(ORDO NEWS) — An international team of scientists has come to the conclusion that children of overprotective parents often live less than their more independent peers.
This is especially true for men. In addition, the study showed that the risk of death before the age of 80 in men who lived with only one parent and had an infectious disease in childhood was 279 percent higher than in men who lived with both their father and mother.
Scientists from the Federal University of San Carlos (Brazil) and University College London (UK) analyzed data from 941 participants in the English longitudinal study of aging who were born in 1950-1960 and died between 2007 and 2018; 445 of them were women, 496 were men.
The researchers examined participants’ responses to questions about many aspects of their lives, including family structure and economic status, parental occupations, presence of infectious diseases, and relationships with parents during childhood and adolescence.
The results showed what has long been known: relationships with father and mother in childhood leave a global imprint on a person’s entire life.
Thus, the development of children is negatively affected by authoritarianism, permissiveness, overprotection and negligence in education. But the researchers managed to find out the details that were of interest to them, namely, that the nature of relationships with parents affects a person’s life expectancy.
It turned out that men who had an overprotective father as a child had a 12 percent higher risk of not reaching the age of 80 than men who did not have such experience.
In the case of women, a similar risk of premature death was estimated at 22 percent. However, if we are talking about a caring mother, then this figure for women dropped to 14 percent.
Children need parental care and support, but not to be deprived of their independence. In this case, the child becomes afraid of the father and mother, which, according to other studies, leads to various problems, including unhealthy habits – alcohol and drug abuse, chronic stress. All this leads to a reduction in life expectancy.
A mother’s care of a girl in childhood is probably more decisive for an adult woman than her father’s. Such people are less prone to stress, as scientists believe, and therefore the risk of premature death is lower.
Among other things, scientists have learned how children are affected by living with only one parent. It turned out to be decisive. At least this applies to men brought up in an incomplete family.
The risk of dying before age 80 was 279 percent higher for those who also had an infectious disease as a child than for participants who lived with both their father and mother during childhood.
Researchers believe that this is due to the difficulties of living in an incomplete family in the last century. It is likely that the boys experienced more stress in such cases – for example, they may have had to go to work earlier than their more prosperous peers.
In general, scientists came to the conclusion that father’s overprotection negatively affects the life expectancy of people of both sexes, but mother’s care for daughters (but not sons) reduces this risk.
—
Online:
Contact us: [email protected]
Our Standards, Terms of Use: Standard Terms And Conditions.