An article in Newsweek discusses the latest studies on happiness and children, which find that parents are less happy than non-parents. (Via Will Wilkinson and Megan)
In Daniel Gilbert’s 2006 book "Stumbling on Happiness," the Harvard
professor of psychology looks at several studies and concludes that
marital satisfaction decreases dramatically after the birth of the
first child—and increases only when the last child has left home. He
also ascertains that parents are happier grocery shopping and even
sleeping than spending time with their kids. Other data cited by 2008’s
"Gross National Happiness" author, Arthur C. Brooks, finds that parents
are about 7 percentage points less likely to report being happy than
the childless.
In fact, we seem even more unhappy about the rugrats than we did in the past. Some point to the increasing difficulties of mixing work and family. Or it may because more of us had a blast in our 20s, so those late night feeding and temper tantrums are rather a shock to the system.
Wilkinson says that empirical studies on these matters are limited, since the intense love for our kids may compensate for the hassle. Megan says the findings in the study sound about right and that women have been sold a pack of lies in order to agree to marry and pump out kids.
There’s got to be something rewarding, if not happy making, about having kids. Or else, why do parents have more than one. If they had been sold a pack of lies, you would think that after the first one, they would catch on and stop. No, people keep pumping them out and go for two or three.
The low level of happiness that is being measured by parents is certainly tied to the crappy work-family laws in this country. Northern European countries with more liberal policies in this area have higher birthrates than Italy and Spain with less liberal laws. So, these studies haven’t measured the right thing. Unhappiness comes from the lack of support from government and society. It’s not the kids that make us sad; it’s the hostile environment.
Apt. 11d 
On a related note, does anybody know how long the “terrible twos” last? (If the answer is “until graduate school”, don’t tell me.)
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I would like to know when the “it’s not fair” and stomp out of the room stage ends. I suspect it ends when he makes me drop him off a block away from school, because he’s too embarrassed of the old car and the old mom.
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11D, where are you? I thought we might see you down here!
I listened to that title during our time on the superslab and am surprised that any specific claim could really stem from it–the whole enterprise seemed like a metastudy with a running conclusion that our subconscious blindspots fool us a lot and we should all read Khaneman and Tversky more often.
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Yeah, aren’t the economists supposed to decide what people actually want based on what they actually do?
I’m intrigued by the birthrates in Italy, and the reasons behind their decline. But, I think it’s a lot more complicated than economics or work-family laws. I don’t see it as a problem, though. Ultimately, we’re moving towards a borderless (“flat”?) world. Yeah, maybe women who were born in Italy aren’t having children, but the world population isn’t declining. Eventually people will have to wake up and smell the benefits of immigration. Yes, their worlds will change, but such is life. People have to get over it, and accept the world as it is, not some fantasy they have from the 50s.
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JMT – The school only gave me $300 to present a paper at APSA last year. How much would they reimburse me for hanging out with bloggers and drinking in Austin with you guys?
The book blurb sounds a little Oprah, but Oprah can be fun. Worth a read?
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Gilbert is definitely worth a read….or a listen. We’ve got it on .mp3 if you want to “borrow” it.
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I’m sorry to get all phenomenological here, but I’ve never been able to take any of these surveys–or the whole idea of “happiness studies” itself–at all seriously. Happiness is relational, contextual, a state of mind which achieves a self-recognition of such only while in the midst of ongoing exchanges or tasks; to stop everything and ask to sum up “Are you happy today? Were you happier last week?” is invariably going to result in utilitarian calculcations (“oh, well, my toddler’s screaming fit this morning definitely created twice of much despair on my part than did my girlfriend breaking my heart ten years ago…”) of the sort which we’re all fascinated by on paper, but which no one actually ever lives according to (not unless they’re a bean-counting borderline psychopath).
All of which is not to say that Laura’s point–“Unhappiness comes from the lack of support from government and society. It’s not the kids that make us sad; it’s the hostile environment”–isn’t correct, which it most clearly is.
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RAF – Yes, there is something silly about these happiness studies, but I would like to “borrow” JAG’s .mp3 of this book to check it out.
JAG – Yeah, I would love to “borrow” the book. We can listen to it on the way down to NC, though listening to some Harvard professor may harsh the whole Thelma and Louise vibe I like to go for when we take road trips. Well, “Finding Nemo” on the car DVD player and the Toyota Corolla probably kill the Thelma and Louise vibe anyway. My place for beer and fried scrod when you come back.
