When analyzing the pros and cons of being a father, a new factor must now be taken into account: who has offspring increases their chances of reaching old age , as a study carried out by scientists from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm (Sweden) concludes.
The researchers, who have published their work in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health , did a comprehensive statistical analysis of the records of more than 700,000 Swedish women and men born between 1911 and 1925 . In addition to the longevity of these people, other factors were taken into consideration, such as their marital status, level of education and number of children .
Thus they were able to observe that from the age of sixty, when health begins to deteriorate, men who have been fathers can have a life expectancy of two more years, on average. Obviously, the risk of dying increased according to the subjects as they were older, but so did the gap between those who had had children and those who had not. For example, the probability of dying for an 80-year-old man with at least one child was 7.4%, compared with 8.3% for a man of the same age and without children .
In the case of women , with higher life expectancy in general, the relationship was lower, although it also existed. And another significant fact: single parents are more likely to reach the elderly than married ones .
This work is in line with others that already pointed to the harmful influence of aging without children, perhaps due to the social and economic deficiencies that people alone must face in the last stages of their lives . Where Swedish scientists have not detected significant differences is in the fact that the children are men or women, since both seem to provide the same degree of support to their parents. Previous research suggested that daughters take more care of their fathers as they reach old age.
