The unexpected rewards of fatherhood.

Fatherhood comes with many rewards and, it must be said, responsibilities. Curiously, and unexpectedly, in some ways, it also seems to come with a biological reward: better health. A very large study of 138,000 men by the AARP, concluded that men who had fathered children, were 17% less likely to die of cardiovascular disease than men who had never done so.

Rather unflatteringly, researchers compared this health effect, to the benefits of owning a dog. Both share in common a simple mechanism: caring for another. It seems that having someone to care about may bring blessings, other than the immediate rewards that come with expressing such care.

The research did not express any conclusions on whether this effect depended on the number of children in anyway, but was expressed in terms of childless or not childless.

Of course, this effect may be no more than another effect altogether: the ill health that might cause a man to be infertile. So, what we might be seeing here, might not be a positive effect of fatherhood, at all, but a negative effect of the inability to father a child. Either way, it does suggest that, in this narrow respect, fathers are healthier than non-fathers. I find it interesting, for it does suggest some kind of positive selection process for better health in the reproductive system itself. Perhaps evolution hasn’t come to as much of a halt, as many people seem to believe (in truth it is, if anything, faster than before, due to new selection processes at work...not all of them beneficial).

Anyway, this research cheered me a little. As the father of three sons, perhaps they bring me another kind of reward, other than the obvious ones inherent in parenting. If so, thank you to my Three Musketeers! (and to my wife for providing them.)

Posted by Valentine Cawley

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Michael Jackson, dead of cardiac arrest, at 50.

Michael Jackson, the famed "King of Pop" is dead at 50. Initial reports say that he had a cardiac arrest and could not be revived. I have, however, some thoughts about that.

Few men, these days, die so young as Michael Jackson has. I think, though, that, in Michael Jackson's life, there were many contributing factors. Firstly, it is hard to either imagine or overstate, how much long term stress he must have had to endure. Michael Jackson was, in the last decade or so, always in the media, for the wrong reasons. He was constantly subject to unsavoury allegations - and, whether true or not, for I do not know, there is no doubt that this must have been intensely stressful. Then there was the fact that he was often in court for various reasons, that people were always suing him, for a multitude of reasons. He was never free of legal or media harrassment. I have the strong feeling that this would have created a stressful kind of life that may well have ushered forwards the date of his death, rather dramatically.

Michael Jackson was one of the world's most famous people. Whether he deserved to be, is another issue - but the fact that he was so famous, should not also mean that he is one of the world's most harrassed people. It is easily forgotten that famous people are people, too. Even the most famous of people deserves a life of relative peace, should they so wish it. No-one should have to endure constant legal battles, or constant media allegations (if not true).

Michael Jackson is dead - and it may well be that a great part of the reason is the large number of people who wanted a piece of him, in life, who saw in his supposed wealth, an opportunity to make a big buck, by suing him.

The world should learn to be more civilized and to leave even its most famous people, in peace, if they wish it. Sadly, however, those in Michael Jackson's situation, have no peace in this world, at all...they only find that, upon death.

Incidentally, I was not a fan of his work...though I did listen to it, when it played. So I do not write as a fan, but just as an observer of humanity.

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