Here's one of those medical study stories that you're not sure whether to believe. But if there's any credence to it, this one is pretty scary.

Researchers in Sweden say that babies of separated parents are three times more likely to develop diabetes. The theory is that children — even babies — pick up on the stress their parents are feeling and it causes them to becomes stressed, themselves. And that, in turn, leads to auto-immunity, a condition where the immune system attacks insulin-producing cells.

I only saw a brief mention of this and didn't see much else in the way of support for the theory. But if there's anything to this study, it's something worth looking into. Here in the U.S., we have increasing rates of childhood obesity and diabetes, and I don't remember hearing anyone link up these problems with our sky-high divorce rate. Is there a correlation? Maybe there are some more researchers out there willing to check it out.

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Somewhere, Lorena Bobbitt is smiling.

A court in Taiwan has granted a man a divorce because his wife has been threatening to cut off his penis.

What a perfectly lovely story this is.

The couple has been married for 10 years. Two years ago, the wife began to suspect that her husband was cheating. And that's when she started making threats against his manhood. She would wake him up in the middle of the night to interrogate him and let him know that bad things might be happening to that sensitive part of the anatomy.

You think that’s sick, try this: She started sharpening a knife and leaving it next to the bed. Think about how brave this guy must have been to get into bed every night with a woman like that.

So, given all this information, the court decided there was no way this couple could continue living together and granted the divorce.

See what you started, Lorena?

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Sounds horrendous doesn't it? Like the kind of thing you'd expect to see in a soap opera. But under the circumstances, it is the right thing to do.

The man's wife has an incurable condition and will be in a coma for the rest of her life. He has agreed to arrange for her care. But he also has an ailing mother to take care of, so the court has permitted his divorce. There are no easy decisions here, for either the court or the man involved.

A story in the China Post briefly says that the comatose woman can't "fulfill her role as a wife." I was just about to suggest that rulings like this show that maybe Chinese authorities are beginning to demonstrate a more progressive approach. But this is still a very patriarchal society. I can't help but wonder what the court's ruling might have been if things were reversed, and it was the husband in the coma.

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It’s not surprising when children of divorced parents end up having behavioral problems. But a new study that was published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry says there may be one underlying reason for both the parents’ divorce and the children’s behavior issues: heredity.

Without getting into the methodology of the study, the basic finding was that parents who are genetically prone to being unhappy in their marriages are more likely to have children who experience depression and anxiety. So maybe it’s not the divorce that’s so tough on the kids—it’s the genes.

Of course, there’s a bit of a “chicken and the egg” here. Did the kids’ depression surface before or after the divorce happened? In some cases, the kids’ issues started before the parents actually split up, but there was already tension in the marriage.

Research aside, the important message here is that parents need to pay really close attention to their kids when marital problems start. The kids will naturally pick up on the rising tension in the home.

Somehow, you have to find a way to manage your own emotions and help your kids’ manage theirs too. That’s a challenge with no easy solutions. But being aware of everyone’s feelings is half the battle.

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