But I disagree that emotions are a choice. I think our emotions are very much influenced by our environment and the messages we hear on a regular basis. Why wouldn’t a person who is told over and over that their lifestyle MUST be pathological, miserable, dysfunctional, or suboptimal not internalize negative feelings about themselves, at least a little bit. A fat person who feels sad in response to the anti-fat bias around them hasn’t made a choice to feel sad. The same for the gay person, the stigmitized ethnic minority, the poor person, or the single/childless person. Being “abnormal” shapes a person’s personality and their outlook, even if the thing that makes them abnormal doesn’t bother them.
But individuals are different. Not every single/childless person cares that society views them as a “weirdo”. Or maybe they don’t think being a weirdo is a bad thing. I think a person can cope with a stigma so that it doesn’t faze them. The ability to enure isn’t a choice, but it does require conscious effort.
They didn’t pick two people and compare them unfairly, they looked at 670 people and picked out the happiest and saddest. Although I agree with Jragon that they’re not casting it as any bona fide human beings. It’s a statistical profile or happiness and sadness in a 2.5 children statistic sort of way.
The one advantage family people generally have over child-free is that we’ve tried it both ways. Of course some people get knocked up at 18, but that’s far from most parents in the U.S. these days. And I’ll never know what being child free in my 30s and 40s is like personally. I’m sure it’s a lot different than being child free in your 20s. On the other hand, at least I was single and childfree in my 20s.
I often think about how lonely it was not having anyone to do things with, being home alone in the evening, sleeping alone in my bed. I generally think about it because nowadays I often get about an hour a week to myself. There’s pros and cons to both lives, but I really value having the first hand experience of each, at least as much as possible within 1 lifetime.
This. People who want their life to be X are likely to be happy if their life is X (so, #1 and #4), and likely to be unhappy if their life is not X (so, #2 and #3). There seems to be a weird obsession among some folks for finding One Answer To Rule Them All, i.e. either having kids make everyone happy, or having kids make everyone unhappy, without any consideration for the unique interests and wishes of the individual.
Aside from not controlling for other factors the study is irrelevant for anything that directly affects me. I make individual decisions. I encourage those in my life to make individual decisions that best suit them. Individual decisions aren’t driven by what makes the group at large happiest but based on personal hopes, dreams, etc.
Why does not being married or having kids mean I do everything myself or never have any support? Why do I need to define my personal success in terms of societies structures and definitions? I likely would have been distracted from or not even in the position to enjoy the most meaningful and personally rewarding period of my life if I’d focused more on remarrying to have kids. There is a point that some culturally normed “success” can be more difficult when single. There’s still plenty of cultural norms and structures that don’t fit well with being single. That speaks more to societal norms making the single and childless more prone to unhappiness than reinforcing the norms as the route to happiness.
The article directly talks about the having it all mentality which is different than making a choice. I can see that being directly tied to unhappiness. There’s only so much time in our lives . If you don’t choose where to at least accept risk, if not directly sacrifice, amongst wants, you open yourself up to more disappointment when wants aren’t fulfilled. If you think you can have it all and don’t… of course you are unhappy. Whether that “all” includes kids or not.
Actually, it’s more complicated than that. I don’t think #1 vs #4 accurately describes the comparison in the OP because we don’t know what those people want. The 42 year old female in the OP might actually want kids but doesn’t want them until she gets married and that hasn’t happened yet. That would be closer to #2 than #4, compounded by the fact that she hasn’t found a mate.
Perhaps love, love, love is somewhat inwardly generated? Shakespeare sold it, and to the best of my knowledge he wasn’t employed by a greeting card company.
Perhaps the study in the OP comes from a model of happiness, and then generating people and matching them against the model?
If the unhappy woman were stuck in a crappy hospital and desperately wants to get married, then I can see it. On the other hand she might be using her skills to serve underserved patients and be quite self sufficient, and be very happy.
Perhaps the unhappiest people of all are psychologists who can’t tell us how we are supposed to feel.
Different people are happy with different things. My kids and wife are the best things about my life. I work to support them, but my career is not of value to me in and of itself–it’s just a means to an end. But my baby sister and best friend are both childless and happy that way. That is what works for them, and I think they’d be doing potential children a disservice by having them when they don’t really want them.
No kidding. I bet this accounts for most of the unhappiness of parents, especially parents of young children. Everything takes longer, takes much more effort, and goes on seven days a week.
I wonder if single parents are unhappier than married ones, or married people without kids, or unmarried people.
I’d venture in most families with kids where one member is a successful upper-level manager and the other partner is a part-time worker, that part-time worker does most of the housekeeping. And that is a pretty cushy place to be for the primary earner.
I leave work (which I love) every day and come home to feed the baby, bathe the baby, dress the baby for bed, read a couple stories, give the evening bottle, and get the baby to sleep, and the wash the baby’s bottles- a set of tasks that require my full engagement until around 9:00 PM. Then I get to worry about cooking, shopping, dealing with bills, laundry, and keeping down the level of filth and chaos. My husband truly believes he does half the work, but he doesn’t. I love spending time with the baby, of course, but my “me time” is measured in 10 minute intervals, not hours or days.
