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Dollars for abortion: The House considers a bill allowing local funding of abortions in D.C. 
The stork brought me a bundle of sorrow
A new study suggests that having children doesn’t make you happy. Or perhaps I should rephrase. A new study suggests that people with children report lower happiness levels than those without. This is unexpected, to be sure:
In fact, no group of parents-married, single, step or even empty nest-reported significantly greater emotional well-being than people who never had children. It’s such a counterintuitive finding because we have these cultural beliefs that children are the key to happiness and a healthy life, and they’re not.
This is a complicated matter. How would one explain such results?
For the childless, all this research must certainly feel redeeming. As for those of us with kids, well, the news isn’t all bad. Parents still report feeling a greater sense of purpose and meaning in their lives than those who’ve never had kids.
But still, how do you explain that parents show less happiness than non-parents? The easy answer is that kids are no fun, but it seems it would be more complicated than that. My answer is that happiness isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
back to top25 Comments to “The stork brought me a bundle of sorrow”
Kids may not make anyone happy. But they surely provide many of us with compelling reasons to get up and head off to work in the morning, no?
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I wonder how much our attitude and expectations have to do with it?
I wonder how much the study would differ in countries with a lower standard of living, so as to have lower expectations?
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1. I feel less happy when I am tired. And with kids I am tired a lot.
2. Lots of people who don’t have kids still get involved in other people’s lives, including children. They may get some of the benefits of giving their time and love to those children without all the headaches that parents have.
3. The survey probably includes parents who had kids they didn’t really want, or whom they wanted until they discovered what a lot of trouble kids are, as well as parents who went into parenthood knowing how difficult it would be but wanting to do it anyway. The unhappiness of the former will lower the overall average.
4. Kids not not the key to happiness. Doing what you feel you are meant to do with your life has a lot more to do with happiness. For a lot of people that includes kids, but not everyone.
5. If you’ve never really thought about what is important in life, you are likely to be unhappy because you’ll have no sense of making progress toward what is important if you don’t know what it is. People who have made the conscious choice not to have children have probably thought it through to some extent.
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This is comparing apples and oranges. You have to poll people who are childless about their happiness level and then poll them years later when (if) they have children and compare.
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I had to post on something else while I mulled this over.
I don’t have children, but I am an aunt. I always appreciated the fact that my sister was generous not only with me but with some childless couples who wanted children in that she “lent” them out, so to speak. There was one young woman in church who had cervical cancer and lost the chance to have children of her own. She took a shine to my sister’s middle child, and would periodically take her home between Sunday services for some special attention. We have a small family, so it was like having another auntie. I always enjoyed watching these little people learn and develop, and that’s what they were to me — people who just needed time to learn. (When I think of Peter Singer saying an infant has no consciousness, it offends me deeply because I remember seeing awareness in my sister’s kids right away. It’s as if Singer doesn’t even want to give them a chance to learn.) I wouldn’t trade my memories of these kids growing up for anything or for the opportunity to play a role in raising them, small as it was.
My sister at times has accused me of having it easy, and perhaps she’s a little envious of my freedom, but she doesn’t realize there is a downside to being single over the long haul, too. I ignore her when she gets like this.
I can’t say that I am happier because I don’t have children because life is very, very different when you don’t have children around 24/7 and you’re not responsible for them (except as the go to person for the desired indulgence). I’m not unhappy either. I would be interested in knowing how old the childless people are in these studies, because I think things change with age. I know my sister complained when the kids were growing up, but I doubt she’d trade lives with me. Once the kids are grown, you have the same kind of freedom a single person or a childless couple have — plus grandchildren, usually.
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Perhaps its because we are so selfish. Being a parent means giving up a WHOLE lot (in my case, even taking a shower in private). Unfortunately, we like to put ourselves at the top of the list. When you are raising children, you just can’t be at the top anymore, not if you want to parent well…So if “pleasing yourself” is what makes a person happy, then no, having kids doesn’t make you happy. But it sure makes you blessed!