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Did the study cut off at the beginning of the empty nest years, or did it cover the second half of life, too? I would expect that the experience of aging is very different for parents and non-parents. Things may be changing now with the internet reducing generational barriers (I’m often surprised how old or young posters are), but I think it is often difficult to form friendships with those of a younger generation. If we live an average life-span, at some point half of our friends, siblings, and other contemporaries will have died. If we live a longer than average life-span, even more of our contemporaries will be dead before we die. What a very melancholy thought!
In my own family, I call at least one set of relatives every day. Monday I might talk to my grandparents, Tuesday parents, Wednesday grandparents, and so on. I talk to my dad about the news, whatever book project he is working on, and what I’m reading, and with my grandma I don’t really need a subject. Grandma has lost much of her vision and grandpa had hip surgery this spring and was only recently given permission to start driving. It’s been a very long recovery. One aunt has driven them to grandpa’s appointments with specialists, another aunt and uncle are pharmacists and have always provided a lot of advice, my dad and sister installed pull-bars over the bath, the in-town relatives have done grocery deliveries, and I’ve sent the occasional DVD set or Sudoku book via Amazon (that’s not much, but it turns out that grandpa LOVES Sudoku). Plus, a nephew of my grandparents has been picking up the slack around the farm. What a bummer it would be if my grandparents were childless, or nephewless. And what a bummer for their child if they had had only one child, and that one child were responsible for everything.
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I meant to add that the relationship that I have with my grandma and my dad is my long term goal for the sort of relationship I would like to have with my own children and (hypothetical) grandchildren.
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Unhappiness comes from the lack of support from government and society. It’s not the kids that make us sad; it’s the hostile environment.
Even so, why do we not catch on after the first one? It’s still only more expensive and harder to juggle after the first one?
Much as I love my little 2 week old, I have a feeling that we might be on the “One and Done” plan…
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Two weeks! Congratulations.
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MH,
I think 3 is very different from 2. As I recall, when he was two, Baby D had an amazing talent for flicking the keys off my laptop whenever it was left unguarded for a few seconds. He doesn’t do that anymore. 3 is also more rational than 2, less prone to running into traffic. You can negotiate with a 3-year-old.
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Laura, if the unhappiness really stems from our “crappy work-family laws,” then why are our birthrates about as high as the Northern European countries whose laws draw so much envy? Shouldn’t they be more akin to the Southern European vanishing birthrates? The NYT magazine article you refer to from a few weeks ago noted that either of two regimes seem to work in increasing birthrates: an extensive system of laws a la Northern Europe or serious labor-market flexibility like we have here. Unfortunately, those are generally an either-or proposition.
And as to why parents keep going, I do believe in the existence of forgetfulness hormones. (Though I’m not sure they work as well for men – maybe because men obviously don’t experience the greater physical trauma. I can’t count the number of times Mrs. M. says that something or other “wasn’t really that bad” and I respond “YES IT WAS.”
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I don’t know about forgetfulness hormones. It is true that I can’t remember much from the first three months of our son’s life. My guess is that it has to do with not getting enough uninterrupted sleep to form coherent memories. What I do remember is lots of episodes of Columbo. At the time, one of the cable channels was running them at 2:00 a.m. and I would always watch (sound off, captioning on) while feeding, burping and putting back to sleep.
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Laura, this is the Best. Subject Header of a Post. Ever.
The heat and the kids’ incessant playing of the HSM Wii Sing It game has melted away any other intelligent response I might have.
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I could swear we’ve had this conversation before, haven’t we? Or was it on halfchangedworld? My theory is that, day over day, it’s more stressful and therefore less blissed out to be a parent. But over the long haul it’s much more rewarding. It would take a very carefully-created survey to tease that out.
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I also think there are many different components to “happiness”
If we are talking about the “pleasure” component – then yeah, the kids have killed that. No more spontaneous Friday night trips to the local bistro and bar. No more crazy vacations – just the two of us.
But if we are talking about the “meaning” component – show me a parent who hasn’t felt the most intense feeling of joy in their life simply by snuggling with their newborn (or 3 year old…or 8 year old…)
I think that relationships and connections and love bring happiness too. Just a different kind of happiness. Maybe a “harder to measure” kind.
Even if we can’t just hop off to Jamaica for the weekend.
Also – according to my parents – grandchildren are the best thing in the universe and bring more happiness than anything else they’ve experienced, to date. I find that hard to believe, but that’s what they tell me.
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Within the US, it certainly isn’t differences in work/life policies that make the difference in who has no kids, or one kid, or two kids, or lots. If anything, fewer career opportunities for women seems to lead to larger families.
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“…parents are happier grocery shopping and even sleeping than spending time with their kids.”
Now I know the secret to happiness: spend more time grocery shopping.
