Children Make Us Miserable
The evidence really doesn’t look great for the idea that kids are the key to contentment. I just got Arthur Brooks’ new book Gross National Happiness in the mail. Brooks quite rightly points out that happiness research doesn’t really do much to support conventional liberal policies, and he gives it a right-wing spin, as far as the data allow. But the data don’t allow much celebration of the happiness-value of children:
On the surface, it looks as though kids make people a bit happier: Adults with one or two kids are about 3 percentage points more likely to say they are happy than childless adults. But this gap is an illusion created by the fact that many happiness-causing things are also correlated with whether one has kids — marriage, age, religion, politics, and so forth. When we correct for these things, the relationship between kids and happiness actually reverses itself, and we see that children make people unhappy. If two adults in 2004 were the same in age, sex, income, marital status, education, race, religion, and politics — but one had kids and the other did not — the parent would be about 7 percentage points less likely to report being very happy.
The more children you have, on average, the unhappier you get — up to a point. The average happiness of adults — correcting for all the factors mentioned above — falls as more children are added to the family. …
[...]
None of this is to say that people with kids are unhappy people. There are many things in a parent’s life that bring great joy. For example, spending time away from kids.
Brooks points out that global self-reports can be misleading, because people often misremember how they have felt doing various activities. But experience sampling makes it look even worse:
Using these techniques, researchers have collected data on how people — particularly women — experience life with their children. And what emerges is that the enjoy almost everything more than they enjoy taking care of their kids. …
How about Bryan’s thesis?
Of course, we tell ourselves, having young children is difficult — but we will experience rewards when they are older, right? Probably so — although one British study suggests that senior citizens get more satisfaction from frequent contact with friends thans they do from spending time with their grown children. Al least once children have grown up, they seem, on average, to stop lowering the happiness of their parents.
I’m afraid the case for breeding, whatever it might be, isn’t going to be based in the pleasure of it.
April 4th, 2008 12:16
Fascinating! I have four children myself, and I spend a lot of time stressed out and torn between work and family and all the rest of it. Certainly life was happier and more carefree in graduate school. But I would say that asking whether I’m happy today is completely beside the point. I am engaged in a huge personal growth project, primarily for my children but also for myself. Day-to-day happiness is not high on my list of priorities.
Where are the cross-demographic studies that ask people, “how much have you matured and grown as a human being in the last five years”?? Many people value that more highly than happiness. And children certainly can help out there.
April 4th, 2008 12:53
I have three children and agree with Jeff.
I would just add that having children leads to satisfactions apart from moment-to-moment happiness. Perhaps another analogy is to running a marathon. Some people like running marathon’s not because it makes them happy while they are doing it and training for it, but because they derrive satisfaction from setting and acheiving the goal of having run the marathon. Children provide a similar, arguably more worthwhile challenge.
But it is also possible I may be rationalizing, so I’m curious. How good do you think the happiness studies are at picking up this sort of satisfaction as distinct from other types?
April 4th, 2008 13:02
Three children here as well. To keep going, I’d compare child-rearing to career advancement. It’s about life satisfaction. I can’t imagine that high-powered executives or lawyers or whatever working 75 hours a week are enjoying those 75 hours of work, but they do it for some reason, even if they could retire comfortably. So at the very least, breeders are no less stupid in their choices than the hyper-motivated careerist, especially considering the diminishing returns on happiness once one gets to a certain level of wealth.
Loved this line: “None of this is to say that people with kids are unhappy people. There are many things in a parent’s life that bring great joy. For example, spending time away from kids.” I laughed mainly because I can’t wait until June when my wife and I go to New York without our kids.
April 4th, 2008 13:05
Just to be clear, I argue often that happiness isn’t the only thing worth caring about. And I’d like to have children in a decade or so myself. (Kerry and I would like to adopt). But given the costs of kids, especially to women, I think that natalist propaganda that encourages the sense that life without children is lacking or incomplete in some way is harmful and implicitly sexist.
Anyway, no doubt the challenges of childrearing are rewarding at many levels. The thing is, the challenges of the things you could be doing if you didn’t have kids can be rewarding at many levels, too. I think a lot of people simply assume that a life without kids cannot be just as fulfilling and meaningful as a life without kids, but as far as I can see, that’s just false.
April 4th, 2008 13:43
Will,
Sounds like an interesting book. I suspect the basic result (kids not so good for happiness, at least in the near term vs. say old age) is for real, though the data I’ve seen rely on memories of the previous day’s experiences and may be skewed by peak-end effects (eg, the peak moments with kids most days might be negative, whereas the peak moments with tv tend to be positive). Maybe we have kids, besides out of brute inclination, mainly for the meaning it adds to our lives, not b/c it makes us happy…
BUT, how much of the effect is peculiar to contemporary American (and UK?) lifestyles? There is some new data coming out from a similar study of France vs. USA, one result of which suggests that time with kids is one of the MOST pleasant parts of the day in France, while one of the least pleasant in the USA. This does not surprise me–I suspect family life has gotten much less pleasant in this country in recent decades….
