|
E-mail this page to a friend!
News for Baby Boomers
Childless Baby Boomer Women Fare as Well
Psychologically as Do Mothers
Good health, husband or partner count most for older women
 May 7, 2007 - For one day each year, which happens
to be next Sunday, motherhood brings flowers, cards and Sunday brunches,
but a new University of Florida study finds women of the baby boomer
generation think motherhood is less critical than other factors that
shape a woman’s life.
The researchers sought to learn how important is it
for women’s happiness in midlife whether and when they had children?
“Contrary to warnings we hear about being lonely if
you don’t have children, our study finds that childless women and
mothers generally report similar levels of psychological well-being in
their 50s,” said Tanya Koropeckyj-Cox, lead author and a UF sociology
professor.
Whether a woman has children seems less critical
than other important factors that shape her life, including education,
work and earnings, and relationships with family and friends, Koropeckyj-Cox
said. “Whether you are socially integrated or have concerns about paying
the bills – those things play a more direct role in shaping
psychological well-being among women in midlife,” she said.
Being in good health and having a husband or
partner gave the biggest boost to older women’s psychological
well-being, said Koropeckyj-Cox, whose study of nearly 6,000 women
between the ages of 51 and 61 is scheduled to be published in the June 7
issue of the International Journal of Aging and Human Development.
The study used data from two major national
surveys: the Health and Retirement Study, conducted in 1992, which
includes women born between 1931 and 1941, and the National Survey of
Families and Households, which provides a comparable sample from
1987-88.
“The most vulnerable group in terms of being least
happy, loneliest and most depressed are the mothers who were single,
divorced or widowed in middle age,” she said.
For mothers, psychological well-being also was
heavily influenced by when they had their children. Women who gave birth
early, before age 19, reported being least happy, more depressed and
lonelier than mothers who had their children later, Koropeckyj-Cox said.
Slightly more than one-third – 35 percent – of “early mothers” reported
ever feeling lonely, for example, compared with about a quarter -- 25
percent to 27 percent -- of mothers who had their children in their 20s
or later, she said.
For early mothers, unhappiness is related to poorer
economic circumstances and the likelihood of being unmarried in midlife.
“Early childbearing often means interrupting or dropping out of school,
creating economic stress that can last throughout adulthood,” Koropeckyj-Cox
said.
Women who became mothers at age 25 or older were
happier and less lonely or depressed than either the early or “on-time”
mothers, defined for these women who were born in the late 1920s and the
1930s as between 19 and 24, when about half of American women had their
first child, she said.
“Those women who delay childbearing and possibly
marriage as well are able to spend their early adult years focusing on
education and career, which helps them economically and gives them more
opportunities later in their 30s and 40s and beyond,” she said.
Besides being better educated and having higher
incomes, older mothers may find it rewarding to have children young
enough to be at home as they enter their 50s, she said.
Family satisfaction was lower among those who had
been single mothers, and more than half of early mothers had been
without a partner at some time when their children were under 18,
compared with a quarter to a third of women who gave birth on-time or
late.
That so few differences in psychological well-being
were found between childless women and mothers was significant
considering it was this generation that mothered the baby boomers,
Koropeckyj-Cox said. “If anyone was going to show disadvantages in being
childless, it would be these women,” she said. “They came of age during
the 1950s, when motherhood was regarded as the focal point that defined
women’s lives.”
Fewer than 10 percent of women of this generation
remained childless, compared with nearly a quarter of those who came of
age earlier during the Depression, Koropeckyj-Cox said. Today, 16
percent to 19 percent of women in their 40s have not had children, she
said.
Koropeckyj-Cox worked on the study with Amy Pienta,
a University of Michigan sociologist, and Tyson Brown, a sociology
doctoral student at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Click to More Senior News on the
Front Page
Copyright: SeniorJournal.com |
