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
CDC presents recent trends in health behaviors of US adults
(HealthDay)—In 2008 to 2010, the prevalence of key health behaviors among U.S. adults varied, with about one in five adults current smokers and 62.1 percent overweight or obese, according to a report presented ...
Health
1 hour ago |
not rated yet |
0
Americans still making unhealthy choices, CDC reports
(HealthDay)—The overall health of Americans isn't improving much, with about six in 10 people either overweight or obese and large numbers engaging in unhealthy behaviors like smoking, heavy drinking or ...
Health
1 hour ago |
not rated yet |
0
US court strikes down Arizona 20-week abortion ban
A federal court in San Francisco Tuesday struck down Arizona's ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Health
1 hour ago |
5 / 5 (1) |
0
Aggressive behavior linked specifically to secondhand smoke exposure in childhood
Children who are exposed to secondhand smoke in early childhood are more likely to grow up to physically aggressive and antisocial, regardless of whether they were exposed during pregnancy or their parents have a history ...
Health
4 hours ago |
1 / 5 (1) |
0
Most elite athletes believe doping substances are effective in improving performance
Most elite athletes consider doping substances "are effective" in improving performance, while recognising that they constitute cheating, can endanger health and entail the obvious risk of sanction. At the same time, the ...
Health
5 hours ago |
not rated yet |
0
Reducing caloric intake delays nerve cell loss
Activating an enzyme known to play a role in the anti-aging benefits of calorie restriction delays the loss of brain cells and preserves cognitive function in mice, according to a study published in the May ...
CDC says high number of public pools contain microbes
(HealthDay)—Three-quarters of public schools in the metro Atlanta area contain microbes, including bacteria indicating the presence of fecal matter, according to research published in the May 17 issue of ...
Researchers find genetic risk factor for pulmonary fibrosis
A paper recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine and co-written by physicians and scientists at the University of Colorado School of Medicine finds that an important genetic risk factor for pulmonary fibros ...
Biomarkers discovered for inflammatory bowel disease
Using the Department of Defense Serum Repository (DoDSR), University of Cincinnati (UC) researchers have identified a number of biomarkers for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which could help with earlier diagnosis and ...
Changing cancer's environment to halt its spread
By studying the roles two proteins, thrombospondin-1 and prosaposin, play in discouraging cancer metastasis, a trans-Atlantic research team has identified a five-amino acid fragment of prosaposin that significantly reduces ...
Global recommendations on child medicine
Transparent information on the evidence supporting global recommendations on paediatric medicines should be easily accessible in order to help policy makers decides on what drugs to include in their national drug lists, according ...