Research suggests many US parents will lie when saying kids made them happier
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Re: Research suggests many US parents will lie when saying kids made them happier
#2My personal situation is complicated, but I think children make specific kinds of people happy.
I have a child, and I really enjoy learning. And we here at HN love the Feynman style "you want to learn, then be able to teach" paradigm.
I want to say I am often inspired by far smarter parents than me here, as my son is still less than 5. But I doubt I can catch up to teach him robotics. One man here once quipped he and his son were bonding over the shared development of typed programming language.
When my son reacts to input and adapts, he is the ultimate compiler, and I am part of one scraggly development team. When you look at parenting this way, I find it to be that cheesy "most rewarding achievement of your life" commentary far less trite and I feel it internally and beam with pride.
I would love to hear counter-arguments, but HN has show me anecdotes where I feel I am reading, coincidentally, the parenting tips of future world leaders and specifically movers and shakers in the CS world by virtue of how they inspire their kids.
Re: Research suggests many US parents will lie when saying kids made them happier
#3I don't feel that anyone disputes that children make parents happier (cuteness, inadvertent humor, fulfillment ...) but the responsibilities associated with them (sleep deprivation, education and care related costs, ...) stress everyone out which everyone acknowledges as well
Re: Research suggests many US parents will lie when saying kids made them happier
#4Hypothesis: people mostly say having kids makes them happy, because they know that's the right answer and they've never actually stopped to evaluate that statement since the child was 2 days old and the joy hadn't worn off.
Like most things, I suspect it's an opinion that's formed and then never reflected on unless something major comes along to force a correction of it.
As an aside to this, there's a lot that society and governance can do to make life easier for parents both in the short and long term. Places that do that make the statement more likely to be true, as the article suggests.
Re: Research suggests many US parents will lie when saying kids made them happier
#5I don't feel that anyone disputes that children make parents happier (cuteness, inadvertent humor, fulfillment ...) but the responsibilities associated with them (sleep deprivation, education and care related costs, ...) stress everyone out which everyone acknowledges as well
It's probably because happiness is a difficult thing to pin down. I could see them as decreasing happiness, but increasing fulfillment. But then, since fulfillment is a big component of happiness, perhaps I'm just defining happiness wrong.
Re: Research suggests many US parents will lie when saying kids made them happier
#6>The researchers caution that their findings don't mean that American parents are less happy than other parents around the world, as some media outlets have reported
Like for example the headline of this very article. I guess it was not written by the author.
Re: Research suggests many US parents will lie when saying kids made them happier
#7The article seems to cite public policy as the source of the difference. I don't think public policies are the root cause, but rather the underlying values of the culture that gave rise to them (as the article later seems to suggest). I'll bet that the U.S. end of that chart tends to be characterized by cultures that put individualism above all else, while the other end much less so.
Individualism is good; I'd never want the other extreme. I think Asian cultures subvert the individual to the group far too much. But the extreme individualism of the U.S. has led to an ever more selfish, narcissistic and cold society, where material gain and personal comfort trumps everything.
Re: Research suggests many US parents will lie when saying kids made them happier
#8Hypothesis: people mostly say having kids makes them happy, because they know that's the right answer and they've never actually stopped to evaluate that statement since the child was 2 days old and the joy hadn't worn off. Like most things, I suspect it's an opinion that's formed and then never reflected on unless something major comes along to force a correction of it. As an aside to this, there's a lot that societ…
> As an aside to this, there's a lot that society and governance can do to make life easier for parents both in the short and long term.
And further subsidize child-bearing? Property taxes already directly fund public schools in most localities in the US.
Re: Research suggests many US parents will lie when saying kids made them happier
#9I'd really like to see a study specific to female happiness with children. I live in the US, and I think men and women's experience with children is entirely different.
When my wife worked, she missed our kids tremendously. Almost 75% of her take home went to day care. She was pretty miserable.
Now she stays home. She gets a lot of off-hand comments from other friends with kids about "how bored they would be if they stayed home". Or from friends without kids about "how they feel like they are doing something with their lives".
Now she feels like she isn't doing enough with her life.
Maybe she needs thicker skin, or maybe the societal pressure for women is immense.
Men working is expected by society. IME, the dads I know who stay home get more of an "awesome bro!" type response when they say they stay home.
I just feel like no matter what I do, I will feel happy with kids. No matter what my wife does, she feels like it isn't good enough.
[Edit: so many links to books! I've exhausted my audible credits for the month. Thanks for the support!]
Re: Research suggests many US parents will lie when saying kids made them happier
#10I'd really like to see a study specific to female happiness with children. I live in the US, and I think men and women's experience with children is entirely different. When my wife worked, she missed our kids tremendously. Almost 75% of her take home went to day care. She was pretty miserable. Now she stays home. She gets a lot of off-hand comments from other friends with kids about "how bored they would be if they…
Wow, I have a very similar experience to yours. My wife worked, same thing, now doesn't work, and she feels lonely and like she (1) isn't contributing and (2) has no adult conversation.
I try to help her by mentioning how great she is with the kid, and by taking the kid places by myself so she can go see and do adult things.
It is tough, good luck.