I have to agree - that all is way, way too convenient. So the only women who benefit, it sounds like, are married ones who space their children in a certain way? Where are the variables? Where does domestic violence enter? Unplanned children? Disabled children? And let's not ignore the fact that statistically speaking, couples who never have children enjoy much, much better marriages than those that do.

I'm not buying this one.

I don't buy it either. Not only does it sound too convenient, it just focuses on one of the any variables influencing a woman's health. What about lifestyle? Exercise? Diet? Family background? Stress level? What exactly do they mean by "poor health"? It's a bit vague. Imagine you look at traffic accident statistics and find out red-haired people have more accidents than brown or blond-haired people. Does it mean that being a redhead makes you a worse driver?

"At the other end of the motherhood age scale, this study reveals that women who have a child over the age of 40 experience better health in later life. But the reason, researchers suggest, is not necessarily that having children later makes women healthier rather that women who conceive at that age must already be in good health and feel fit enough to bring children up."

How come in THAT particular case, they have to play this advantage down by bringing up other factors? Is it because it doesn't fit with their theory that women who conform to the usually accepted standards are better off than those who don't? Maybe I'm paranoid, but I think I smell a bias.

To be fair I bet they don't separate those who are childless because they want to be and those who can't have children who desperately want them........

Could those that biologically can't have children be more likely to suffer poor health from the stress or be more likely to have poor health anyway hence not being able to have children?

Parents are also more likely to be depressed than people who do not have children because there are fewer networks for families in the US and because children are now more of a financial liability than an asset.

And for those who have chosen not to have children? Simon said her study validates that their choice might just be the healthiest one of all.

"At least if you're going to do it," she says to those contemplating parenthood, "know what you're getting into."

Carrying a child to term is a body-forming change that throughout history, at least 80% of women experience. Breast tissue develops, hormones re-direct metabolic activity, and the senses become hyper-active. Of course examining data sets can be biased by cultural assumptions or even agendas, but I don't see why this study, which doesn't really suggest anything radical about non-mothers (and that, at least in cases of breast cancer rates has shown to be true due to breast development during pregnancy) should be dismissed so quickly. It seems, from the quote, that the most interesting bit of the research, that the economics of motherhood impacts health is both the most radical and the most useful. Teen mothers, presumably the majority who will go on to live in poverty or at working poor levels. Women who have babies 18 months or less apart, perhaps women who have been forced to do so in order to avoid too many years in the "mommy track" and of course, mothers of more than five children, which in developed countries usually indicates adherence to a strict patriarchial religion.

These are feminist issues--and yes, the marginalization of single women and women who choose not to give birth to children are also feminist issues, though it can get trapped in that "you're so self-indulgent, let's discuss my personal life and antedotes of other people's personal lives instead of discussing the systemic which informs the personal" kind of tract. By saying that, I'm not dismissing the good work (and work that needs to be repeated in our generation--20 something feminists) by consciousness raising groups which used the personal in order to identify how the patriachy and deep rooted sexism affected (affects) women (and men) because I do think that discussing the personal is political, I just mean that so many issue oriented discussion regarding women and social problems seem to fall into the "Lifestyles" section of the newspaper and the internet and that the art of looking at data is being ignored. We have to respect data--argue and look at methods--but still, use data in the defense of our causes.

Blessed Be

Whoa, from 1911 on? Is the lifestyle, diet, or maternal mortality rate today anything similar to women in 1911? What about marriages, employment, disease prevention and healthcare, and child mortality? I mean, WTF? How could anyone justify using data from 1911 to extrapolate about women today? -- unless I suppose they could think that all these social variables (and the biological ones, too, since they don't have anything to do with X and Y chromosomes) don't count. Who funds this crap?

I would like to add that most women who decide or happen to do things in a way that doesn't jive with dominant culture, are more likely to end up poor. for instance, having a baby very young without getting married tends to put women below the poverty line. being below the poverty line effects access to nutrition and healthcare. not to mention the most 'special' benefits are always reserved for WASP MEN.

