Childless Couples Don't Live As Long As Those With Kids?

On Rock Center with Brian Williams on Thursday night, there was a quick report about a Dutch study that was recently published in the December issue of Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, which finds that childless couples don't live as long as those with kids.

Being the good librarian that I am, I did some research and found the original article, which turns out to be much more interesting than these popular media sources are letting on.

The study finds that childless women's risk of premature death (such as cancer, circulatory disease, and accidents) is four times higher than those who gave birth to their own children, and twice as high as women who adopt a child.

It also finds that men who don't become fathers are twice as likely to suffer from premature (or crude as the study refers to it) death than men who either have biological children or adopt (it's apparently all the same to the guys I guess).

The really interesting part that you have to dig into the original study itself to really find, is that this study also differentiates between voluntary and involuntary childlessness.

The nature of the study is inherently causes the researchers to look at this from the perception of the involuntary childless.... because their entire pool of subjects are couples undergoing IVF treatments!

The news media sources don't highlight this, but the other major finding of this article is not only that the involuntary childless don't just have a higher mortality rate, we have a higher risk of psychiatric illness too.  I can 100% believe this.

Interesting tidbit I learned from the article: In Denmark, couples must attempt IVF before they can adopt, and the government provides 3 free cycles of IVF!

B & I really need to move to Europe, A) so we can do IVF and  finally have a baby, and B) so we can apparently live longer and not go crazy :)