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Stéphane Clerget (Child psychiatrist)
A study conducted by British and Brazilian researchers shows that there is a link between longevity and the parent-child relationship. More specifically, children with protective parents die earlier than others. The explanations of Dr Stéphane Clerget, child psychiatrist in Paris.
We know that childhood is an important time in the life of an individual. However, according to a study by researchers from the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) in Brazil and University College London (UCL) in the UK, it goes deeper than that. This work is the first to study how the absence of a parent, or poor parental relationships, can reduce longevity.
Education during childhood affects longevity
In this study, researchers analyzed data from 941 participants in the English Longitudinal Study of Aging who died between 2007 and 2018. There were a total of 445 women and 496 men, all born in the 1950s and 1960s.
Researchers studied participants’ responses to questionnaires about many aspects of their lives, including their family structure, housing, occupation of the head of household, presence of infectious diseases, and relationships with parents during childhood and adolescence, particularly regarding care and protection. This is how they determined correlations between these elements to estimate the impact of parental relationships on longevity.
Having a single parent increases the risk of dying before age 80 by 179%
Result: Men who had an overprotective father and little autonomy during childhood have a 12% higher risk than others of dying before their eighties.
For women, this figure rises to 22%. However, for women who were well cared for by their mothers during childhood, the risk may decrease by 14%.
Moreover, this work shows that men who lived with a single parent in childhood had a 179% higher risk of dying before they were 80 years old.
According to one of the authors of this work, Dr. Tiago Silva Alexandre, “the most interesting thing about this study is that we were able to show in numbers what has been discussed about parenthood for many years. The caring and loving relationships with your father and mother during childhood have repercussions for the rest of your life. In particular, our results show how they affect longevity.”.
For Aline Fernanda de Souza Canelada, who also participated in this work, “the middle way is best, avoiding both intrusion, which prevents children from being independent, and neglect or emotional distance. What we call care in the article is a question of not neglecting but of being present and taking care without overprotecting”.
The opinion of Dr Stéphane Clerget, child psychiatrist in Paris
“This study clearly shows that it is important for children to take risks, because children who do not take them experience less. Certainly, they do not put themselves in danger at this time, but later, once the danger arises, they are less well equipped to face it. The fact of being overprotected also pushes paradoxically not to do it by oneself, so we have the illusion of being protected by the parent who plays this role for us. We think that nothing can happen to us which can lead to dangerous behavior, which will have an impact on the lifespan“.