Without reading the primary research, it's hard to sort out the quality of the findings. However, there are some evolutionary & biological factors here that no doubt play roles in the findings.
The best anthropological data shows that prior to sedentary agriculture, human females have had 2-4 children spaced 3-5years apart, between the ages of 16-18 and into their 30's. Babies got breastfed until 3-6 years old. These observation holds up across cultures & time, and are still the pattern in the few remaining hunter/ gatherers, and low-tech agriculturalists.
Most biological anthropologists believe that this represents the normative reproductive cycle to which our species is adapted. A few thousand years of modern culture can change the observed pattern, but will only be just starting to change the evolutionary pressures on women.
With sedentary agriculture & (later) the industrial revolution, Some big things happened that changed how many babies women had & how they cared for them. 1) alternative foods readily avaiable that allow earlier weaning & therefore shorter intervals between babies & 2) Less calorie expendature relative to the effort of getting food, leading to earlier menarche 3) working away from baby 4) THE PILL (or real reproductive choice).
Since pregnancy is highly demanding of a women's body, shorter intervals between babies usually means depleting Mom's biological reserves, particularly of calcium and iron. Long-term deficiencies in these lead to poor bone health & dentition - which is by itself a risk factor for poor overall health. Osteoarthritis & Osteoporosis are life shortening & quality of life reducing diseases. Also, early babies are harder on a woman's body, since she is not full developed.
As far as the negative effects of limiting pregnancies, many populational studies have linked more menses with higher risks of breast & ovarian cancers & chronic anemias. The reasons are still poorly understood, but probably have to do with the fact that when the fully realized cell differentiations that happen in our reproductive organs don't happen, or happen way off our evolutionary time-table, the cells are more prone to the errors which lead to tumors & cancers.
All that being said, recognizing the biologic effects that our lifestyles (by choice or necessity) have, is the first step to using our cultural resources to get better results. In other words, these findings should NOT justify some kind of social-darwinist-anti-feminist crap! They SHOULD serve to inform public health policy, however.

Holy correlation-as-causation, batman.

Having just reread the press release for the third time (the study appears unavailable even on the ESRC website), I'm not seeing "social-darwinist-anti-feminist crap". The results are presented as simple correlations, with the researchers suspecting an inherent sampling bias in the 40+ grouping. Although I'm a little concerned that their peer-review process seems quite weak, I'm not seeing any anti-feminism involved at all (one of the conclusions that can be drawn is that getting married immediately and churning out kids nonstop is quite unhealthy), and I'm a little disconcerted by what appears to be a rejection of a scientific study not on the basis of specific flaws in that study but because not all of the results are popular.

Not only that, but I'm reading things not remotely present in the linked page.

Quoting Samhita:

The study also found that marriage kept both women and men happier.

I mean what were even the motives of this study. Now see here you crazy independent women that don't want to get married or have kids, you are going to end up with health problems too!

Mandy:

Specifically, the study included women born in 1911 or later, as in, they've covered the lives of women between some unknown lower bound age (probably 50ish, if it's about "later life") to about 95. This isn't "using data from 1911". This is using current health data on people who happen to be that old (and it's a little difficult to check on the health of older people without including people who were born a long time ago).

Now, there is an interesting question as to whether adult lives spent single or married, childless or not, between 1940 and 1990 will bin the same way as between 1990 and 2040. If you want to hypothesize that the changes to social structure in the US and UK over the last 50 years have made it so much healthier to be single that this gap will disappear, that's fine -- but you're going to be waiting a while to prove it.

In the mean time, it would help if you made more of an effort to understand what the study was before bashing it so crudely.

The same applies to everyone else speculating about "variables" without so much as coming up with a mechanism by which those variables will generate statistically significant selection bias that invalidates the actual presented results (not a straw man about some hypothetical thing that could be implied by those results).

There's probably some value to pre-emptively coming up with answers to some of those hypotheticals to ward off future abuses of that study, but sheesh, people.

Zed- The same applies to everyone else speculating about "variables" without so much as coming up with a mechanism by which those variables will generate statistically significant selection bias that invalidates the actual presented results (not a straw man about some hypothetical thing that could be implied by those results).

How do you mean? Are you criticising people for not coming up with ways in which another study could test this studies conclusions by including extra 'variables' in the data analysis or not discussing how the proposed 'variables' affect the current results.

Furthermore, I don't deny that having people around you in supportive roles could definitely be good for your health. But what does marriage have to do with that?

If marriage is approached in any kind of healthy way, it should have everything to do with it. I have to agree with Zed on this one, Samhita; I think you're projecting a lot of personal issues into this. By the same token, I understand being troubled that they *only* reference marriage as a way of having a committed, supportive partner. Instead of asking "what does marriage have to do with that", maybe ask "why does marriage have to be the only societally-recognized way of conveying that?"

