Married women are less likely to suffer from partner violence, alcohol or drug abuse and postpartum depression than women who live with a partner or have no partner at all.
"We first looked at the duration of extramarital cohabitation and found that the shorter the cohabitation, the greater the likelihood that women suffer from intimate partner violence, alcoholism and drug addiction before, during and after pregnancy, including postpartum depression," the researchers say. - "We did not see a similar picture among married women who experienced fewer psychological problems, regardless of the time they lived together with their spouses."
Of unmarried women who lived with their partners for less than two years, at least one in three problems was characteristic of 20% of women. However, the longer the couples lived together, the less often problems arose.
For single women who have never been married, this figure was 35%. Problems were most common among women who were divorced or lived separately, especially if the couple broke up less than 12 months before the birth of the baby. Here the figure rose to 67%.
And only 10.6% of married women with similar problems were identified.
Why did researchers want to consider the risks and benefits of various types of relationships, including civil marriage? The answer is simple - more and more children are born to parents who are not married to each other. For example, 30% of children born in Canada were born out of wedlock, compared with 9% in 1971. In a number of European countries, the number of such children even exceeds the number of children born in a legal marriage.
