As if you need another reason for parental guilt, a new article in Bioscience Hypotheses speculates that our feelings could impact our reproduction and affect our children.

Dr Alberto Halabe Bucay of Research Center Halabe and Darwich, Mexico, suggests that a wide range of chemicals that our brain generates when we are in different moods could affect 'germ cells' (eggs and sperm), the cells that ultimately produce the next generation. Such natural chemicals could affect the way that specific genes are expressed in the germ cells, and hence how a child develops.

In his article Halabe  suggested that the hormones and chemicals resulting from happiness, depression and other mental states can affect our eggs and sperm, resulting in lasting changes in our children at the time of their conception. 

Brain chemicals such as endorphins, and drugs, such as marijuana and heroin are known to have significant effects on sperm and eggs, altering the patterns of genes that are active in them. 

"It is well known, of course, that parental behavior affects children, and that the genes that a child gets from its parents help shape that child's character." said Dr. Halabe Bucay. "My paper suggests a way that the parent's psychology before conception can actually affect the child's genes."

"This is an intriguing idea" commented Dr. William Bains, Editor of Bioscience Hypotheses. "We wanted to publish it to see what other scientists thought, and whether others had data that could support or disprove it. That is what our journal is for, to stimulate debate about new ideas, the more groundbreaking, the better."

Article: Alberto Halabe Bucay, 'Endorphins, personality, and inheritance: Establishing the biochemical bases of inheritance', Bioscience Hypotheses, In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 7 May 2009  doi:10.1016/j.bihy.2009.03.003