Any working mother could have told the scientists for nothing, but now it is official – kids stress you out.
Researchers have found that employed women with children produce far higher levels of stress hormones than those who are childless, although the same does not appear to be so for fathers.
The doctors found that stress hormone levels in working mothers rose each morning and stayed high until bedtime, putting them at higher risk than other working women for health problems such as heart disease. The number of children at home made no difference – stress levels were as high with one child as with several.
Researchers from Duke University, North Carolina, studied 109 women working in clerical or customer-service positions. Hormones linked with stress that are excreted in urine were measured at various times throughout the day, including at work and in the evening at home. They looked in particular at three hormones: cortisol, norepinephrine and epinephrine.
The results, published in the American journal Psychosomatic Medicine, show that regardless of marital status, women with children at home excreted higher levels of cortisol throughout a 24-hour period than did working women without children.
All the women showed a significant increase in levels of epinephrine and norepinephrine during the day, and there was little change, if any, during the evening. By contrast, other studies in men have shown a significant drop in these two hormones when they come home after work.
The study’s chief investigator explained that cortisol had been shown to be related to distress or lack of control, while the two other hormones were linked to effort or activity. Long-term elevations of cortisol in mothers could lead to health problems.
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