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Well, I was married 7 years, single again 7 years and married again for 5 years before my wife and I had a kid. I was 40 and my wife was 39. We both worked as pour daughter grew up and I was only home on weekends.
My feeling is I had much more personal fun when married or unmarried, when I didn’t have a kid but, I was and am happier after having one.
But I also think the one good reason to get married in the first place is if you want to have kids with the person you are marrying.
These kind of polls or studies also bother me because I did co-own a larger sized polling company and know how easy it is to control the outcome based on small sample survey, corrupt sample groups, who is asked what question and even when the question is asked, etc, etc etc,. I also know that 97% of all supposed facts have been proved wrong by later man.
I wouldn’t put to much credence on this survey.
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Besides, no one wants to have to pay anyone to empty your bedpan in old age when a kid will do it for you to protect their inheritance
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there is no way that word definitions are going to be the same within such a large contrived poplulation
we weren’t created to communicate on such intimate issues such as happiness in life with the whole country…still buiding the tower of babel…and still babbling
we were created for intimacy within God ordained relationships
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I often wonder what the heart of those who answers these questions has buried so deep that they believe they are happier because they are alone.
I’ve never met anyone who wishes they hadn’t had children.
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I’m skeptical of this. I don’t know how children affect happiness at all. You love them, raise them, sent them to college, or wherever. You get them married. They have grandchildren for you. Then the happiness starts.
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From Ps. 127: “Behold, children are a gift of the LORD; The fruit of the womb is a reward. 4 Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one’s youth. 5 How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.”
I’ve pondered this passage (and the question of the post) many times. My experience of raising three children is that it has not been an unqualified blessing. There’s been a lot of hurt, anguish and sorrow. Sometimes it is difficult to remember the happy moments. Flipping through a photo album helps the memory.
Chas mentioned grandchildren. I don’t have any yet. But I am looking forward to them. It seems like it will delightful to love them without the disciplinary responsibility.
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I think momoffour has it right in post #6- selfishness. Parents cannot be selfish because we have to give to others, do things we don’t want to do (like changing very messy diapers). Once we had children, we could no longer just get up and go somewhere spur-of-the-moment. Childless couples can take more expensive vacations, go out to eat or to the show more often w/out having to take the children or get a sitter. Perhaps than, it is a perceived happiness we are talking about.
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Someone once said having a child is like taking your heart out of your body and letting it walk around–permanently. With children you get the whole shebang. I didn’t know I could fall in love again and so deeply until I had my first child. Then I didn’t think I could love another child as much as I loved the first one, but it happened all over again. When you love intensely it brings great joy and great sorrow. I never knew how selfish I was or how angry I could get until I cared so much I was willing to look my sin in the face for the sake of those I love.
Happy is a moment not a sustained lifestyle. And my best moments are all seven of my kids around the dinner table enjoying each other. Pure bliss.
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Pauline, Your point number one is LOL funny because it is so true:)
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Happiness? Happiness is overrated. Joy is what’s important.
Happiness is momentary. It’s enjoyable, yes, but it goes away. But Joy is very different. Joy is a result of living in the Spirit, when you look past what’s going on in your life and realize that there’s something better coming. (Heaven!) It helps you to smile when you don’t feel like smiling.
Happiness is a gift God gives you, because He enjoys giving his children what they when it fits with His plan.
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I have always said having Chloe is what I never knew I always wanted. I didn’t even LIKE children.
Llama, you made me laugh. The first time I had to feed my dad through the tube in his stomach I thought I would gag and throw up. I made it. I looked at him and said aren’t you glad you had a girl baby instead of a boy baby becasue as worthless as I am a son would be even more worthless. We both laughed. Thankfully I never had to change a bedpan and for that I am sure he and I both are happy.