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Why do economists assume we make all choices with happiness as the goal? And also, why do we assume that maximising “hours spent feeling happy” is the same thing as happiness, which is what the survey seems to based upon? I agree that an ideology that says that once must have children to be happy and that children automatically bring happiness to one’s life is flawed, but so is this weird idea that if one rates time spent on one activity as happier than time on another, that the first activity should be the logical choice. I probably would rate the hours I spend baking cakes as happier than the ones at my job, but I also love my job and have no desire to become a baker.
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I believe there’s also some research that says that while major life events (marriage, divorce, winning the lottery, etc.) may temporarily bump your level of happiness up or down, we tend to have an individual happiness level that we default back to. So it may be that happiness depends much more on individual personality than on stuff like having kids or not having kids. However, I still think that every prudent person should provide themselves with grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
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Norwegian birth rates aren’t anything to write home about though, as they’re still beneath the rate of replacement. So, it’s a slower demographic decline, but not much better. All those social programs are expensive, and may throttle family growth. Our European friends are all well aware of how expensive children are, particularly for the university-educated.
Do children make us happier? Probably not, as they drastically decrease the percentage of our resources we can spend on ourselves. This is not a bad thing. Children do make us, perforce, care about the welfare of someone other than ourselves, and they anchor us to the future. They make life more intense, and certainly more interesting.
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Norwegian birthrates are heading up and global warming keeps making Norway warmer. Isn’t that recreating the conditions that created to the Viking expansion?
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They’ve got oil, too, don’t they?
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As my ancestors are mostly from places the Vikings conquered, I’m a bit nervous. I took plenty of classes in international security, but they always stopped short of explaining how to stab somebody.
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On reflection, it was probably the comparitivists who were learning how to stab. Nobody could possibly stay awake long enough to write about comparative parliaments.
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I don’t think it’s all about economics and being able to self-indulge more. When I am moderating a fight or cajoling a child into behaving, I think how stupid it is that I worked for years (we suffered infertility) to have the honor of doing this frustrating grunt work of parenting.
On the other hand when I am sitting around the table carrying on real conversations with my teenagers and sometimes my 10 year old (rarely the 6 year old yet), I feel incredibly lucky to have the chance to know these interesting people so intimately. I honestly have found parenthood has gotten better the older the children get. Get through the first decade and life becomes great.
The six year old is still in those years that make you think a cute little yorkie might have been a better way to nurture something.
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Good comments, everyone.
At this thread began, I was thinking that it was very cool for public policy that psychologists were fine tuning these measures of happiness. I would like to take a look at actually how it is done, but if they are good measures, then we could construct government programs that directly respond to happiness measures. If urban life makes people happier, then it gives us one more reason to build walkable town centers and denser building patterns.
However, as this thread went on, it really shows the limitation of happiness measurements. Clearly, kids might not give us moments of bliss, but they give us something else. Something that hasn’t been measured yet. Neat.
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People keep describing the happiness literature results as being driven by economists. But part of their point has been to cast empirical doubt on the economists’ assumption that all we can say is “revealed preferences” and “utility maximizing” and “more is better than less.” Economists assume that the choices we make are ones that make us better off in the relevant sense (as does Laura in her post). The happiness people are always trying to show that that’s not true, and therefore (e.g.) that wealth maximization isn’t actually good for us, since we don’t end up any happier.
If you like Laura’s revealed-preference argument better than the self-reported happiness survey results, then you’re with the economists, not agin’ em.
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Take away recent immigrants and the US birthrate would below replacement level. The US group with the highest birthrates are the very wealthy; one study showed that billionaires had 5 children on average. Recent immigrants also have higher than replacement birthrates. Two-career professional couples have the lowest birthrates. Women in traditionally-male fields of science and technology have the lowest birthrates of all.
From my birthrates series:
http://badmomgoodmom.blogspot.com/search/label/Birthrates
That said, my decision to have a child was completely irrational, as is my deep love for my child and my willingness to sacrifice for her.
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It seems that “happiness” and “satisfaction” are quite different.
I find programming satisfying (it’s a large portion of my job). I actively seek projects that have a significant programming component. But a large portion of the time I spend actually programming is frustrating. My mental state is something like: WTF do you mean, computer? I already DEFINED class1! (15 minutes later) WHOSE GOOD IDEA WAS IT TO PUT THESE LINE-BREAKS IN MAC FORMAT? (An hour later) Oh–I’m missing a comma 5 lines up. What a STUPID way to spend an hour; this job would bore the average COMPUTER.
But at the end of the day, a program that works is satisfying enough that I want to do it again.
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ianqui, with my vast experience of not quite 11 months of parenthood, I can tell you that it gets a lot more fun in another week or two.
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