Bummed Out

So I guess we can file this under "Gee, Ya Think?"

"Anybody who's had a baby knows it can be intensely stressful and intensely pleasurable at the same time," Paulson says. "The man may feel increased financial demands, fatigue from a loss of sleep, a change in his relationship with the woman — any of these could contribute to depression."

If the ecstasy side of new parenthood doesn't also kick in, a dad may interact less with his baby, [James] Paulson says. Depressed fathers read less to their children at ages 1 and 2 than did fathers who weren't depressed.

I shouldn't mock my fellow social scientists; it's important to find empirical verification for things that seem commonsensical (or, conversely, to prove that common sense is a load of crap). But anyone who's ever been around depression -- or experienced it, as I have -- would recognize that it's not conducive to reading much of anything or, for that matter, interacting in a normal way with anyone.

What's interesting about this study, though, is that it suggests -- along with similar research projects from the UK -- that depression in fathers might actually hinder language acquisition or correlate with behavioral problems. Again, this is all completely unsurprising. But the fact that rates of depression for men are elevated during the first year or so of a child's life is certainly not a fact to be ignored.

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