States and some other developed countries in recent decades, and many experts suspect ineffective childhood vaccines for the alarming resurgence.
CT radiation risk less than risk of examination indicator
(HealthDay)—For young adults needing either a chest or abdominopelvic computed tomography (CT), the short-term risk of death from underlying morbidity is greater than the long-term risk of radiation-induced ...
Music therapy reduces anxiety, use of sedatives for patients receiving ventilator support
New research suggests that for some hospitalized ICU patients on mechanical ventilators, using headphones to listen to their favorite types of music could lower anxiety and reduce their need for sedative medications.