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Home › Articles › Dad's Health › House of Blues

House of Blues

Even Dads Get Depressed

By Teri Brown

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In mothers, hormones often help fuel feelings of depression, while fathers' depressive symptoms are more likely to be generated by the dramatic changes in household routine, lack of sleep and new and demanding roles. It's important to note that depression isn't limited to first-time dads. Symptoms are liable to occur even if the newborn is the second or third child. In fact, additional children in a home can sometimes compound the impact of changes within a family.

Feeling Left Out
One problem for fathers is that they might feel a bit left out of the loop. Dr. Pochyly believes this is often related to the amount of involvement the father has in a child's daily care. These feelings of being "left out" also are the most likely source of any jealousy a father feels for having to suddenly share his wife. "Optimally, both spouses should have enough of a teamwork approach to give them the sense that they are each sharing each other with the child," he says.

Hall reports being aware of where these emotions are coming from, but admits to often feeling left out of the closeness his wife and his new baby have. "Sometimes I get the feeling that the girls could get on perfectly well without me – that I'm just someone who pays the bills," he says.

He believes these feelings were compounded by the fact that when picking up their adopted daughter, his wife was able to spend weeks alone with the baby. "[My daugter] is much more connected to her mother than she is to me," Hall says. "Sometimes I think she doesn't even like me."

Like many new fathers who work at demanding jobs, Hall feels unable to break into that inner circle. "To be honest, though, my wife does most of the feeding and nappy changing," he says. "Maybe if I did more of that sort of thing, [my daughter] would warm up to me. It's not that I object to feeding and changing, but I'm just not around as much as my wife is."


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