Passing Stress Down to Your Children

Parents, are you stressed out about all the different ways you are messing up the biggest job you’ll ever have? Well, here’s one more thing to stress out about: Parents who are stressed or depressed are scarring their kids, doing actual damage to their DNA, quite possibly turning them into their own balls of stress, according to a report by scientists at McGill University.

If you are anything like me, reading that paragraph probably got your blood pressure up, just like mine shot up as I first read about the research in a report by The Daily Beast.

In my own hackneyed layman’s terms, it seems that our stress somehow shuts down a stress-receptor’s trigger mechanism in our , so that they can become overwhelmed by and overreact to stressful situations in their own lives (it may help you get through this column, dear reader, if you turn it into a drinking game, doing a shot every time you read “stress” or one of its derivatives). Therefore if you display any stress or depression in front of your child during his or her formative years, congratulations, your kid will grow up to be just like you.

This all just seems patently unfair. I mean, c’mon Mother Nature, could you cut us moms and dads some slack already? First, you tossed this whole 40-week gestation thing at us, complete with all of the rites and privileges afforded hereto, such as bloating, crankiness, limited bladder control and a state of fatness that for some of us never quite goes away. Then there’s the labor and delivery ordeal akin to doing the splits on a crate of dynamite (hat tip to Lorelai Gilmore), followed up by having to take home and then care for a newborn infant a mere 48 hours later. Add in the trials and tribulations of attempted breast feeding and a perpetual lack of sleep and who wouldn’t be a little or even a lot stressed out?

The first time around, those things combined added up to one of the most stressful experiences in my life thus far. And yet nature is once again marking us as failures for not being able to adequately take the heat with a glow and a smile? It’s all starting to sound a bit futile, like the deck is just stacked against us no matter what we do.

It seems like maybe the only solution is to just stop reading the news and to take up , both of which I find quite helpful, even if I can’t seem to stay away from the news for too long. If you follow my advice, please do me a favor and don’t include my or this fine website in your news diet or you will only be contributing to my stress level.