The percentage of mothers who stay at home has risen sharply in the past 15 years. You might think this would make the lives of fathers easier. Hell no. Everyone is miserable.

The extra moms staying home to take care of their kids aren't all doing it because they read some books on attachment parenting—much of the rise is attributed to women who can't find jobs. Bummer, since staying at home with the kids still does not pay a salary. And now, a new study finds that some younger dads are not so jazzed about the whole thing:

Symptoms of depression increased on average by 68% over the first five years of fatherhood for men who were around 25 years old when they became fathers and lived with their children, according to the study published online today in the journal Pediatrics.

Depressed new fathers can take heart, I guess, in the fact that rates of depression among new mothers is even higher. If these trend lines that we're reading about now continue moving in the same direction, we can look forward to a time when all families feature an unemployed, depressed stay at home mother, an equally depressed father, and then, to cap it all off, they find out that the wife was mistakenly implanted with some other couple's embryos and the twins aren't even yours. A few years down the road you probably have to take the whole sad family to Epcot, even though you don't want to, and Epcot is boring. Your paycheck? A few Mickey-shaped ice cream bars and it's all gone, my friend. Plus they're melting in the sweltering, hellish sun.

Is reproduction worth it?

[Photo: Flickr]