Having sons can make you age quicker, study says

One study has found that having sons can actually make you age quicker.

Researchers aimed to investigate how having sons can impact a parent's cognitive levels and the results are pretty interesting.

The study, which was published by the National Library of Medicine back in 2022, is titled: "Sons and parental cognition in mid-life and older adulthood."

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In short, the study looked to investigate a possible link between the number of sons a parent has, alongside their long-term health.

To do so, the study looked into the cognitive baseline levels and the rate of cognitive decline in a sizeable cohort of 13,222 adults aged 50 years and older from the US Health and Retirement Study.

And out of that sample of parents, 82.3 percent had at least one son and 61.6 percent of the respondents were female.

The study adds: "We included only participants with at least one child."

Not only did they look at the amount of children each participant had along with their cognitive levels - but the researchers also took into consideration an array of sociodemographic factors throughout their lives.

"Associations were evaluated using linear mixed-effects models, stepwise adjusting for sociodemographic and health-related factors," the abstract said.

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The researchers' findings went on to provide some key insights into the potential impact having at least one son has on parents' cognitive health.

Effectively, the study came to the conclusion that having sons is, in fact, connected to long-lasting negative effects on parents.

Ouch.

Parents who had at least one son were found to have experienced a steeper decline in cognitive abilities, compared to those with no sons at all.

The study also demonstrated that parents with multiple sons had an even faster cognitive decline when compared in-line next to parents who only had daughters.

While the experts haven't been able to completely pin down just why or how it happens - the study's results point to the conclusion that the reasons behind this correlation are more to do with how families interact rather than biological factors.

Due to this, the study also found that the impact of having sons on parental ageing is not limited to a specific gender as results showed similar patterns amongst both mothers and fathers.

The official findings concluded: "The results support the theory that having sons might have a long-term negative effect on parental cognition."

Topics: Health, Parenting, Science

Rhiannon Ingle

Rhiannon Ingle is a Journalist at LADbible Group. She graduated from the University of Manchester in 2021 in English Literature. Alongside her studies, she was the Lifestyle Editor of The Mancunian, the largest student newspaper in the United Kingdom. Her favourite topics to write about include sex and relationships, bizarre lifestyle trends and all things travel.