Your kids can make you sick

Well here's some ammunition for parents to hold high over their children, the little darlings can make us all quite depressed.

A study from the University of Florida has determined that the happiest people apparently are those who have not shared in the joys of child rearing. Researchers have found that adults with children are significantly more likely to report symptoms of depression than those without kids.

13,000 respondents took the survey reporting sleeplessness and loss of appetite to distractedness and loneliness, all signs of lingering depression. And here all along we just thought it was part of the normal process of parenting!

The most severe cases of depression are found in people who do not have custody of their children or were single parents, and the least depressed are the "empty-nesters," whose children have left home. But even they continue to suffer the blues after the kids move out, worries about how their doing away from the nest tend to counterbalance any joy of newly recaptured freedom one assumes.

Of course as parents age they will revisit their angst upon their children many times over, as the child learns to worry about the state of their parents health and other concerns of aging. It's something those that chose not to partake in the child rearing experiment will never benefit from, so our short term pain will result in hopefully some long term gain.

Or to put it more correctly our worries of today will become the worriers of tomorrow. A nice little cycle when you begin to think about it!