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I also kind of think that children have taken on an over inflated place in our lives in that we no longer just assume that we will get married, have children, raise them and marry them off to get grandchildren like Chas says. We are over analyzing this. Children really arent given to us to make us happy or sad.
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Determining happiness at any point is at best provisional. At what point in our lives do we measure this happiness? Asking the student in the middle of that do-or-die calculus test whether he’s happy is different than asking him 20 years later as a successful engineer.
It may also be that happiness is culturally determined. Happiness is not fixed, but relative; or self described. That is, does what makes for happiness in 2006 the same as in 1996? in 1986? Let alone, say, 1886.
Lastly, happiness might be seen in the context o the Maslovian pyramid. In earlier centuries, children are genuinely blessed, because they assure the security of the family. In our society, we no longer count on children as a source for our own primary care-taking or our wealth. So they make us happy for some other reason. Without a godly perspective, this view gets rather materialistic and shallow very very fast.
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Actually Victoria, I have met people who wished they hadn’t had children. And after observing them and their families, I would agree that they shouldn’t have, because they are all so miserable together. The truth is that raising children requires more strength, love and unselfishness than most of us are prepared for. The stakes are high and there are no guarantees that everything will turn out well. But if you take the view that children aren’t necessarily meant to make parents happy but to help them grow in character and godliness, it helps you settle in for the long haul. My kids are in their early 20’s now, and they’re intelligent, interesting, productive people. It wasn’t easy to get them to this point, but I’m glad I made the sacrifices and endured the struggle. My kids made me grow up.
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My kids made me grow up.
So true. So true.
I still find I am trying to live up to the person they see.
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LJO and Victoria,
I have met those people and it is sad. Sad as it is when the child clearly knows from actions, I suspect it also hurts when the parents tell others in the child’s presence, how much better their lives would be without the child/children.
Children are a blessing. As mentioned, they help us grow up.
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Getting married was the first great sanctifying relationship in my life. Having children was the second. God has molded me more and more into the image of His Son through my husband and children than through any other influence with skin on. My bests are better, my sacrifices deeper, and my sinfulness more apparent because of these 6 people I live with.
God has brought me to the end of myself at times. I remember expecting baby #4, throwing up 15-20 times a day, every day, for weeks on end, with morning sickness, while caring for a 1st grader (homeschooled), a preschooler, and a toddler still in diapers. I thought I couldn’t make it, but by God’s grace, I did. He has stretched me, challenged me, and rewarded me with these incredible little miracles. Day-by-day happiness is elusive, but God chose children to build my character and my faith, and now I certainly have more joy, and more purpose, than I did before kids.
God will use other means to acheive this in believers who don’t have children, but I think a spouse and children are one of His favorite ways to grow us up in Him. That’s much more important than “feeling” happy.
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This thread reminds me of the second verse of “What Have We Become?” by dcTalk.
Mom of 5: I like the way you put it in that last paragraph.
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Momoffour, I agree that selfishness must certainly have played a part for the folks who took that survey. I think that more and more it’s become fashionable to think of children — or any people who require considerable amounts of our time — as burdensome. More and more forums are devoted to “venting” about the difficulties of caring for others, and more media outlets than I can count are fond of sending the message “You deserve a little ‘me’ time”, and “Pamper yourself!” and the like. Because people are constantly receiving the message that dedicating one’s life to other people is somehow unfair, I believe there’s a subconscious resentment that’s been building up in parents and caretakers who perform duties that were simply regarded in former times as what needed to be done and were done with much less grumbling. People who celebrate — or at least don’t complain about — caring for others, I’ve noticed, are often regarded as “saints”, as though devoting oneself to one’s family were a task that requires a person to be exceptionally kindly, and therefore suggesting that regular folks shouldn’t have to put up with such “burdens”. It’s a very dangerous mentality — and it leads to neglect, not only of children, but to disabled and elderly adults as well.
And Momof5, yes, definitely, folks need to also realize that happiness is more than simply “feeling”.
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