A study conducted by a PhD candidate at Keele University, UK, states that men are more depressed than women over not having children.
The research was presented at the annual meeting of the British Sociological Association, Wednesday.
The survey was conducted on 27 men and 81 women aged between 20 and 66 without children. They were asked about their thoughts on parenthood.
Robin Hadley, a sociology PhD candidate, found in his research that half of the men surveyed said they felt isolated because they were childless while only 27 percent of women felt left out. Four out of 10 men without children felt depressed, the study found. The men also confessed of being angry, sad and jealous.
The study found that the impact can last throughout their life, with older men regretting not having children when their friends become grandfathers. One of those surveyed said, "I'm 55, the light's been getting dimmer and dimmer and dimmer of me ever being a father, to the point now where it's not going to happen." Another man, 70-year-old, said, "If I'd had children, I'd have been a proper grandfather. Maybe even a great-grandfather by now."
However, when they were asked if they yearned to be a parent, both men and women, responded the same. Seven out of 10 men and women said they did desire children.
Speaking about his research Hadley said, "There is very little research on the desire for fatherhood among men. My work shows that there was a similar level of desire for parenthood among childless men and women in the survey, and that men had higher levels of anger, depression, sadness, jealousy and isolation than women and similar level of yearning.
"This challenges the common idea that women are much more likely to want to have children than men, and those they consistently experience a range of negative emotions more deeply than men if they don't have children."
