[caption id="attachment_64648" align="aligncenter" width="460"] childless men depressed[/caption]Men More Depressed Than Women When Childless

Although a lot has been made of the depression suffered by women who are childless, a new scientific study has revealed that men who desire children but don't yet have them suffer even a greater intensity of depressed feelings.

The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the British Sociological Association in London Wednesday (April 3) by Robin Hadley, of the United Kingdom's Keele University.

Study findings revealed at the recent British Sociological Association annual meeting reported that although the majority of women who wanted children by a certain point in their life and didn't have them felt guilty, men who wanted children and were frustrated in that effort felt more depressed.

"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." [History's 12 Most Doting Dads]

Although 63 percent of women reported to want families, at least 59 percent of men studied also wanted children to be an important part of their lives.

The study also revealed that childless men tended to be twice as likely as women to feel isolated by not having the children they desired.

In addition to intense depression, childless men also tended to feel angry, sad and jealous over their inability to start a family. The average age of the men who participated in the research was 41, with the majority being Caucasian, heterosexual and employed full time. Although more women felt a biological urge to procreate, for men, having children was more influenced by family and cultural pressures.

An American study published last year found that women who choose to be childfree felt more pressure to reproduce than other women without children, reports Live Science.

On The Web:

Childless Men Depressed: Majority Want Kids as Badly as Women Do
http://www.christianpost.com/news/childless-men-depressed-majority-want-kids-as-badly-as-women-do-93408/

No Kids? Men More Depressed About It
http://www.livescience.com/28414-childless-men-more-depressed.html

'Childfree' Women Feel Little Distress, Study Finds
http://www.livescience.com/23891-childfree-women-distress.html