I was never depressed to the point of seriously contemplating and wishing I’d never been born. However, I had a discussion with my boyfriend recently, where I mentioned going through a phase of depression, and offhandedly remarked “that happens to everyone in their teenage years” (since all my friends that I’ve talked to about such a thing have agreed with me), but he instantly corrected me and said “No, I never had psychological problems when I was younger.” I was dumbfounded at the idea that “not everyone went through that phase”, but it was one of the things that made me realize that I should have sought counseling or some form of self-help at some point, since it was not something everyone went through, and not something you were just supposed to “suck up and deal with”.
But back to the question of the OP. If such a thing is inherited, then I inherited obsessive-compulsive and anxious tendancies from my father. He has had professional psychriatric treatment before, and knew that the possibility of passing on his traits to me was there. It did not stop him, and I do not resent him for that. The existence of a mental disorder should not be (should, not is) enough to deter anyone from wanting to live their life. What I do hold against my dad is that he did not want me to seek help when I needed it, as he had a distrust of everyone in the psychology/psychiatry/counseling/therapy professions. He thought he could better take care of me himself, but didn’t take into consideration how complex my “problems” were and the fact that he, himself, was a large part of the problem.
Dervish Jones, you said you “felt unprepared and uneducated when I began feeling depressed”. If you want to have a child, this is exactly the kind of thing you have to prepare them and educate them about. You have gone through depression yourself, you know that one of the worst feelings from it is that you have nowhere to turn to for help, no one who will ever be able to understand how you’re feeling. If your children start feeling or saying things like this, take action right then. Tell them they don’t have to feel like that. Ask them why they feel that way. Show them that you want to understand them. If you don’t get answers from them, then you have already let the situation degenerate, since they no longer trust you. At that point, they need help from someone other than you. Get help for them. Get help that they are willing to cooperate with (that will respect their privacy and make them feel respected, instead of just the “4:00”), and that will actually benefit them. Make sure that they understand that you want to help them, and will help them how they want to be helped. That will be the most important thing.