http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,455027375,00.html Friday, January 24, 2003 Risk of mental woes climbs for kids of single parents By Emma Ross AP medical writer LONDON Children growing up in single-parent families are twice as likely as their counterparts to develop serious psychiatric illnesses and addictions later in life, according to an important new study. [Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Researchers have for years debated whether children from broken homes bounce back or whether they are more likely than kids whose parents stay together to develop serious emotional problems. [Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Experts say the latest study, published this week
in The Lancet medical journal, is important mainly
because of its unprecedented scale and follow-up it
tracked about 1 million children for a decade, into
their mid-20s.
The question of why and how those children end
up with such problems remains unanswered. The
study from Sweden's National Board for Health and
Welfare in Stockholm suggests that financial
hardship may play a role, but other experts say the
research also supports the view that quality of
parenting could be a factor.
The study used the Swedish national registries,
which cover almost the entire population and contain
extensive socio-economic and health information.
Children were considered to be living in a single-
parent household if they were living with the same
single adult in both the 1985 and 1990 housing
census. That could have been the result of divorce,
separation, death of a parent, out of wedlock birth,
guardianship or other reasons.
About 60,000 were living with their mother and
about 5,500 with their father. There were 921,257
living with both parents. The children were aged
between 6 and 18 at the start of the study, with half
already in their teens.
The scientists found that children with single
parents were twice as likely as the others to develop a
psychiatric illness such as severe depression or
schizophrenia, to kill themselves or attempt suicide
and to develop an alcohol-related disease.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Girls were three times more likely to become drug
addicts if they lived with a sole parent, and boys were
four times more likely.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
The researchers concluded that financial hardship,
which they defined as renting rather than owning a
home and as being on welfare, made a big difference.
However, other experts questioned the financial
influence, saying Swedish single mothers are not poor
when compared with those in other countries and
suggested that quality of parenting could be a factor.
"It makes you think that what you're seeing is just
the most dysfunctional families having these
problems, rather than the low income. The money is
really an indicator of something else," said Sara
McLanahan, a professor of sociology at Princeton
University, who was not involved in the study.
"If you really thought that it was the income that
makes the difference, you would think that Swedish
lone mothers would do a lot better than the British or
those in the U.S., but they look very similar," she said.
Other experts agreed.
In the last 20 to 30 years, poverty has been greatly
reduced everywhere in Europe, but psychiatric
problems in children have not, said Dr. Stephen
Scott, a child health and behavior researcher at the
Institute of Psychiatry in London, who also was not
involved in the study.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
He said that in previous studies, once researchers
have adjusted their results to eliminate the influence
of bad parenting, any increased risk of emotional
problems shrinks markedly. This, he said, indicates it
is not so much single parenthood but the quality of
parenting that is at issue.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
"The
kind of people who end up as single parents might
not have done well by their kids, even if they hadn't
ended up alone. They tend to be more critical in their
relationships, more derogatory toward other people,"
Scott said, adding that it is also harder to be a warm,
non-critical parent when you're bringing up a child
alone.
However, he noted that there are plenty of
children from single-parent families who don't end
up with serious emotional problems.
There may also be a genetic element: More
irritable people are more likely to become separated,
but they are also more likely, whether they are
separated or not, to have more irritable children,
Scott said.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
"The whole field is highly debated. This is another
piece in that debate that makes several important
points firstly that there really is an increased risk in
young adulthood of pretty bad things. It also
indicates it's not all about the money, but may be
about the people themselves," McLanahan
said.
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
----------------------------------------- On the Net: The Lancet, www.thelancet.com |
Leave a Reply