Most of the research on depression after the birth of a baby has focussed on women but they don't have a monopoly on depression. Blokes get it too and there have been suspicions that pregnancy and childbirth are high-risk times for fathers as well as mothers.
The question is whether a depressed father is associated with a higher risk of behavioural and developmental problems in the child as with maternal postnatal depression. And it seems that it is.
A study has followed thousands of pregnant women, their offspring and the fathers out to when the children were aged three and a half. Depression in the fathers was assessed when the baby was two months and 21 months old.
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