Dan
April 4th, 2008 14:04
[...] … having kids makes people less happy. [...]
April 4th, 2008 15:57
“Brooks points out that global self-reports can be misleading…”
It’s only “misleading” if you’re taking global subjective satisfaction as an indicator of momentary subjective satisfaction. But why do that? I’d expect it’s the former kind of ‘happiness’ that most people care about (insofar as they care about merely subjective states at all).
April 4th, 2008 19:12
Having talked to a lot of families and their kids, kids seem to provide as much difficulty as happiness in a day to day sense, but having them seems to provide a lot of meaning for people. I see complementary evidence in the amount of single people I know who are happy in the life they’ve made for themselves, but don’t always have a clear sense of “what it’s all been for”. Have you seen any good reading that addresses the relationship or lack thereof between happiness and meaningfulness? They seem on quite parallel tracks.
April 4th, 2008 21:03
Will,
If you plan to start adopting kids when you are 45 years old, then you won’t need to worry about whether or not you are getting more satisfaction from your friends than from your grown children as a senior citizen because you’ll have neither- you’ll still be busy attending school conferences and fighting about who is going to pick the kids up from daycare when you are eligible for the 55 and over senior discount at the buffet.
Unless, of course, you adopt older children rather than infants. Referring back to the Jamie-Lynn posts- How much better is geriatric parenting than teen parenting?
April 4th, 2008 21:45
I’ve heard that at 40 you’re already too old to adopt and it gets extremely difficult to do. Also, raising kids takes energy and at 40 you instead want to relax.
April 4th, 2008 23:25
Jen, I don’t get it! 45 year-old men sire children ALL THE TIME. I believe Michael Douglas was about 60 when his last was born. What’s the difference in adopting one? Given changes in technology, health, medical care, and lifespans, 45 really is the new 35. And part of the point of waiting until you’re in your peak earning years is so you can outsource as much of the annoying stuff as possible.
April 4th, 2008 23:52
I think Dan Haybron is onto something — the happiness (and long-term satisfaction, and meaningfulness, and whatever other values) effect of children depends to some — I would imagine great — extent on the social context. And certainly in the US today, we have a social context that makes childrearing burdensome. On the other hand, another important aspect of modern US social context is natalist propaganda. I wonder how much the average for parents’ happiness is skewed downward by the presence of many parents who would not have had children if not for that propaganda (and its related institutions like reduced practical access to birth control).
April 5th, 2008 13:31
For me, this information reinforces Will’s idea that happiness isn’t the only thing worth caring about–it can’t be, otherwise why would humans have (and more importantly, continue to raise) kids?
April 5th, 2008 21:51
“otherwise why would humans have (and more importantly, continue to raise) kids?”
Safe, reliable birth control has only been available in the developed world for two generations (and still isn’t available in much of the world).
April 5th, 2008 22:23
I tend to think of things from the perspective of a once overwhelmed and very young mother, so I didn’t think about your point with regard to older men, but you’re right.
Outsourcing is what older men who sire children have done throughout time. If you don’t have a nanny to outsource it to, then the younger wife will do it. Sweet!!
April 7th, 2008 12:29
>Safe, reliable birth control has only been available in the developed world for two generations (and still isn’t available in much of the world).
That might be why people have given birth to kids, but why do people raise them? Upon finding kids to be more work than they thought, why don’t humans eat their kids, for example?
April 7th, 2008 12:40
Will,
While adopting is noble and a very close substitute to having one’s own children, they are not identical substitutes. I think you are totally ignoring powerful forces that make genetic links stronger, both between parent and child, and co-genetic investors in children. To say, ‘he gets that from you’, is often fascinating, and to see similarities in innate proclivities and physical structures is very bonding.
Eric
April 7th, 2008 12:52
Eric, Humans have little or no biological capacity for detecting genetic closeness. (Even giving birth to a child doesn’t guarantee the women that it’s her offspring these days.) If it matters a lot to you, then it’s because you THINK it does. The actual human emotional attachment and bonding mechanisms are based in body contact, proximity, food-sharing, etc., and is incredibly labile. (Have you noticed how attached people are able to get to blankets, stuffed animals, pets, etc.) If you’re fixated on seeing yourself in a half-clone, or have accepted some kind of silly ideology of genetic perpetuation, then yes you will feel you are missing something if you adopt. Of course, people who don’t adopt are missing something entirely different.
April 8th, 2008 13:11
Will,
Ever heard of the phrase ‘red-headed stepchild’? Given many animals find their young based on olfactory sense, it seems reasonable to assume there are vestiges of this deep in our medullary processor.Plus, many adopted kids later in life invest a great deal in finding and bonding with their biological parents regardless of how pathetic they wer and are, many writing books about these experiences. While understandable, I always find these stories sad, in that even though they are trying to celebrate this journey and say its win-win, I can’t help but think it takes a bit from the persons who put so much time raising the kid. But these are powerful forces.
