As if being a single mom wasn't tough enough, a recent study suggests that it can actually be bad for your health. Researchers at Ohio State University studied nearly 4,000 mothers over a 30-year span (1979-2008) and found that the women who had children when they were single reported being less healthy when they reached their 40s, compared with women who raised their children with the children's father.
The study also found that getting married after having children out of wedlock did not help a woman's health unless she married the biological father, remained married to him and was white or Hispanic. Black women had no improvement in health when they married after having a child out of wedlock.
While the study did not determine what the cause of these women's poor health was, researchers believe that stress and financial strain could have something to do with it. "In the long run, it's still a case of the socioeconomic disparities that produce all sorts of negative outcomes for people," says William Avison, a sociologist at the University of Western Ontario. The study suggests that policymakers find ways to help improve single mothers' health by providing access to job training, health insurance and child care assistance.
It's not exactly easy raising children on your own, but if there were more support programs in place to help single mothers, as the researchers suggest, we're sure it could help alleviate the growing number of health issues being caused by these circumstances.
Read more at MSNBC.
In other news: T-Pain Is Over Auto-Tune. He Promises.
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