Women with lots of children might be stressed, but they are less likely to commit suicide, according to a Taiwanese study that found the more children a woman has, the lower her risk of suicide.
There is a long-standing theory that historically lower suicide rates seen among married versus unmarried women reflect the “protective effect” of motherhood rather than the advantages of marriage. Researchers at Kaohsiung Medical University said this latest study supported that theory.
TWO CHILDREN
The study looked at 30 years of data on 1.3 million Taiwanese mothers and found that women with two children were 39 percent less likely than those with one child to commit suicide.
Researcher Yang Chun-yuh (楊俊毓) said that the risk was 60 percent lower for women with three or more children.
The study, reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, was based on birth and mortality records for Taiwanese women who had their first child between 1978 and 1987. Yang followed death rates for the study group through 2007.
Suicide was uncommon regardless of the number of children the women had.
For women with one child, there were 11 suicides per 100,000 women per year. The rate was seven per 100,000 for women with two children, and under six per 100,000 where mothers had three or more children.
When Yang factored in a number of other variables — including the women’s age at the birth of their first child, marital status and educational level — the number of children a woman had remained clearly linked to suicide risk.
EMOTIONAL BENEFIT
Yang said it was possible that women with a large brood of children benefit from greater emotional or material support when times are tough.
Women who have several children also spend a larger share of their lives caring for young children compared with mothers with one child.
He said mothers who feel “needed” could be less vulnerable to suicide.
However, Yang said it was also likely that women who were already more likely to commit suicide — because of serious depression or other psychiatric illnesses — tend to have fewer children.
Although the current study included only Taiwanese women, Yang said the findings were likely relevant to other countries with studies conducted in Norway, Denmark and Finland identifying a similar relationship between the number of children a woman has and her risk of suicide.
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