You already know that being a single mother is seriously
damaging to your wallet, but did you know that it might also be damaging
to your health? Trying to do it all without a partner around to help
share the responsibilities of raising children - along with lots of
other environmental and economic factors - can have a deleterious effect
on women's health, a new study finds. But before you go demanding a
ring, the researchers also discovered that marriage isn't necessarily
the cure.
"Using longitudinal data, [Ohio State University researchers] found that in general, 'premarital childbearing' had negative health consequences for white and black women later in life, but not Hispanic women," explains Jezebel. And while getting married to the biological father mitigated that effect for some women, black women were least likely to be benefit from marriage, the study found.
Of course, correlation does not equal causation. Women who are already impoverished and undereducated are more likely than their wealthy, educated counterparts to wind up pregnant out of wedlock in the first place, and poverty is a major contributor to negative health consequences.
Plus, we tend to think that it isn't necessarily marriage that makes childrearing easier on your health - it's having a stable, loving partner, whether or not he's put a ring on your finger.
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