An eight-year study of 218 couples found 90 percent experienced a decrease in marital satisfaction once the first child was born.

“Couples who do not have children also show diminished marital quality over time,” says Scott Stanley, research professor of psychology at University of Denver. “However, having a baby accelerates the deterioration, especially seen during periods of adjustment right after the birth of a child.”

An unrelated study in 2006 of 13,000 people found parents are more depressed than non-parents. Scientists speculate that the problem is partly a modern one, because parents don’t get as much help at home as they did in previous generations.

There are key variables to note in the new study.

Couples who lived together before marriage experienced more problems after the birth of a child than those who lived separately before marriage, as did those whose parents fought or divorced.

However, some couples said their relationships were stronger post-birth. They tended to have been married longer or had higher incomes.

Children don’t ruin everything, Stanley points out.

via Kids Curb Marital Satisfaction.

Nice to know! They don’t ruin everything. They just ruin most things. Like your house, and your sleep and your social life and your friendships with people who don’t have kids. And your bank account and your peace of mind and all your plans that didn’t have them at the center.

Sorry. Just not very pro-kid over here at chez Susan.

I am sure yours are nice. Really.

The Riviera Beach dive company involved in a fatal shark attack off the Bahamas this weekend offers clients the opportunity for uncaged encounters with tiger sharks and great hammerheads, fearsome ocean predators known to attack people.On a dive Sunday from the 65-foot boat Shear Water, which the company’s Web site said was on a shark expedition, something went wrong. A shark sank its teeth into the leg of Markus Groh, 49, a lawyer from Vienna, Austria. A mayday call went out at about 10 a.m., and the Coast Guard airlifted him to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, where he died.

No one was able to identify the species of shark that attacked, said Petty Officer Nick Ameen. The circumstances of the attack are unclear, and the Coast Guard is investigating. But the incident has drawn more attention to the dive company and its practice of shark feeding, a common procedure in which tour operators dump bloody fish parts into the water to attract sharks.

So, take me on a vacation where you put me out to sea with no cage or other protection, and then dump bloody fish parts in the water to attract dangerous man-eating sharks. What could possibly go wrong?

“Him working with tiger sharks and bull sharks uncaged is totally irresponsible and dangerous,” [Neal Watson, president of the Bahamas Diving Association] said. “It wasn’t a matter of ‘if,’ it was a matter of ‘when.’”

ATLANTA – The suicide rate among middle-aged Americans has reached its highest point in at least 25 years, a new government report said Thursday.
The rate rose by about 20 percent between 1999 and 2004 for U.S. residents ages 45 through 54 — far outpacing increases among younger adults, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

In 2004, there were 16.6 completed suicides per 100,000 people in that age group. That’s the highest it’s been since the CDC started tracking such rates, around 1980. The previous high was 16.5, in 1982.

Experts said they don’t know why the suicide rates are rising so dramatically in that age group, but believe it is an unrecognized tragedy.

They don’t know why? Money. Money is why. Jesus. How dumb are these “experts”?

*Subject/verb agreement, Yahoo! Google it.

November 15th, 2007, filed by Tom Heneghan

Covering religion may be harmful to your faith. Two leading religion journalists — one in Britain, one in the United States — have quit the beat in recent months, saying they had acquired such a close look at such scandalous behaviour by Christians that they lost their faith and had to leave.

Bates article in New Humanist: Stephen Bates, who recently stepped down as religious affairs writer for the London Guardian, has just published an account of his seven years on the beat in an article entitled “Demob Happy” for the New Humanist magazine. Bates followed the crisis in the Anglican Communion for several years and even wrote a book on it, A Church At War: Anglicans and Homosexuality.

…

“Writing this story has been too corrosive of what faith I had left: indeed watching the way the gay row has played out in the Anglican Communion has cost me my belief in the essential benignity of too many Christians. For the good of my soul, I need to do something else.” Bates, who says he still regards himself as a Catholic, said he was turned off by the intolerance he saw towards gays and the self-righteousness of Christians who “pick and choose the sins that are acceptable and condemn those – always committed by other, lesser people – that are not.”

WASHINGTON – Programs that focus exclusively on abstinence have not been shown to affect teenager sexual behavior, although they are eligible for tens of millions of dollars in federal grants, according to a study released by a nonpartisan group that seeks to reduce teen pregnancies.

“At present there does not exist any strong evidence that any abstinence program delays the initiation of sex, hastens the return to abstinence or reduces the number of sexual partners” among teenagers, the study concluded.

Although I have to make a comment for clarity’s sake – if actual abstinence was happening it would indeed be curbing teen sex. Abstinence curbs any sex, really. Severely. So obviously this crap headline should read “Abstinence-only education not curbing teen sex” However that doesn’t mean it’s not also cross-posted with the “ya think?” tag.

Feminism boosts sexual satisfaction for both men and women, a new study suggests.
Busting stereotypes that peg feminists as man-haters, a new study shows that having a feminist partner is linked with healthier, more romantic heterosexual relationships.

The study, published online this week in the journal Sex Roles, relied on surveys of both college students and older adults, finding that women with egalitarian attitudes do find mates and men do find them attractive. In fact, results reveal they are having a good time, maybe a better time than the non-feminists.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – For some people, chronic insomnia may be a sign of broader mental health problems like depression and anxiety, according to a new study.

In surveys of more than 25,000 Norwegian adults, researchers found that those with chronic insomnia were more likely to also be suffering from depression or an anxiety disorder.

Anyway, last night after we were finished, I stayed around longer to do Ms. Delightful’s stretching routine, since I liked it better than Mr. Zen’s and I didn’t want to be sore today. When I got out of the water I noticed that, for once, there were no hairy-backed men in the hot tub – in fact the hot tub was completely empty, so I climbed in for 10 minutes, and it felt delightful. As I got out, and stood letting myself drip-dry for a moment, I started reading the list of hot-tub rules. Now, it had your standard “No diabetics, no pregnant women, no horseplay, no diving (?), no people on prescription meds, no alcohol, etc. But the rule that caught my eye was about halfway down the list. Now, keep in mind that this wasn’t some ‘written in marker’ kind of homemade deal, this was a nicely printed, permanent rules-listing that seemed as if it might be standard at facilities across the country. The rule that took me aback was “No shaving in the hot-tub, due to the risk of blood-borne pathogens”

Huh? Is there some contingent of hot-tub shavers somewhere in American that necessitated this rule? Who ever thought “Let me get my disposable razor and head over to the hot tub! That will be a hoot!” I can’t imagine the circumstances that caused this rule to not only exist, but also be graven in plastic! Who was shaving? Did they bring shaving cream? Was it some kind of erotic thing? They thought that the warm water would be a good environment for that? Blech.

In addition, I note that there was no such rule for the regular pool, so guess what baby-girl is going to be doing next week if class gets boring? OK – no I won’t. But dang. I didn’t know whether to laugh or be extremely grossed out. And of course I had to wake up to this article about the dangers of hot tubs this morning, and be even more grossed out.