Parenthood as prevention

Reports that parenthood is a great suicide preventive in married women. Team of Norwegian physicians enrolled a million women in a study and collected information from them over the next fifteen years; Link between number of children and likelihood of suicide; Reported in the 'Archives of Psychiatry,' volume 50, number 2; Emile Durkheim's suggestion of the association a century ago.

By PT Staff, published on July 01, 1993

WOMEN AND SUICIDE

Parenthood has many charms. And here's one more. It's a great suicide preventive in married women. So reports a team of Norwegian physicians who enrolled a million women in a study and collected information about them over the next 15 years. The married women turned out to have a lower suicide rate than the unmarried. No surprise-almost every study has shown that single women have a higher suicide rate than their married sisters.

What was distinct was that among married women, the more children they had, the lower their rate of suicide. Women with six or more kids had one-fifth the okayed rate of childless women. Parenthood was protective even when the kids grew up and left home.

All told, there were 1,190 suicides among the 989,949 women during the 15 years, the team reports in the Archives of Psychiatry (Vol. 50, No. 2). There were only 11 among women with the largest family size.

Find a Therapist

Search for a mental health professional near you.

Find Local:

Is the decrease in suicide with increasing numbers of children the result of factors selecting low-risk women into marriage? Or is the social network of a big brood the protective element?

There has to be something to selection theory, since studies show that there's much more mental illness among unmarried versus married individuals. There's no solid information at all about protection through multiple children.

That didn't surprise the researchers. It was the great sociologist Emile Durkheim who first suggested an association between family size and suicide among women. His study was conducted a century ago. Until now, no one had ever looked seriously at the link.

ILLUSTRATION