I have found it very striking to know the data of a new study in which more than one million mothers participated. Ensures that motherhood protects against suicide, or what is the same, that women with children commit suicide less than those who do not.
They have also verified that suicide rates decreased the more children the mothers took care of. Obviously, emotional attachment and the instinct of protection towards children plays a decisive role in thinking about such a drastic option as taking one's own life.
This decrease is due, according to experts in psychiatry, because mothers with children who still need their care think that taking their own life would somehow mean also killing their children by depriving them of their mother.
Mothers who had at least two children were 39 percent less likely to commit suicide, while those who had three or more children were 60 percent less likely to commit suicide compared to mothers who had had a child.
The study was done in Taiwan, although researchers say the phenomenon is global. They found identical results in other studies on maternity and suicide carried out in Norway, Denmark and Finland, countries where there was also a lower risk of suicide among mothers than among women without children.
Attachment relationships between people, and more especially with children, have a protective effect against suicide provided there is no significant psychiatric problem. The data show that there are higher rates of suicides among widowers, divorced and single people.
The function of emotional support that a mother fulfills as a provider and not leaving her children in distress would be the reason why mothers commit suicide less. Apparently, instinct predominates.
By saving the distances, for the same reason, women with children fear more than when we did not have them that an accident or illness ends our lives and our children are left without a mother.