Barak Obama’s dad was basically a sperm donor, yet Barak chose, after adolescence, an identity more aligned with this mere 50% biological antecedent than his primary nurturers or his mother!
April 8th, 2008 13:58
Eric, Maybe you want to believe that you can smell kin, but there is no evidence of it.
The issue with stepchildren is that often they are accepted as part of the price of the new spouse, but are really unwanted. But I was talking about adopting children one does want.
How many adopted children don’t look for biological parents? In the absence of the comparison, a few anecdotes establish nothing at all. And why are people looking for their bioparents doing this? Because they can smell them out there or because people like you insist that similar DNA is a source of meaning?
April 8th, 2008 17:42
I haven’t seen anything on parent-child smelling and preferences, but there has been lots of fun research giving women t-shirts of men, and analyzing what types of scents they like, and have examined how these preferences relate to their genes and menstrual cycle. This is why cologne sells–it works.
Look at those goosebumps on your arm. You are an animal.
April 9th, 2008 19:55
[...] Will Wilkinson is giddy over happiness research these days. One of the results he cited the other day was controlling for everything, kids make people less happy. [...]
April 20th, 2008 17:22
While I agree that children are the root of a large amount of stress I think in the end having raised children and experiencing life with them is possibly the happiest and most fulfilling thing in the world. Adults whom I know who do not have children especially as they reach their later years are generally seem more depressed. My husband and I have six children and four grandchildren and we are truly happy that we have them and happy with our life. We have only one left at home and we are not quite ready for him to leave. I believe wholeheartedly that raising children is challenging and can be very difficult but the in the end you are far happier for having done it.
May 6th, 2008 05:35
Renee:
Looks like a kid-centric society has done a very good job in brainwashing you. Pity.
May 6th, 2008 19:42
Excellent discussion! I made my decision to be childfree shortly after college; 30 years later I still don’t regret it, and never expect to. But you are dead on target about pronatalist propaganda; I’ve been harangued by hairdressers, repairmen, and complete strangers because they seemed to think it was their sacred duty to make sure ALL women have children.
BTW, I’m with Jen about the notion of adopting at 45. It’s one thing to have a tail-end child at that age, and quite another to start the child-rearing process from scratch. Also, I was adopted by older parents, and it caused a lot of problems as I grew up; there was almost two generations’ worth of generation gap between me and my parents, and we fought constantly from the time I was 10 or 11 years old until I moved out of the house. I wouldn’t wish that on any kid, or on you either!
May 6th, 2008 19:57
By casual cobservation, I think there’s a smallish proportion of parents and kids who are good for each other. They’re the ones worth studying.
May 27th, 2008 05:52
[...] had fertility on mind lately for obvious reasons. I have been following the great Wilkinson-Caplan debates, am part way through Better to Never Have Been by David Benatar, and am taking a [...]
June 2nd, 2008 19:43
My kids make me miserable. They don’t listen, they fight all the time, they don’t clean, the oldest is a hermit, the middle one is a trouble maker, and the youngest is just hyper. Yeah, I do love them with everything I have but they just don’t understand that money doesn’t grow on trees and they’re hard as hell to raise. They don’t understand that it takes sleep to work a graveyard job.
Oh, and the dad? Well, he pretends to be interested and “tries” to see them every other weekend and then blames all their problems on me.
I’m about ready to pull my flipping hair out!
August 7th, 2008 06:10
I think it can depends to some degree on what sort of temperament your child/children have, as to how they make you feel. We have a 5-year-old boy, who, right from the word go, had a VERY strong character, and never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it was going to be so emotionally hard raising a child. The baby-phase was tough; we have no family around us, and our little boy was Colicky. The toddler tantrums were unbelieveable, and nothing we tried made them easier to handle, and even now at the age of 5 he can still reduce me to tears. Yes, he brings us joy, and we are a fun-loving family who spend plenty of quality time together and focus very much on our son’s emotional wellbeing, but there is no way we want any more children. Our marriage is important to us, and if we had any more, we would be more stressed than we are now with that extra responsibility, more tired, and we’d have less time together as a couple until they had grown up. But that’s not the only reason we don’t want any more; we feel that we don’t have to cave in to pressure from the rest of society that children SHOULD HAVE siblings. Half of my friends don’t even speak to their siblings, and a good friend of mine who was brought up and only child always says she had the best childhood ever. Adding one or more children to a family can (and I see it with friends who have more than one) add to everyday pressures and make parents (particulary stay-at-home mums) miserable. With one child we feel we have everything - a beautiful son, time for ourselves as a couple, and enough stress to contend with thank you very much! It sounds negative, but I don’t think that children are the be all and end all of adult happiness. I used to think they were, but now I have a child of my own I can totally understand why some people choose a child-free life.