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According to science, parents of one or more boys experience faster cognitive decline than parents of girls. But for what reasons?
Are the clichés that readily designate boys as more rambunctious, noisy or restless than girls so far from reality? According to a Czech and American scientific study, conducted on more than 13,000 parents, having one or more sons would not be a walk in the park and would indeed have an action now demonstrated on the brain: the parents of boys would experience a cognitive decline. faster than those raising daughters.
More pronounced cognitive decline with age in parents of boys
The team from Charles University in Prague and Columbia University in New York collected data from a study following more than 30,000 people over the age of 50 and their spouses. Some 13,222 parents were followed for approximately 14 years. A total of 10,872 participants had male children, of whom 4,862 had one son, 3,523 had two, and 2,487 had three or more. Of those without sons, 891 had one daughter, 905 had two daughters, and 554 had three or more daughters.
The retained parents also completed regular cognitive tests that assessed their mental abilities, such as memory, concentration, thinking and comprehension.
The results, published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, show that parents with at least one son had a faster rate of cognitive decline than those without a son. The rate of mental deterioration, on the other hand, was similar for fathers and mothers. Their analysis also revealed that the decline in mental abilities of parents was faster if they had multiple sons, compared to parents who had only daughters.
“As the effect was the same in mothers and fathers, an aspect of parenthood of sons may therefore play a role in cognitive aging”, the researchers said. The researchers said they took into account all family patterns, whether the participants’ children were biological, adopted or stepchildren.
Girls, more used to caring for their aging parents
Why such a result? Would boys give their parents more worries? The mechanism behind this finding has not been studied, so only guesses are possible.
For the time being, no biological role has been formally established. The researchers put forward a first hypothesis, not based on gender or genetics, but more on social organization: according to them, “parents of sons may be more likely to be disadvantaged later in life, as daughters provide more social support than sons and more often become informal caregivers”. A role that boys would take less on growing up…
A cliche to explain another cliche? If the results can challenge, the underlying causes still remain mysterious.