This article reviews and presents research findings on the relationships between parenthood and health over the life span. Existing research shows lacunae. The links between reproductive behavior and longevity generally focus on family size rather than contrasting parents and nonparents. Studies of marital status differentials in survival generally confound the effects of parenthood and marital status. Studies of the effects of multiple roles (combining parenthood, marriage, and employment) have the drawback that parenthood is equated with currently having children in the home. The authors provide new evidence on the health of people who have reached old age, contrasting those with and without children, in an attempt to tease out the effects of parenthood, marital status, and gender. Data from Australia, Finland, and the Netherlands are used. Insofar as parenthood effects are found, they pertain to health behaviors (smoking, alcohol consumption, and physical exercise), providing evidence for the social control influences of parenthood. (Contains 4 tables.) [The findings reported in this article are from the 1992-1993 Australian Longitudinal Study of Aging (ALSA), which was funded by the U.S. National Institute on Aging and the South Australian Health Commission; the 1994 Health Status of Older People Survey, which was funded by the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation; the 1994 Survey of Living Conditions in Finland (SFLC) that was carried out by Statistics Finland; and the 1992-1993 Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam (LASA), which is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Health,Welfare and Sport.]