I think a lot more research -- that includes other variables -- needs to be done. However, this study seems to be more preoccupied with the ways in which women have children -- do you have a brood of squalling babies? did you have them within a few months of each other? Are you having them at the age of 15? I think we can all agree that these are less-than-healthy reproductive choices. While I still question the idea that the healthy *choice* of not having children (versus being forced not to have children) is the cause of health problems later on, I'm actually kind of glad that we're looking at a study that in effect says that the fundie idea of popping out as many children as possibel starting as soon as possible is just as unhealthy as choosing not to have children, if not moreso.

My first reactions to that story are that they're reversing cause and effect: Women with health problems are likelier to not have children than women in good health, because some of those health problems will render them infertile or . I suspect this overwhelms the number of "childfree" people, especially prior to widely available contraception.

So they are going all the way back to 1911 and this is supposed to mean something today? Sounds like crap to me. I am a married childless person who has quite a few friends that are also married and childless. We all work and will have retirement and social security and medical care so we won't live in poverty. Barring genetic predispositions or accidents I just don't see how one could say that our health won't be just as good as most people irregardless of gender.

chem_fem:

I'm a bit disturbed by the use of "there are so many variables, so there can't be any conclusions" argument. You can almost always find an additional variable that might apply to a general topic at hand, but the only thing relevant variable-wise to a criticism of a study is whether or not there is an undisclosed source of systemic bias in the result. So far, nobody mentioning the word variable has indicated why whichever variable is of interest is likely to introduce that bias.

For instance, Jeff's response (which I'll get to in a bit, since I also disagree with it) doesn't bother me: it's asserting a likelihood of selection bias not only among older women but among the younger as well. Whether or not that's the case, it is a reasonable question to raise. On the other hand, saying, "But domestic violence exists!" is about as useful as saying, "But what about Halley's Comet?" in terms of criticizing the conclusion of the study. Something along the lines of "For reason xxx it would seem that the difference in domestic violence rates between childrearing and childless couples dwarfs any health conclusions you could draw from this" would be something to talk about, for instance. But that step of coming up with a means of effect has to be taken for it to make any sense at all.

Jeff:

I'm having a bit of a problem with your conclusion here because I'm not aware of prevalent infertility issues that also increase mortality rates. Could you specify some? Even endometriosis has negligible morbidity.

Pat Blue:

You misunderstand statistical relevance. The study doesn't say that you, specifically, are going to drop dead soon. It says that they measured a whole lot of people who were similarly childless and found that a larger percent of them dropped dead earlier than a whole lot of other people who had children a certain way.

You and your friends may be statistical outliers. That's the reason why individual anecdotes don't constitute meaningful data.

Also, see my above comment about the 1911 thing. That's the oldest birthdate, not the date of the health data.

You can look for ways they might have screwed up the measurements, you can look for ways that there might have been bias issues, you can even accuse the researchers of out and out fabrication if you have evidence for it, but it's nonsensical to do so simply because you don't personally understand the exact mechanism for the discovered correlation.

Zed, the main variable I'm thinking of is questioning the reproductive motives of the women of the survey. For example, of the childless women, do you see a stronger relationship between health problems and the *inability* to have children as opposed to health problems and the choice to not have children. Similarly, while having children within 18 months of each other puts an incredible strain on a woman's body, I wonder if other pressures -- like feeling as though she needs to hurry up and have the number of kids she wants so that she spends as little time as possible raising small children, or if her husband/boyfriend is pushing her to have lots of babies quickly -- make these health problems worse.

And just to play devil's advocate, I wonder if societal pressures on women who have many children also hurt them. Samhita mentioned the social stigma against women who have no children; what about the social stigma against women who have eight or nine? Frankly, when I see a woman with a brood of children I can't help wanting to smack her and tell her a la Pandagon that her vagina is not a clown car. Does that sort of "holy crap my vagina aches in sympathy" reaction put extra pressure on women in that position? On the other hand, I'm not sure if there's a way to measure such a thing.

In related news, global warming is correlated with a reduction in the number of pirates in the last 200 years.

1. Women who are poor are more likely to not be able to afford children...or regular medical treatment.

2. Women who suffer from chronic life-threatening illnesses have more reason to find pregnancy a daunting prospect.

Two alternative explanations, and I didn't even have to think very hard.

Folks who say that childbirth extends women's lives have a hard time describing any mechanism by which it could, short of God's blessing on His obedient followers, or comparable horseshit.

Cheers,

TH

Andrea:

Measuring societal pressures is certainly problematic, though there's quite some merit in trying to subdivide "childless" into "intentionally childless" and "infertile/unmated". Actually, I'd be curious just to see the relative percentages that fall into each category. That's more in the category of "it would be nice if we had another study" rather than a problem with this one though.

