Saturday, May 15, 2010

Can being a 'cougar' send a woman to an early grave?

Article here.

Dr John Ray comments:

I guess it is very wicked of me but I do find the results below a bit amusing: Having a younger partner is GOOD for men but BAD for women! How unjust! I once married a woman 11 years older than me and she is still at age 77 in good health and full of beans so we should note that the effects described below are not strong and allow for many exceptions.

That men who have younger wives live longer is easy to explain. They probably have to be pretty fit and vigorous in the first place to attract younger women.

The finding about "cougars" does seem much harder to understand. The stress of keeping up with a younger man's lifestyle would seem to be the most likely explanation but that does seem rather facile to me. But I have no better explanation. Perhaps the younger guys DO just wear them out.

Posted via email from Garth's posterous

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