Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert has been making waves since he ‘put his mother’s advice’ on happiness to the test, and concluded if you want to top the happy-charts maybe don’t have kids.
His mum told him that “marriage, money and children” were the keys to creating a happy life, but he found while the marriage and money parts were true the children bit wasn’t.
Who did he ask to come this conclusion, I wonder? Not me. I’ve never been happier than since we had kids and I don’t think this is an uncommon sentiment. Not only for the sheer joy of having them around, but for the fantastic perspective-enhancer that having children is.
Stuff that was a big deal, pre kids, now simply doesn’t matter. Self-absorption is reduced, feeling connected to other humans and your community gets such a massive boost.
Yes it can be a lot of work, on not much sleep, the overseas trips dry up and you are broker (and there are the outbreaks of random gastro). But given the children are healthy and you are too, what were people who say they are less happy since kids expecting?
And, so long as you have enough to support an average standard of living, how people can put “money” over “kids” as a source of happiness? I just don’t get that.
For the record, Prof Gilbert found that married people are happier – at least for the first 10 to 15 years—because they are healthier, had more sex and lived longer. After 15 years they had to work harder to keep the spark alive.
Money was found to be important but only to a point: the happiest people were earning $US50,000 to $US70,000 and often gave money away to help others. Wealthier people “eventually became unhappy because they were spending money ‘on the wrong things’.”
Being creative, relaxing and spending time with loved-ones were top happiness generators. But “raising children made people increasingly unhappy”.
And: “The only symptom of empty nest syndrome is non-stop smiling”.
Perhaps the real issue here isn’t that raising children, per se, is wearing some people’s happiness down, but the pressure that goes along with it in our current parenting context is.
People do struggle with child care – to find it and to pay for it. They do struggle to look after their own health and other needs well as they focus on the needs of kids. Yes, the tiredness may reduce the rolling-in-the hay count.
Some parents’ work opportunities may be impacted, their down time definitely is, and then there is the authentic and serious issue of parental depression – of which exhaustion is an acknowledged driver.
Parenting has become more political now, too. There’s been an unwelcome increase in the number of child-unfriendly places and attitudes.
Some of these factors are easier to shrug off than others, and some take a few years to work out. But despite them, to say that having children, overall, makes you less happy? That’s a call I think the majority parents, even while we’re in the thick of it, would never make.