Scary Visions

There is no scientific evidence, but perhaps some new dads get scary visions of the future. Those would be the ones who get male postpartum depression as they see trouble ahead for their children.

Mild scary would be the view of how one's own reputation will help and haunt your son, as is the case with Justin Trudeau, who carries both his father Pierre's name and reputation into his own political campaigns. Trudeau père was Canada's swinging 70s prime minister and his third son has decided to continue the good fight to keep his country together and do a bit of self-aggrandizing in the mean time.

A bit more frightening would be the fight of children over money in a way that threatens a great legacy. Such is the fate of the memory of Martin Luther King Jr., whose three surviving children are antagonists in court for the third time in four months, this time to battle for control over their mom's estate.

And, finally, there is the horror show of a son who wastes prodigious talent and takes his own life to the edge of the abyss, teeters ... and then falls. Such is the fate of Guillaume Depardieu, French actor-extraordinaire Gérard, who rebelled against his father for most of his life. The younger Depardieu, a blistering memoirist and lionized actor in his own right, weakened himself with drugs and other excess and lost his life to what has been described as a "lightening quick" strike by pneumonia.

The world is a scary place and new dads have reason to fret, but they need to fight the fear with hope for the future as well. There is enough father saddle their kids with. No need to throw one's depression in there too.