Better book a session with your therapist — yet another painful consequence of your parents’ divorce has emerged.
Nearly half of US marriages will end in divorce or separation. Research shows that children of divorce are more likely to experience depression, distrust and low self-esteem, which can lead to troubles at school and social isolation.
Now, a heartbreaking new study reports that children of divorce have 60% higher odds of experiencing a stroke at some point in their lives than those who didn’t go through that ordeal as a kid.
“The magnitude of the association between parental divorce and stroke was comparable to well-established risk factors for stroke such as male gender and having diabetes,” said senior study author Esme Fuller-Thomson of the University of Toronto.
Stroke happens when blood flow to the brain is blocked or a ruptured blood vessel leaks blood into the brain. Stroke is one of the top causes of death in the US, accounting for 162,600 deaths in 2023.
Fuller-Thomson’s team evaluated data from 13,200 adults 65 and older with no history of childhood abuse. Seven percent of the group reported they had a stroke and nearly 14% said their parents had divorced before they reached adulthood.
The study authors speculated that the higher stroke risk could be due to chronic stress disrupting the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which controls the body’s stress response. A dysregulated HPA axis is strongly tied to an elevated stroke risk.
Another theory is that children of divorced parents are at increased risk for high blood pressure, sleep problems that persist into adulthood and childhood poverty. All raise the likelihood of stroke.
The researchers said they controlled for known stroke risk factors such as diabetes, depression and small social support networks but didn’t have key data on participants’ blood pressure, cholesterol, contraceptive use, age at parents’ divorce or the types of strokes they experienced.
This was one of several limitations to the research, published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.
Another was that the youngest of the participants was born in 1957, before the divorce revolution took hold in the 1960s and ’70s following the widespread adoption of “no-fault divorce” laws across most states.
“Due to the changes in societal norms, it is not clear that Gen X or Millennial Americans will experience a similar link between parental divorce and stroke as was evident in our sample from the Baby Boom and Silent Generation cohorts,” the researchers wrote.
The findings support a 2010 study conducted by Fuller-Thomson that suggested that children of divorce are over twice as likely to suffer a stroke in their lifetime compared to other kids.
Other health effects
Strokes aside, past research has found that children of divorced parents frequently experience negative health outcomes well into adulthood.
Adult depression, a weakened immune system, making them more susceptible to colds as adults, and even premature death are some of these potential consequences.
The age at which the divorce occurred, the intensity of the conflict and the level of parental support are among the factors that influence the severity of these long-term effects.
