Nevertheless, new findings suggest that the influence of parental divorce can extend into adulthood.
The recent study examined 13,000 American adults aged 65 and older. It discovered that among those who witnessed their parents’ divorce during childhood, one in nine later received a diagnosis of a life-threatening condition.
This contrasts with one in 15 individuals whose parents remained married.
The diagnosed condition was a stroke, which claims five million lives annually worldwide.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), strokes accounted for one in six cardiovascular disease-related deaths in the US in 2022.
Mary Kate Schilke, the study’s lead author and a university lecturer in the Psychology Department at Tyndale University, commented on the findings: “Our study indicates that even after taking into account most of the known risk factors associated with stroke — including smoking, physical inactivity, lower income and education, diabetes, depression, and low social support — those whose parents had divorced still had 61% higher odds of having a stroke.”
The association between childhood parental divorce and elevated stroke risk is comparable in magnitude to other risk factors like depression and diabetes, as reported by News Medical.
The connection may be attributed to stress hormone levels experienced by children of divorce.
“From a biological embedding perspective, having your parents split up during childhood could lead to sustained high levels of stress hormones,” clarified Professor Esme Fuller-Thomson from the University of Toronto.
“Experiencing this as a child could have lasting influences on the developing brain and a child’s ability to respond to stress.”
This stress could have consequently disrupted the child’s sleep, further contributing to the risk of stroke in later life.
Fuller-Thomson remarked to Mail Online: “We don’t know why people whose parents have divorced when they were children have a higher prevalence of stroke, but it may be that the stress impacts their sleep quality.
“There is evidence that sleep disruption during childhood can set people up for developing insomnia in later life, and that may increase the risk of having a stroke.
“The prolonged stress of your parents separating may also permanently change the body’s response to stress, producing elevated levels of stress hormones like cortisol which can cause inflammation in the body and increase the risk of having a stroke.”