Author Topic: Does having children predispose one to depression?
FS
Member
Member # 3142
posted February 11, 2006 08:14 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Psychologist/author says childless couples are happier:
http://www.webmd.com/content/Article/11 ... genumber=1 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posts: 105 | From: Southeast | Registered: Sep 2002 | Logged: 24.127.204.34 |
mose
Member
Member # 2980
posted February 13, 2006 07:17 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
How fascinating and depressing at the same time!
I don?t think I will hand out copies of this study to the expectant and new parents my business works with.
Do you think parents are more depressed now because of the current parenting trends that places a huge emotional investment on children at the sacrifice of most parents own wellbeing and happiness? In our current culture, children are definitely first in most families and marriages and it is shocking when we hear about or meet someone that says their self or husband or wife comes before their kids as an emotional priority. There was a huge uproar when the author Ayelet Waldmans article ran in The New York Times
http://www.ayeletwaldman.com/truly.html she wrote about her husband coming first before the four kids. I thought she was narcissistic, selfish and a fool for gaining so much of her happiness from her spouse when I read the article, hey, maybe she is onto something. Who knows?
Our culture for the past few decades has been completely child centered and this study indicates it could be to the determent to ones own overall happiness. Parenting was not historically like this, think about our own childhoods if you were born in the 1950?s. I know I was loved and attended to, but not nearly, anything coming close to the adoration and the way our generation is all consumed with our kids lives and their educational, recreational, psychological and emotional well-being.
[ February 13, 2006, 11:00 AM: Message edited by: mose ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posts: 915 | From: New York City | Registered: Jul 2002 | Logged: 66.108.212.226 |