If you’re a parent of young children, the Christmas ‘holidays’ might not have felt like much of a holiday, more an endurance test.
So it might not be a surprise that research suggests having children can, indeed, shorten your life – even if it doesn’t feel like it when you’re reading The Gruffalo.
According to a paper published in the American Journal of Human Biology in 2006, women lose one year eight months of life for every child they carry.
In part, this is due to hypertension and pregnancy-related diabetes. (However, it might also be because the data that the researchers looked at was based on Polish statistics that dated back to 1886 when death from childbirth was more common.)
But there’s a lot of other conflicting research suggesting those with children tend to live longer than those without.
For example a Swedish study showed that, at the age of 60, men who had children could expect to live two years longer than those who didn’t. For women, it was one and a half years longer.
So maybe don’t make a decision on whether or not to have kids based on the impact it will have on your life expectancy.