3 ms·
The story is about a man who died 48hrs after his wife at age 101. There are not that much "buying groceries, cooking and cleaning" in 48hrs, and not many 101 y
by belorn 7y ago
The story is about a man who died 48hrs after his wife at age 101. There are not that much "buying groceries, cooking and cleaning" in 48hrs, and not many 101 years old in the grocery store.
"Often, it’s unrelated to any accident or cardiovascular incident, but sometimes it is related. That can be part of the stress reaction to grief."
"It’s just the difference between men and women and how we’re socialized,” she said. “Connection helps us negotiate old age. Independence does not do us well.”
Social relations, social support network, social contact, all of it is connected with stress management. Traditional gender roles where men prioritize work over their social live is correlated with smaller social network. If the goal is to live a long life with as little stress as possible then prioritizing time with children and spending time building social connections is much better than being at work.
However not being at work puts men at the lower end of the social ladder which also correlate to a smaller social network and increase stress. Social status is one of the bigger factors when predicting stress in both humans and animals alike.
- DoreenMichele 7y agoI included the link for the opening statistic that more men than women die shortly after their spouse, not for the story.
- belorn 7y agoThe link do not support the suggestion that because women do most of "the women's work", men are at greater risk than women of dying soon after their spouse. It does however support that men has worse stress reaction to grief and thus men are at greater risk than women of dying soon after their spouse. Stress management, and not some concept of "women work", is the likely culprit for why men are at greater risk than women of dying soon after the spouse. The link support it and so do also research which ask why some people live a long life and others don't, popular called successful aging in most of the research. As one researcher described it, stress is about margins. A stressful event occur and the body reacts and the older a person gets the smaller the margins becomes. Meaningful social connections reduces the stress response and thus a person can handle events which otherwise would kill them. This is one of the insights why Sweden changed the elder care policy of moving old people into care homes. Moving a old person away from a trusted and safe environments induces stress, which has a very deadly result. As far as it possible it is much better to perform elderly care within the environment which results in the lowest amount of stress for the patient, ie the own homes. In addition, buying groceries, cooking and cleaning is already guarantied through the social safety net provided by the state. By the time this kind of statistics is relevant the state is already taking care of all the so called "women work". It did not change the statistics that more men than women die shortly after their spouse.