From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Sun May 19 2002 - 04:02:07 MDT
Phil Osborn:
>A newborn infant costs considerable stress on the woman (with
>possible health detriment, including accelerated aging),
I think stress needs to be defined, the emotional bonding is
pretty profound.
If you mean physical stress, then maybe not if the babies are
daughters, according to the below study. Even if this study turns
out to be applicable to today's world, I expect that most mothers
would not think to trade their 34-weeks shorter life with a
lifetime of experiences with their son!
Amara
BTW, Have any of you heard Saami music? Neat stuff. I heard a Saami duo:
"Angelit" perform and sing traditional music when I was in Kiruna, Sweden,
last August. Highly recommended!
http://www.warnerclassics.com/finlandia/ln/innov/biogs/angelit.htm
==========================================================================
Having sons may shorten the life span of their mothers,
researchers say
PAUL RECER, AP Science Writer
Thursday, May 9, 2002
©2002 Associated Press
URL:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2002/05/09/national1517EDT0709.DTL
(05-09) 12:17 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --
"My son will be the death of me yet."
The familiar lament by mothers everywhere may have a kernel of
scientific truth, researchers say.
A study analyzing family church records in earlier centuries found
that having sons shortened the life span of Finnish mothers by
about 34 weeks per son. Daughters nurtured to adulthood helped
prolong mothers' lives.
Baby sons, researchers suggest in the journal Science, make a much
greater physical demand on the mother's body than do the typically
smaller daughters and this may actually lead to a shorter life for
the mother.
"Boys are usually born much heavier than girls," said Samuli
Helle, a researcher at the University of Turku in Finland and the
study co-author. "It seems that boys are much more demanding to
produce than girls."
Helle said the conclusion is based on church family records kept
in Finland for a nomadic people called the Sami during the period
1640 to 1870. He said the toll on mothers lives of having sons may
not apply in the era of modern medicine.
"Nowadays we have better medical care," Helle said. "Resources are
not as likely to limit females' life span. There might be some
effect, but it will not be as huge as in the Sami people."
Helle and his co-authors used the records because of their
accuracy and because they gave a measure of the effects of natural
mortality before advance medical care.
The study concentrated on women who produced children and then
went on to live past age 50. The researchers found that women who
gave birth to sons had a shorter life span than those who had only
daughters. Typically, a mother's life was shortened by about 34
weeks per son.
Having daughters who were raised to adulthood diminished the
effect, actually helping the mothers to live longer, Helle said.
"You can actually cancel the negative effect (on life span) of one
boy by producing about three girls," said Helle. "The girls stayed
in their natal group for quite a long time. All the children had a
great influence on their parents' lives, but the girls had a more
positive effect than the boys."
During the study period, Sami families typically had four children
per generation. The children tended to stay with the family,
creating an extended family group that spanned several
generations.
The Sami were a nomadic people who followed the migration of
reindeer. They led a hard life, but they were very successful,
said Helle. Infant mortality in the group was very low, so there
was "no need to produce compensating children to replace those who
died at an early age," he said.
During the preindustrial era, the life span average about 62 years
for both men and women, said Helle. This was far longer than in
many cultures during that era. Today, the average life span of a
Finn is about 81 years for women and about 74 years for men.
------------------------------------------------------------------
On the Net:
Science: www.sciencemag.org
©2002 Associated Press
-- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." --Lily Tomlin
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