Neurotic, anxious, or depressed? You may be fertile.

The University of Sheffield in the UK put out a press release earlier today entitled Research shows personality can predict fertility.

I'm not really sure what to think about the study, since I'm left with more questions than answers after reading the release. The researchers found that neurotic women prone to be anxious, moody, and depressive have more children than less neurotic women. That's an interesting finding, but I am not sure about the connection to fertility that the authors claim in the press release.

After all, fertility is usually defined as tha ability to have children, not the number of children a woman has given birth to. Isn't it possible that non-neurotic women are equally fertile as neurotic women but more prone to choose to have fewer children?

It would be interesting to read the full-length research article, which doesn't seem to be available online yet. I wonder if the researchers controlled for factors like age, general health, and marital status, and I wonder if they performed any biological tests to access the fertility of their subjects.

Still, it's an interesting idea. Do you think there could be a link between personality and fertility?