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American Morning
The Big Question: Is Mr. Mom at Greater Risk for Heart Disease?
Aired April 25, 2002 - 08:40 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: The Big Question this hour, is Mr. Mom at greater risk for heart disease? Working fathers have long teased their stay at home wives that staying at home was easier than going to the office every day, but a new study shows what moms have known for a very long time now, that staying home and taking care of the kids is tough work, it is stressful, whether you're a mom or a day, and it could even be bad for your health.
CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is here with us this morning.
So what is the study all about? This is confusing.
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's very confusing. It's actually the first study of its kind. It's believed to be the first study of its kind, where a researcher went out and said, hey, look at all these people who are doing untraditional things, dads who were staying home or moms who were going and having high-powered jobs. What affect does that have on their health? They did this study in the mid-80s, and looked at people, men who called themselves house husbands. And they found they had an 82 percent higher chance of dying within the 10 years of the study. That is obviously a huge number. It shocked the people who did the study.
Let me tell what you they found with women. Women in high authority, high-demand jobs were three times as likely to get heart disease. Again, women in high authority, high demand jobs three times as likely to get heart disease. Of course that left the researchers and left everyone else thinking, what's going on here? Why is that true? And I said to the author, why do you think that's true?
And some people might say, well, gosh, this must be because men just aren't prepared to deal with the stress of being at home with kids, and women just aren't prepared to deal with the stress of having a high-powered job. And she said, well, I hope people don't think that's what it is.
What she thinks it is, is that in the mid '80s, these people were real pioneers, and that they were taking basically a lot of guff from society for their choices, and even if they didn't know it, they were internalizing that stress and they made them sick. That's her interpretation of this data.
COOPER: And this study was done in the mid '80s?
COHEN: This study was done in the mid '90s, right. And people, if you were a stay-at-home dad, that was really unusual.
COOPER: But it really is open to interpretation. I mean, you could see this in many different ways. In fact, you could look at it as, is there something about the men who describe themselves as stay- at-home dads, the fact that they're stay at home, maybe there's a risk factor there.
COHEN: Exactly. One problem with this study is that we don't know why the men were house husbands. For example, maybe these men were laid off from their own jobs, and that's why they were house husbands. Maybe they were house husbands not by choice. Well, that's stressful, and that would explain some of these health problems. Maybe some of them were house husbands by choice. We just don't know, and so that's why you really need to have a second study. There's a huge difference between choosing to stay home with your family or being forced to, say, because you're ill.
COOPER: Right. Now also, I understand there's a new study about gender and heart disease.
COHEN: Right. All these studies are coming out of American Heart Association Conference, and there is another one that looks at a really interesting gender difference. They looked at people who had a sudden cardiac arrest. That is people who pretty much without warning, their hear, the electrical impulses go crazy, and if they don't get some help very, very quickly, they die.
Well, these people got help, and they asked them, what kind of stress was going on in your life right before you had the arrest. And the women were much more likely to say that there was some kind of psychological or social stress in their life, a death in the family, a divorce, some kind of family tension.
But the men were much more likely to say that they had some kind of physical exertion going on in their life on that day. So it seems that women seem to have a harder time with social stress, but men have a harder time with physical stress.
COOPER: So men and women deal with stress differently.
COHEN: Exactly. It is interesting.
COOPER: Thanks for coming up from Atlanta.
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