Being a parent is supposedly a rather stressful experience. Without even focused on the physical burden of giving birth, there’s the late nights filled with crying, worrying over schools and lunches and whether they’re developing properly, there’s caring for them when they’re sick, and this lasts until they’re old enough to leave the house and head to college. But then, it really doesn’t stop, because as they leave you’re still worried.

Among all of this you still need to find time for your own life, your hobbies and your job, your relationship and even just time to relax and do nothing. Yes, having kids is rewarding, but it’s hard to say anyone would say it isn’t full of hard work and a lot of stress. Given that, it might seem odd that there’s a new study linking more children with a longer life of the mother:

To find a link between number of children and the rate of biological aging, the team also looked at the length of each woman’s telomeres, the protective tips found at the end of each DNA strand that indicate how cells are aging. The longer the cells, the better it is for aging and longevity.

In the first study to look at a direct link between the length of telomeres and the number of children, the results showed that the women who gave birth to more surviving children had longer telomeres, going against the theory that producing a larger number of offspring speeds up biological aging.

Whether anything similar holds true for the fathers is not yet known, it’s likely the reasons for the effect would need to be better understood. For example, is it the caring for the children that produces the effect? If so, a father that spends plenty of time doing so might show the same anti-aging benefits. For now you can read the more about this study in the full article.

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