Could gender equality in parental leave harm off-springs' mental health? a registry study of the Swedish parental/child cohort of 1988/89

International Journal for Equity in Health

Research

Anna Månsdotter¹  Lisa Norström¹  Lene Lindberg¹ 

[1] Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institute, SE-171 76, Stockholm, Sweden;

关键词: Parents;    Gender equality;    Children;    Anxiety;    Depression;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1475-9276-11-19

 received in 2011-07-11, accepted in 2012-03-30,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

IntroductionMental ill-health among children and young adults is a growing public health problem and research into causes involves consideration of family life and gender practice. This study aimed at exploring the association between parents' degree of gender equality in childcare and children's mental ill-health.MethodsThe population consisted of Swedish parents and their firstborn child in 1988-1989 (N = 118 595 family units) and the statistical method was multiple logistic regression. Gender equality of childcare was indicated by the division of parental leave (1988-1990), and child mental ill-health was indicated by outpatient mental care (2001-2006) and drug prescription (2005-2008), for anxiety and depression.ResultsThe overall finding was that boys with gender traditional parents (mother dominance in childcare) have lower risk of depression measured by outpatient mental care than boys with gender-equal parents, while girls with gender traditional and gender untraditional parents (father dominance in childcare) have lower risk of anxiety measured by drug prescription than girls with gender-equal parents.ConclusionsThis study suggests that unequal parenting regarding early childcare, whether traditional or untraditional, is more beneficial for offspring's mental health than equal parenting. However, further research is required to confirm our findings and to explore the pathways through which increased gender equality may influence child health.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Norström et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.