Childless Men Depressed: Majority Want Kids as Badly as Women Do
A new study has revealed that men who want but do not have children may feel more depressed than women who want the same.
While women are more likely to feel guilty about not producing children by a certain age, a new study has proven that more men felt depressed when they did not have children. The findings were presented Wednesday at the annual meeting of the British Sociological Association. Researcher Robin Hadley of the United Kingdom's Keele University polled 27 men and 81 women online who did not have kids.
Of the people surveyed, 59 percent of men and 63 percent of women age 20-66 stated that they wanted to have children. But men were more likely than women to experience a sense of isolation because they weren't parents.
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Half of men reported feeling "isolated" verses only about a quarter of women, the survey said, according to Live Science. In addition those men were also more likely to feel "jealous, sad, angry, and depressed" over not having kids.
"There is very little research on the desire for fatherhood among men," Hadley said in a statement. "This challenges the common idea that women are much more likely to want to have children than men, and that they consistently experience a range of negative emotions more deeply than men if they don't have children."
Women on the other hand, were more inclined to feel guilty about the fact that they were not mothers.
About 16 percent of women said they felt guilt, while none of the men did according to the report. Of the respondents, the average age was 41 and the majority were white, heterosexual and had full-time jobs.
The reasons why men wanted children, however, were more often based on cultural and family pressure where as women exhibited both a desire and a biological urge to do so.
