Maria L. Andersen
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mlandersen.bsky.social
Maria L. Andersen
@mlandersen.bsky.social
1.7K followers 320 following 15 posts
PhD fellow at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. Researching parenthood and inequalities in mental health using population-based registries. Also fan of long-distance trail running🌲|| Interests: public/labour/gender econ & social policy
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mlandersen.bsky.social
New preprint 📈📉

🧠👶🏻 We explored the link between parenthood and mental health in over 2M Norwegians using primary health care records. We found that parents generally experienced fewer mental disorders, even after accounting for factors like education and marital status.

🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2024...
Parenthood, Mental Disorders, and Symptoms Through Adulthood: A Total Population Study ML Andersen*, HF Sunde, RK Hart, FA Torvik *Corresponding author(s). E-mail(s): MariaLyster.Andersen@fhi.no; Abstract During recent decades, parenthood has declined in many Western countries. Simultaneously, mental disorders have become more prevalent. We investigated the link between parenthood and mental health in the entire Norwegian-born population aged 31 to 80 from 2006 to 2019 (n=2,234,087). We used logistic regression models on national register data and included sibling- and twin-matched analyses to address unobserved confounders. Parenthood was associated with a lower risk of mental disorders, including depressive and anxiety disorders. For symptoms related to mental disorders, fathers had a reduced risk, while mothers had a slightly elevated risk. Mental health disparities between parents and non-parents were greater among men than among women and persisted across adulthood, before reducing at older ages. Our main findings were largely consistent in sibling- and twin-matched designs. The disparity between parents and non-parents increased over the study period, suggesting stronger selection into parenthood. Our findings highlight parenthood as a significant indicator of mental health inequalities, with its importance growing over time. Keywords: Mental health, parenthood, childlessness, social inequality, fertility JEL Classification: I14, J13, J16 Two figures. Top figure (a) shows the prevalence of mental disorders and symptoms by parent-status, age, and gender. X-axis is age, and y-axis is prevalence in percent. The prevalence curves for mental disorders are higher for the childless than for parents. For symptoms, the prevalence curve is higher for childless men than fathers. For women, the two lines are much closer. The curve for childless women is higher until approximately age 40, then the two curves are similar until age 70. After 70, the prevalence curve for mothers is above the curve for childless women. Bottom figure (b) shows estimated odds ratios for a variety of logistic and conditional logistic regression models. For mental disorders, all estimated odds ratios are below 1, meaning that parents have a lower likelihood of having a mental disorder. For symptoms, the estimated odds ratios vary, sometimes above 1 (for women) and sometimes below 1 (for men). The magnitude of the estimates differ between the models of symptoms and disorders. For disorders, estimated odds ratios are in the range 0.44-0.71, while for symptoms the range is 0.80-1.19.
November 14, 2024 at 3:31 PM