Divorcing parents usually worry about the long-term emotional impact their split could have on the kids, but new research suggests there may be a physical fallout, too.
The Canadian research suggests the children of divorce may be at a higher risk of stroke in their own adult years.
Based on more than 13,000 adults living in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, the research has found that those whose parents divorced when they were children had twice the odds of having a stroke at some time in their lives, a finding that held after researchers controlled for numerous known risk factors for stroke.
The study – believed the first to show a parental divorce-stroke link – does not prove cause and effect, merely an association, and the researchers stressed their finding needs to be replicated by others.
But it adds to emerging research suggesting early life stressors such as divorce might somehow become "biologically embedded" in children and change the way they physiologically respond to the stressors they face throughout their lives.
"It puts your set point a little bit higher," says lead author Esme Fuller-Thomson, professor and Sandra Rotman Chair in the faculties of social work, medicine and nursing at the University of Toronto.
Other literature suggests that people who react strongly to psychological stressors are at heightened risk for stroke.
The study used data from Statistic Canada’s 2005 Canadian Community Health Survey. Of the 13,134 total study respondents, 10.4 per cent reported their parents divorced when they were children; 1.9 per cent reported that they had been diagnosed with a stroke at some point in their lives.
The odds of stroke were approximately 2.2 times higher for adult children of divorce.
Fuller-Thomson assumed the association would be explained away by health behaviours. "Children who experience their parents divorce are more likely to start smoking and drinking," she says.
But after taking smoking, drinking, obesity, physical-activity levels, diabetes, mood and anxiety disorders, socioeconomic status, age, race and sex – as well as other early childhood stressors such as parental addictions, parental long-term unemployment and physical abuse – into account, the increased stroke risk "did not decrease at all," Fuller-Thomson says.
It’s not clear what might be happening. One hypothesis is that exposure to stress early in life affects the development of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, which controls how the body responds to stress. That can alter regulation of cortisol – the "fight or flight" stress hormone, making people vulnerable to stress-related diseases later on.
In earlier research, the Toronto team reported that physically abused children are more likely to suffer from heart disease and cancer as adults.
"I don’t want anyone to panic that because they went through a divorce their kid is going to have a stroke," said Fuller-Thomson.
"We just found an interesting association that needs a lot more research before we can come to any conclusions," she says. "There’s something going on. We just don’t know exactly what."
The other piece is that stroke tends to strike when people are older. For the adult children of divorce in the Canadian study, their experience of divorce is likely much different from children today, Fuller-Thomson said.
"Divorce was much rarer 50 or 60 years ago, and there was much more stigma."
Kids of divorce were often labelled "children from broken homes."
There may be less stigma. But the "winner take all" adversarial approach to child custody in Canada today is contributing to significant childhood distress, says Edward Kruk, an associate professor in the University of British Columbia’s School of Social Work and Family Studies. Father absence, more than any other factor, "seems to be associated with tremendous stress," according to Kruk, who says he wasn’t surprised by the new study’s findings.
When divorcing couples can’t agree on parenting arrangements, they turn to the legal system. Judges tend to award custody to one parent. "In fact, they don’t award custody, they remove custody from a parent, and that parent struggles to maintain a relationship," Kruk says. It’s estimated 30 per cent of children of divorce today haven’t seen their father in the past year.
Ultimately it’s the children who suffer, Kruk says. "Their stress levels rises dramatically, and that stays with them for a long time."
Warm, ongoing relationships with both parents are crucial, says Kruk, who says laws should be changed to award equal parenting arrangements to divorcing couples.
"Divorce is no longer a huge stigma, but the effects of father absence and prolonged, protracted and exacerbated conflict between the parents is hugely problematic," Kruk says.
The latest estimates from Statistics Canada in 2008 suggest that 38 per cent of married couples in Canada will divorce by their 30th wedding anniversary (divorce beyond that point is rare.)
The study was to be presented Monday at The Gerontological Society of America’s annual scientific meeting in New Orleans.
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