Postpartum Depression for Dads

Postpartum Depression for Dads

A news item today reports that researchers have found Dads suffer Postpartum Depression too.

What took them so long?


Maternal Postpartum Depression occurs shortly after the birth of the baby.

Dads have long known that Paternal Postpartum Depression Onset (or better known as PP’d On) sets in 16 years after the birth or at about the time the son gets his driver’s license and the daughter goes to her first Prom. It coincides with the realization that your progeny are determined to erase any apparent connection to their Dad in their manner of grooming, dress, music, vocabulary and values. They shut themselves in their rooms, deaf to anything Dad says. They would change their inherited DNA if they could. Drives Dad insane.

But the PPD gets worse a few years later when Dad and Mom have to pay the kids’ way through College. Dad becomes aware that the tuition and accommodation would easily pay for that sports car he had always dreamed of buying as soon as he began earning a decent salary after all his years of toil and study. And as if that doesn’t depress him as much as he can bear, he realizes he won’t even be able to afford a Male Midlife Crisis some years down the road: you know, the new unnecessarily expensive car, the boat, the condo at the marina, the irresponsible behavior, the move up to premium booze from domestic beer or even a new pair of jeans.

As the statements for the credit card you gave son and daughter to tide them over some of the typical college student’s unforeseen necessities, like books, arrive, Dad notices that his credit card has gone to trendy places he would never dream of patronizing. Dad treats himself to frozen pizza from the supermarket, son and daughter and truckloads of friends go to a place that charges ten times that. Dad splurges on a pair of Levis jeans once a decade from Penney’s, daughter gets hers at some trendy place he never knew existed, paying a whole lot for the fashionably shredded knees. You question these extravagances and you are met with that “Oh Dad!” that means you are so out of it you’ll never understand them ever again.

Twenty-six years after the birth Dad is about to get over his Paternal Postpartum Depression when son calls to say he’s worried and embarrassed. Dad thinks that at last he has become relevant again. That euphoria lasts for mere seconds until son clarifies that he is worried and embarrassed because he recently discovered to his horror that “I am beginning to sound just like you” when dealing with his toddler’s behavior.

As the grandchildren approach adolescence and your son and daughter begin their difficult task of dealing with it, you are at last delighted when they occasionally seem to want some sage veteran Dad’s advice and support. It’s your moment for revenge. Instead of offering a sympathetic shoulder, you cheerfully relate anecdotes of all those times when they had challenged you and driven you to distraction. You begin to laugh hysterically the more they insist they are serious.

That’s when they call in the men in the white coats to take you away. Paternal Postpartum Depression is incurable.

However It can be relieved so long as your savings last long enough to bribe your grandchildren with the latest video games, and you can indulge behaviors that you scolded and grounded your own kids for.