Tom:

You need to take a few more steps there for me to be able to follow whatever it is that you're trying to describe.

1) seems to be "poverty correlates both a lower birth rate and a lower health rate", which would be an interesting thing to investigate except that I've never seen anyone demonstrate that poverty actually does correlate to a lower birth rate. In fact, I've generally seen it presented that the poor have more children, and the wealthy and well educated have fewer or none. Also, it presupposes that a much larger percentage of the study participants who did not have children were in poverty than those that did have children, which I find a little unlikely, given the economic costs of childraising.

2) seems to be an extreme variation of Jeff's suspicion of selection bias in younger women based on health... except that again, you need the bulk of the childless to be so for reasons of life-threatening illness, and have far fewer women with children ever develop life threatening illnesses, which also seems implausible.

As to mechanisms for extending health and lives, I can come up with a handful off the top of my head:

Hormonal shift.

Immune system alterations.

Creation of a social network focused on the child, not generally created to the same quality by the childless.

Care by the children for the parents in later life.

A reduction in stress in late life that more than offsets the stress of childraising. (Variation: a buoyant sense of satisfaction in late life generally not achieved by the childless.)

The mechanism wasn't a subject of the study, though, so it's somewhat irrelevant.

Just a thought:

The lower the income, the less access women have to birth control, resulting in larger families.

Also, the lower the income, the less access women have to health care, resulting in higher infertility rates. (Because viruses and other disorders that can cause infertility are more likely to go untreated. Not to mention the incredible cost--and lack of financial assistance--for fertility treatments.)

Which could mean this these findings could have less to do with family size and more to do with health care options and the all mighty dollar.

"Creation of a social network focused on the child, not generally created to the same quality by the childless."

I'm sorry, Zed, but it just doesn't hold water. Many people with children have a hard time finding sitters and the like because grandparents are still working, etc. That's why so many children are in day care. It wouldn't be necessary if there was a valuable social network around parents. Besides, childless people generally have a richer social life because they can have more activities outside the home. Of course, those are generalizations, but not more so than saying parents have a better social network around them.

"Care by the children for the parents in later life."

Have you seen the number of elderly people virtually abandoned by their kin? I seriously doubt most of them are childless.

"A reduction in stress in late life that more than offsets the stress of childraising. (Variation: a buoyant sense of satisfaction in late life generally not achieved by the childless.)"

Reduction of stress? How so? As far as the sense of satisfaction is concerned, I think there are many ways to lead a fulfilling life, raising children being only one of them.

The reason why teenage mothers and people who have a lot of children over a short period of time should have a poorer health is obvious enough (strain on the mother's body, lack of financial resources, etc.), but, as many people said above, there are many reasons why women don't have children and it is not necessarily a matter of choice. It is extremely vague to just point out that childless women have poorer health without at least distinguishing between childless women by choice and infertile women.

Zed - I'm a bit disturbed by the use of "there are so many variables, so there can't be any conclusions" argument. You can almost always find an additional variable that might apply to a general topic at hand, but the only thing relevant variable-wise to a criticism of a study is whether or not there is an undisclosed source of systemic bias in the result. So far, nobody mentioning the word variable has indicated why whichever variable is of interest is likely to introduce that bias.

Thanks Zed, I didn't want to comment until I really understood where you were coming from. The thing is that by the conclusions of this study are meaningless when taken in isolation. As Alon Levy rightly points out with the pirate example, you can correlate things that are completely unrelated (especially when the data covers a period of time so large as this study does, I mean there have been two world wars in that time).

I definitely see your point however where criticisms based on variables like domestic violence lead us astray of the real issues this study is tackling.

I think that we are very defensive as a result of media and often so called 'experts' using the results of one study to make statements that people can happily take as given when the system being studied is far more complex. Anyone that has written a review article or dissertation on work in their area of research can understand that even whole bodies of research undertaken over decades by many groups of researchers can be inconclusive. Even if the research in any given area is abundant it opens up the opportunity for those who cherry pick results to support any conclusion they wish and even then there is a lot of interpretation to skew the conclusions the make – Noer anyone? I believe if I try hard enough I could turn his stats into an article that support marrying career women.

This particular study is by no means enough evidence to guide people’s lives in any given direction but we are pretty used to people trying to do that.

