Early loss of a parent

[Verity]

Is this more common in Anabaptist circles? In ten minutes I easily came up with over 30 friends who lost a parent before they were 18. Farm accidents, cancer and heart attacks were the most common causes. What are your observations?

[MaxPC]

Death.JPG

Is this more common in Anabaptist circles? In ten minutes I easily came up with over 30 friends who lost a parent before they were 18. Farm accidents, cancer and heart attacks were the most common causes. What are your observations?

I personally think that birth order in larger families is also a factor in this; the older siblings are not under 18 when the parents die. The younger/youngest children might be under 18. The older the parent when a child is born, the more likely that child will see the death of a parent before the age of 18. Nothing is definitive however and any such statistic coming from the government is not always based on a double blind, long range study.

[Verity]

Good point, Max. Several of the ones I thought of were not 40 when they died. Quite a few were under 35. In EPMC alone there were a number of young fathers lost to accidents or heart attacks last year.

[MaxPC]

Good point, Max. Several of the ones I thought of were not 40 when they died. Quite a few were under 35. In EPMC alone there were a number of young fathers lost to accidents or heart attacks last year.

The questions that come to my mind:
Are there other factors that are involved?
Lifestyle?
Exposure to dangerous activities?
Are these deaths part of a normal pattern? Or is the government study unnecessarily focusing upon a single statistic without providing a larger context, something which it has been known to do?

I see horse and buggy accidents in the news. I also see heart attacks that have been connected to vaccines. I think perhaps there are a number of factors that come together. Just some old man rambling thoughts, that.

[Josh]

In my experience the figure of about 5% holds. It’s just in Anabaptist circles we tend to know a lot more about each other’s family histories.