The following is a round-up of news items compiled by the Hitched editors during the week of July 10, 2014.

Giving Birth at an Older Age Linked to Longer Life
We know that couples have been getting married at an older age (29.0 years old for men and 26.6 years old for women, according to a November 2013 report from the U.S. Census Bureau; and that the average age of women giving birth to their first child has risen steadily over the past four decades, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's often difficult to understand what this means for society, marriage and parenthood. One thing we now know, thanks to some researchers out of the Boston University's School of Medicine, is that women who gave birth after the age of 33 increased their chance of living longer than women who had their last child before the age of 30. The study was based on data from the Long Life Family Study (LLFS)—a biopsychosocial and genetic study of 551 families with many members living to exceptionally old ages. The researchers discovered the age of when 462 women had their last child, and how old those women lived to be. The women who had their last child after the age of 33 had twice the odds of living to 95 or older, compared with women who had their last child by age 29. In a release of their findings, they highlight that previous studies found similar results, in that women who gave birth after the age of 40 were four times more likely to live to 100 than women who had their last child at a younger age.

Women Are More Violent Toward Their Intimate Partner Than Men
The headline alone seems a little shocking, since we know that violence against women from men is a major issue. In fact, 51.9% of women have reported experiencing physical violence at some point in their life, according to the U.S. Justice Department; although an analysis of data from The Washington Post found that "married women are notably safer than their married peers." (And even more specifically, married biological fathers.) However, Dr. Elizabeth Bates from the University of Cumbria and her colleagues presented the findings of their study at the symposium on intimate partner violence at the British Psychological Society's Division of Forensic Psychology annual conference in Glasgow. The researchers gave 1,104 students (706 women and 398 men; aged between 18 to 71 with an average age of 24) questionnaires about their physical aggression and controlling behavior. Their results showed that women were more likely to be physically aggressive to their partners than men and that men were more likely to be physically aggressive to their same-sex others. Moreover, women exhibited significantly higher levels of controlling behavior than men, which significantly predicted physical aggression in both sexes. What to make of these results is still to be determined, but the researchers believe that the violent behavior may not be motivated by patriarchal values (as previously thought) and needs further study within the context of other forms of aggression, which has potential implications for interventions.