London: Motherhood raises a woman`s
self-esteem and the more children she has, the lower her risk
of committing suicide, a new study has claimed.
Researchers at Kaoshiung Medical University, Taiwan, who
looked at data of 1,292,462 women over 20 years, found that
motherhood does indeed have a protective effect and cuts the
chance of a woman killing herself.
The risks fall further the more children a woman has,
they discovered.
According to the study, women with two children were 39
per cent less likely than those with one child to commit
suicide.
And that figure rose to 60 per cent among women who had
three children, a newspaper reported.
Part of the reason could be an increased sense of
happiness and self-esteem that woman feel after giving birth,
the researchers said.
Mothers often have more supportive social networks than
women who do not have children, they added.
"A clear tendency was found toward decreasing suicide
rates with increasing number of children after controlling for
age at first birth, marital status, years of schooling, and
place of delivery," said Dr Chun-Yuh Yang, who led the study.
"Given that the women included in this study were young
(the large majority of suicide-related deaths occurred before
premenopausal age) and were among the youngest reported for
any country, this finding is particularly noteworthy."
The theory that parenthood protects against suicide was
first suggested by renowned sociologist Emile Durkheim in
1897.
However, later studies have found the theory difficult to
prove because of the relatively low number of people who take
their own lives.
But the latest research, one of the largest studies of
its kind, proved that motherhood does indeed have a protective
effect, which increases with the number of children a woman
has.
Dr Chun-Yuh Yang added: "The presence of young children
may increase the mother’s feelings of self-worth, possibly
based on her perception of being needed."
The study is published in the CMAJ, the Canadian Medical
Association Journal.
PTI
