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 Social safety nets and resources from extended families may blunt
this effect in some countries more than others, and researchers
found the association with poor health was strongest in the U.S.,
England, Sweden and Denmark, compared to southern European
countries.
“We had anticipated that single mothers in the U.S. would do poorly
given that so many single moms are poor or low wage workers and that
the U.S. lacks most basic social protections for single mothers
compared to other countries,” said lead author Dr. Lisa F. Berkman
of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies in
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“What was surprising was that U.K. women did about the same as the
U.S. single women,” and single mothers in Scandinavian countries
seemed to be at risk as well, Berkman told Reuters Health by email.
Scandinavia has some of the stronger maternity leave and basic
anti-poverty programs, but women there still had a tough time, she
said.
“We suspect that the basic social protection was still very helpful
to them but not sufficient to protect these women,” she said. “They
still tend to be poorer than married mothers and it may be that
their work situations were challenging and that their extended
families were not as supportive as those in Southern European
countries.”
Researchers used surveys of more than 25,000 women over age 50 about
their marital and childbearing histories as well as their ability to
complete daily activities like personal hygiene or instrumental
activities like driving or shopping. The surveys came from three
previous studies in 14 countries.
Single motherhood was defined as having a child younger than 18
while being unmarried – the researchers did not account for
cohabitation.
One in three U.S. mothers reported being a single parent at some
point before age 50, making it more common than among women in
England (22 percent), western Europe (22 percent) and southern
Europe (10 percent), but less common than in Scandinavia, where 38
percent of mothers said they had been single mothers.
In general, having been a single mother was tied to poorer health
and disability after age 50, as reported in the Journal of
Epidemiology and Community Health.
The risk of having trouble with daily activities in later life
seemed to be highest in England and Scandinavia, where women with a
history of being a single mother were 50 percent more likely than
others to have health problems. In the U.S., single mothers were 27
percent more likely to have difficulties in later life.
That compared to risk increases of 9 percent in Western Europe, 13
percent in southern Europe and less than one percent in Eastern
Europe.
Risks were also highest among women who had been single mothers
before age 20 or who had cared for a child alone for at least eight
years.
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“Lone mothers report worse health compared to couple mothers in most
societies, regardless of which measure of health is chosen; whether
it is mental or physical health,” said Sara Fritzell of the
Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, who was not involved in
the research.
“Our thought is that single mothers work very hard to take care of
their children,” Berkman said. “They may do this at the expense of
their own health- they may exercise less, eat more poorly, or work
very hard in a stressful act of balancing work and family needs.”
Berkman and her coauthors suspect that in countries like Italy,
Spain and France, families and communities may play a stronger role
in sharing family caretaking activities.
“Many countries have formal social policies or informal social
supports that may protect women from health risks,” but the U.S. has
few options for maternity leave, childcare or social support, she
said.
It is possible that women who became single mothers were in poorer
health even before having children, Berkman noted.
“However, even though mothers with poorer health are slightly more
likely to become lone, this cannot explain the major bulk of the
excess risk of poorer health among lone mothers,” Fritzell told
Reuters Healthy by email.
Single mothers may benefit from a wide range of social, economic and
health protection policies, ranging from social programs that
protect women from poverty to those that enable single mothers to
participate in the paid labor force while taking care of a family,
Berkman said.
“So far, when looking at older populations, there are too few single
dads to examine this question,” she said. “In the future however, we
should look at this.”
SOURCE: http://bmj.co/1EhRyMT Journal of Epidemiology and Community
Health, online May 14, 2015.
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