TUESDAY, Aug. 4, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- A new
study reports that Finnish men who became fathers before age 25 were more
likely to die in middle age. The findings raise questions about whether the
stress of early parenthood had an especially strong impact on these men.
Younger men were less likely to have planned for
children and needed to become breadwinners quickly to support their new
families, said study lead author Elina Einio, a postdoctoral researcher at the
University of Helsinki in Finland. "Suddenly taking on the combined role
of father and breadwinner may have caused considerable psychological and
economic stress for a young man not ready for his new role," he said.
The researchers wanted to understand better why
other studies have shown similar patterns. Using census data, they drew a
sample of 10 percent of Finnish men born between 1940 and 1950. Those who had
at least one child were tracked between the ages of 45 and 54. The researchers
then limited the study to more than 11,700 brothers.
Narrowing the study further to 1,124 siblings, the
researchers found that men who had their first child before age 22 were 73
percent more likely to die in their late 40s and early 50s than their brothers
who first became fathers at ages 25 and 26. And those who became parents when
they were 22 to 24 years of age were 63 percent more likely to die in middle
age.
Overall, 5 percent of the fathers -- or one in 20 --
died in their late 40s and early 50s. The most common causes of death were
heart disease (21 percent) and alcohol-related illnesses such as alcohol
poisoning (16 percent).
The death rate sounds high, but Einio said Finnish
life expectancy is "pretty average for high-income countries." As for
the fact that the men were born during and just after World War II, an especially
traumatic era in Finland, Einio said the war's effects had largely waned by the
time the men had kids.
"We believe that our results can be quite
safely generalized to men born in the 1940s and 1950s in other Western
countries," Einio said. "For these men, marriage was relatively
universal and childlessness relatively uncommon."
Emily Grundy, a professor of demography at the
London School of Economics and Political Science in England, reviewed the study
and agreed with Einio that stress could be a factor. Working extra hours
instead of getting training may cause stress, she said, adding that younger men
may be less able to handle the pressures of parenthood.
Oystein Kravdal, a professor of demography at the
University of Oslo in Norway, also reviewed the findings and cited another
possibility, one that the researchers tried to account for: "The brother
who has an early child may have other attitudes, resources and personality
traits than the one who has a late first birth, and these factors may also have
a bearing on mortality." These factors could have greater impact than
stress, Kravdal said.
What do the findings mean for men born after 1950?
Einio cautioned that the study findings may not apply because parenthood in
later life and remaining unmarried have become more common. Also, the
researchers only found an association, not a cause-and-effect link, between age
of fatherhood and age at death.
Whatever the case, "it is important for young
men to wait until they are sure they are ready for the responsibilities of
fatherhood," Einio said. "Some young men can be pretty mature at an
early age and others not at all. Young men who decide to have children should
be supported in their choice."
The study appears in the Aug. 3 issue of Journal of
Epidemiology & Community Health.
source: philly.com
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