I don’t know how well I have made this point so I’ll finish with this joke that sums it up well (from Mark Haddons ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night-time’) An economist, a logician, and a mathematician are riding in a train. Just after they have crossed the border into Scotland, they see through the window a brown cow standing parallel to the train.
The economist says, "Look, cows in Scotland are brown."
The logician says, "No, there are cows in Scotland of which at least one is brown."
The mathematician says, "No, there is at least one cow in Scotland, of which one side appears to be brown."

Respectfully, Samhita, I think you're projecting your personal issues onto this without cause.

Uh, I am a feminist writer. That is what I do, did I ever even claim to be writing subjectively?

Also, I just want to add that it is studies like this that are used and manipulated to perpetuate points of view, policy and action that reify normative understandings of a women's role in society. Research is strategic and political.

It seems to me that at times we hold up studies that support ideas we like as rock solid fact and dismiss as frivolous studies that support ideas not to our liking. Too many people do it and I think it is troubling.

I didn't get to read all the comments but did anyone address who ESRC is? Do you really think they have a political agenda? I don't know but it is worth investigating before simply dismissing their study.

"Also, I just want to add that it is studies like this that are used and manipulated to perpetuate points of view, policy and action that reify normative understandings of a women's role in society. Research is strategic and political." - Samhita

I agree, people selectively (mis)use data all the time; but that doesn't mean that the data from the study is flawed. Could it be that parents are happy not because of society tells them they should be, but because of some amount of joy they took from giving birth to and raising a child? (note: I myself never want to have children)

On the marriage issue, if the study has said that couples in domestic partnerships (instead of the term marriage) were happier, would you have given the study more credence? Stripping away one's thoughts on the institution of marriage and the patriarchy, couldn't being committed to someone make you happier?

Allowing for the fact that the only part of the study I have seen is what is posted here, I don't see anything that cause for concern. Look through some of the wording and see what the data actually says (as opposed to what you are afraid others use it for). There might actually be something there to learn from.

Okay, I am officially sick and tired of all this bogus reliance on "health" concerns as a way to browbeat people - especially women - into behaving in ways that please the patriarchy.

I mean, the research on its own could, I suppose, have some purpose. Like, I could see how accumulating all that data could be a jumping-off place for figuring out how childbearing effects women's bodies, and how to best accommodate that (i.e. if a woman decides to have babies less than 18 months apart, what can she do to help protect her health - basically a way for medicine to /support/ women making their own choices). But as you say, the media focus on childless women (okay, Vanessa mentioned this in her post about this which seems to have since been deleted) reveals how this research will be used in the culture at large - as a way to bash on childfree women, to try to use "health concerns" as a way to guilt them into toeing the gender role line.

It's no different than all the faux-concern about obesity. Admittedly some people really are concerned about the health effects of obesity, and that's all well and good. But in our larger culture, the "health concerns" about obesity have given way too many people free license to pass judgment on overweight and obese people, under the insincere auspices of "health".

I'll believe the average person is /that/ concerned about fat people's health as soon as I start hearing people shrieking, "Omigod, I can't believe Kate Moss was doing cocaine! It's so UNHEALTHY!!"

The thing that has always bothered me about these types of studies that look at women from as far back as the early 1900's and look at health, life expectancy, etc. is that since women born from that time were expected to get married and have kids it is very likely the only ones who didn't were those who had health problems to begin with. Of course they won't live at long. I don't think that data is very useful for today.

People at another website have been interpreting your evaluation of the above study, especialy this line

"Furthermore, I don't deny that having people around you in supportive roles could definitely be good for your health. But what does marriage have to do with that?"

Which of the following comments if any matches your feelings

1 - In asking her rhetorical question at the end, her implication is that marriage is NOT a means of having people in supportive roles around you.

or 2) which is my comment

I don't think she is implying that marriage is not a means of having people in supportive roles around you, she is simply saying that the support you would find in a healthy marriage would still be there if you took away the marriage part(although maybe we should ask her). Like I told my girlfriend of 7 years - marriage for me wouldn't bring anything to our relationship that you don't already bring, just being who you are-

ie)it is not essential.

In "Healing Anxiety and Depression" by Dr. Amen he cites a very different study which found the order of life happiness to be:
1) married men were happiest
2) single women
3) single men
4) married women AT THE BOTTOM (least happy)

He surmised the married woman's unhappiness might be due to unbalanced expectations for working a full time job but doing over 75% of housework and parenting, receiving less pay for work, etc. (I know I'm a helluva lot happier divorced than I was married, lol)