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Parental transition and healthy lifestyle choices

10 July 2024

With age, lifestyle habits become increasingly unmalleable. It is therefore crucial to raise children who are equipped to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Our research question asks whether parents are able to act as good role models of a healthy lifestyle for their children? With regard to smoking, recent evidence suggests that parental transition positively contributes to smoking cessation. Our first aim is to investigate whether this positive effect also holds for other lifestyle factors. At the same time, parental transition is accompanied by intensified psychosocial stress, resulting in an increase of major depression during the postpartum period. Our second aim focuses on the combined effect of parental transition and mental health on labor market outcomes. Based on our findings, our results serve as input to policy concerned with accommodating parental transition in their multifaceted role of raising healthy children and participating on the Dutch labor market.

Photo by Ioann-Mark Kuznietsov on Unsplash