I read this interesting article a friend of mine posted. Its premise is that parenthood is depressing and that people without children are happier than people who are parents. I consider myself well-read and clearly missed out on all this research. I had no clue!
The big takeaway for me is: Don’t get depressed if you don’t have kids or a family. Children make you depressed! Go get yourself a puppy!
It’s a fascinating, but long read that you can check out here. All Joy and No Fun: Why parents hate parenting by Jennifer Senior.
Otherwise, I pulled out the snippets I found to be really interesting below.
The idea that parents are less happy than nonparents has become so commonplace in academia that it was big news last year when the Journal of Happiness Studies published a Scottish paper declaring the opposite was true. “Contrary to much of the literature,” said the introduction, “our results are consistent with an effect of children on life satisfaction that is positive, large and increasing in the number of children.” Alas, the euphoria was short-lived. A few months later, the poor author discovered a coding error in his data, and the publication ran an erratum. “After correcting the problem,”it read,“the main results of the paper no longer hold. The effect of children on the life satisfaction of married individuals is small, often negative, and never statistically significant.”
Before urbanization, children were viewed as economic assets to their parents. If you had a farm, they toiled alongside you to maintain its upkeep; if you had a family business, the kids helped mind the store. But all of this dramatically changed with the moral and technological revolutions of modernity. As we gained in prosperity, childhood came increasingly to be viewed as a protected, privileged time, and once college degrees became essential to getting ahead, children became not only a great expense but subjects to be sculpted, stimulated, instructed, groomed. Kids, in short, went from being our staffs to being our bosses.
About twenty years ago, Tom Gilovich, a psychologist at Cornell, made a striking contribution to the field of psychology, showing that people are far more apt to regret things they haven’t done than things they have. In one instance, he followed up on the men and women from the Terman study, the famous collection of high-IQ students from California who were singled out in 1921 for a life of greatness. Not one told him of regretting having children, but ten told him they regretted not having a family.
“I think this boils down to a philosophical question, rather than a psychological one,” says Gilovich. “Should you value moment-to-moment happiness more than retrospective evaluations of your life?” He says he has no answer for this, but the example he offers suggests a bias. He recalls watching TV with his children at three in the morning when they were sick. “I wouldn’t have said it was too fun at the time,” he says. “But now I look back on it and say, ‘Ah, remember the time we used to wake up and watch cartoons?’ ” The very things that in the moment dampen our moods can later be sources of intense gratification, nostalgia, delight.
As someone who has made a thoroughly thought-out and carefully considered decision to not have children, I have witnessed both sides of this coin in my friends who did decide to procreate. I have had to bear the “you wouldn’t understand it, you don’t have kids, this is so hard, you are so lucky, your life is so free (read: irresponsible), mine is so crazy, etc.” so many times I’ve become immune to it. I’ve also seen first-hand the pure joy and unconditional love these same people feel because of the healthy relationship they have with their children. Without question parenting is not easy and it can wear anyone down because being a good parent means being consistent even if that means correcting the same undesired behavior over and over and over and over again until it sticks. It’s no wonder parents get depressed, they are exhausted and overwhelmed. I love my friends and I love their children and I especially love that as a non-parent I have the extra energy to help them when they get worn down, that I can be a back up reinforcement when needed. Believe me, there is strength in numbers when it comes to raising children in this modern age. Parents and non-parents need to realize that we are on the same side and can work together to teach children how to become happy, healthy, mature adults. But I do appreciate that at the end of the day I get to go home to my husband and dog and feel good about my decision to not have children of my own.