06/30/2026
Includes interview with Professor Thomeer and discussion of research she’s conducted with Professor Wolfe and PhD student Dee Ferguson: “Most research points to a U-shaped relationship between the number of children you have and dementia risk, says Mieke Thomeer, a sociologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The greatest risks are associated with having no children or having lots, typically four or more. But other studies show conflicting results.
The inconsistencies come partly from differences in how cognitive decline is defined and the types of populations studied, says Thomeer. When she carried out a study attempting to control for these factors, many of the associations disappeared. “In other words, it seems that there are multiple childhood and adolescent factors that impact both whether a person has children and how many children they have, as well as their later-life cognition.”
The picture may also be changing across generations. In a second study presented at a cognitive ageing conference at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee in May, Thomeer and her colleagues showed that in more recent birth cohorts, having no children is increasingly associated with better cognitive health in later life.
Thomeer suggests that this trend may reflect changing socioeconomic factors. For instance, child-free women are now more likely to be highly educated than in the past. It could also indicate unique stressors of modern parenting.“
