Do Fathers Matter?: What Science Is Telling Us About the Parent We've Overlooked by Paul Raeburn
Authors: Paul Raeburn
Ads: Link
depression in fathers during pregnancy could do the same. But that is changing. Depression in fathers increases the risk of depression in children, just as mothers’ depression does—even though fathers have no direct connection with their fetuses during their partners’ pregnancies.
Some of the best evidence for the adverse consequences of depression in fathers comes from work done in early 2013 by a research team in Norway led by Anne Lise Kvalevaag. She sifted through data on 31,663 children and their families to collect information on fathers’ mental health during pregnancy. Studies such as these look for associations; they don’t say anything about why such associations might exist. The researchers suggested three possibilities: The fathers could be passing on to their children genes that are associated with psychological problems. The fathers’ depression could be having an influence on their partners, which could in turn have an effect on the children. Or the children’s problems might be a result of paternal depression during their infancy and early childhood: fathers who are depressed before birth are more likely than others to be depressed afterward, too. Whatever the explanation, all this work suggested that fathers’ mental health can indeed have important consequences for their children.
And the outcome can be even worse for the unfortunate children who have two depressed parents. Researchers at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center showed that if both parents are depressed, children have eight times the risk of behavioral or emotional problems of children whose parents are not depressed. Many studies have shown that poor mental health in mothers has negative impacts on children’s behavior and emotional health, but few studies have looked at both parents.
There is some good news here. A healthy father can ease the impact of a mother’s depression on their children. He can serve as a buffer, engaging the children when mother isn’t available because of her illness. But that’s not easy to do. Mothers do a lot for their children, and if they’re compromised by illness, they aren’t easy to replace. Depression often carries with it a good deal of guilt, and mothers or fathers who are depressed around the time of their children’s birth may carry the additional burden of knowing that they cannot fully engage with their children and might be putting them at risk of emotional problems of their own later on.
The list of unfortunate consequences of fathers’ depression continues to grow. A mother’s depression is known to be related to excessive crying, or colic, in infants, but the role of depression in fathers was unknown. When Mijke P. van den Berg of Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands took a look, he found that paternal depression was indeed a risk factor for excessive crying in infants. The explanation is unclear. It could be something in the father’s genetic makeup that he is passing on, his altered interaction with the infant, or marital or family stress related to the depression. Whatever the case, the study emphasizes the importance of considering fathers when studying infant behavior, including excessive crying. Yet another study found that depressed fathers were more likely to spank their children and less likely to read to them than fathers without depression.
* * *
Conflict between mothers and fathers can also interfere with infants’ well-being. In the late 1990s, James P. McHale, a family therapist now at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, conducted a research project at Clark University in Massachusetts sponsored by the National Institutes of Health called Families Through Time, in which he explored how mothers’ and fathers’ coparenting relationships affected their children. It was the first study to look at the development of the coparenting alliance in intact (not divorced) families. One of the things McHale and his colleagues
Some of the best evidence for the adverse consequences of depression in fathers comes from work done in early 2013 by a research team in Norway led by Anne Lise Kvalevaag. She sifted through data on 31,663 children and their families to collect information on fathers’ mental health during pregnancy. Studies such as these look for associations; they don’t say anything about why such associations might exist. The researchers suggested three possibilities: The fathers could be passing on to their children genes that are associated with psychological problems. The fathers’ depression could be having an influence on their partners, which could in turn have an effect on the children. Or the children’s problems might be a result of paternal depression during their infancy and early childhood: fathers who are depressed before birth are more likely than others to be depressed afterward, too. Whatever the explanation, all this work suggested that fathers’ mental health can indeed have important consequences for their children.
And the outcome can be even worse for the unfortunate children who have two depressed parents. Researchers at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center showed that if both parents are depressed, children have eight times the risk of behavioral or emotional problems of children whose parents are not depressed. Many studies have shown that poor mental health in mothers has negative impacts on children’s behavior and emotional health, but few studies have looked at both parents.
There is some good news here. A healthy father can ease the impact of a mother’s depression on their children. He can serve as a buffer, engaging the children when mother isn’t available because of her illness. But that’s not easy to do. Mothers do a lot for their children, and if they’re compromised by illness, they aren’t easy to replace. Depression often carries with it a good deal of guilt, and mothers or fathers who are depressed around the time of their children’s birth may carry the additional burden of knowing that they cannot fully engage with their children and might be putting them at risk of emotional problems of their own later on.
The list of unfortunate consequences of fathers’ depression continues to grow. A mother’s depression is known to be related to excessive crying, or colic, in infants, but the role of depression in fathers was unknown. When Mijke P. van den Berg of Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands took a look, he found that paternal depression was indeed a risk factor for excessive crying in infants. The explanation is unclear. It could be something in the father’s genetic makeup that he is passing on, his altered interaction with the infant, or marital or family stress related to the depression. Whatever the case, the study emphasizes the importance of considering fathers when studying infant behavior, including excessive crying. Yet another study found that depressed fathers were more likely to spank their children and less likely to read to them than fathers without depression.
* * *
Conflict between mothers and fathers can also interfere with infants’ well-being. In the late 1990s, James P. McHale, a family therapist now at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, conducted a research project at Clark University in Massachusetts sponsored by the National Institutes of Health called Families Through Time, in which he explored how mothers’ and fathers’ coparenting relationships affected their children. It was the first study to look at the development of the coparenting alliance in intact (not divorced) families. One of the things McHale and his colleagues
Similar Books