People who manage to get the joy of a family AND the satisfaction of work without the endless freaking grind of household chores have a hell of a lot to be happy about. I’m not surprised those people keep telling us we don’t need feminism.
What about the 40+ hours your husband is working? Doesn’t that count for something? Do you think he sits around all day visiting message boards and chumming with his work buddies? What about his “me time”?
Since we are being anecdotal, in my case, when my kids were very small, I would come home from a long grind of a day, and my wife would be waiting for me at the door, and would hand me the infant and go “here!”, then off she went to unwind. Yes, being a full-time mother, or even part-time, is draining, but dad’s time working does not seem to count, and a 9-10 hour work day gets amended to another 2-3 hours, where dad’s “me time” involves spending time with the kids as opposed to being alone.
To the OP, yes, having kids can be very stressful, for a long period of time, and your relationship with your spouse, and yourself, have to change. There are periods of unhappiness, but it changes over time. Parenthood can be very rewarding for all that work as well, as your offspring start to do things that satisfy you. I think it would be better to ask parents of toddlers versus teen agers - the type of issues one experiences at the different phases can be quite different.
People are different, what makes them happy varies, and a lot depends upon the amount of support that you have in your personal home life and in your job. These things cannot be summed up in 5 short descriptive lines.
Some of the stages of raising children are fun, some are fun and a lot of work, some can be painful and draining.
My two sons came along right before a divorce. The divorce wasn’t that bad and I maintained a good relationship with their mother. I also had the support of my mother who became a doting grandma. Family support makes a huge difference. I later married again when they started high school and the new wife was fully supportive of the boys, and knew more about the things they needed at that stage of their life than I did. So again it was the involvement of family and a committed partner that made things easier. There have been fundamental changes in our modern lives over the last few generations that have eliminated the extended family. You might just have to go it alone far away from the rest of the family.
There is a sweet spot after the little darlings quit shitting their pants and before they realize that you are the stupidest person on the planet, (they grow out of that too), that is a very fun and emotionally rewarding time.
Doing it all alone must be one of the hardest things to go through, immense responsibility with little reward until they grow up. And unfortunately some kids do not turn out well and become well adjusted people no matter what the parents are able to provide. That must be pretty heartbreaking.
And as Anaamika said, a lot of an individual’s personal happiness involves deciding to be happy, at least in my opinion.
It is a long road to go down and you do not know if it will end in happiness or tragedy. Am I happy that I had my sons? Yes, very! They are well adjusted adults who bring beer when they come to visit. Would I do it again? I seriously do not know the answer to that question.
Oh, and a career? That is just a job that you have to keep thinking about after you get off work. I had a good job that did more than pay the bills while they were growing up and that too made all the difference. I cannot imagine having the sole responsibility for the lives and welfare of young kids without some cooperative support system in today’s insecure employment environment. Nerve wracking I imagine.
The article is giving a skewed view of the study. it’s not an either-or, it is a spectrum with the two given examples of the combinations of factors that make the most happy and the least happy.
For all we know, the combination of factors that gives the second happiest rating might be:
Male
39 years old
Married
Household income between $150,000 and $200,000
In a senior management position No children
A wife who works part-time
I don’t think Anaamika is saying that society’s constant pushing of love, love, love is not a reflection of a genuine need for love, love, love.
But it’s just like anything. What you see and hear can influence how you feel, what you desire. If everyone around you is eating, you’re going to be aware of your own empty stomach and want to join in. Everyone’s driving a nice car and living in a nice house? You’re going to be reminded of your bus pass and your crappy apartment. Everyone’s got a guy or a gal on their arm and pictures of children in their wallet? You’re going to think about your singlehood and childlessness. And perhaps feel like something is wrong with your life.
But in a different world, one where the vast majority of people are NOT romantically involved, a single person probably would have a higher level of satisfaction with their life. I think most people can cope with not getting everything they want in life. But if an unattainable object is being constantly rubbed in one’s face, an individual can’t help but to feel some unhappiness.
Look, everyone around me can sit down and eat a pile of shit if they like. That doesn’t mean I’m going to feel slighted if they don’t offer me any.
Also there is a saying that the only thing worse than not getting what you want is actually getting it.
Well, she works 40+ hours too. If she doesn’t get “me” time, or very little, he should get/not get the same damn thing. even sven’s post is exactly what I didn’t want: to be a married single mom with a “good guy” who thinks he does half because he takes out the trash twice a week and maybe loads the dishwasher sometimes. Oh, and he mows the lawn every couple weeks.
When they *both *work, they *both *get to come home after a long 8-9 hour grind and are confronted with Home Life. Don’t project your dissatisfaction on even sven’s post. She’s talking about having 3-4 hours worth of chores and childcare after her long grind of a day and you’re asking about her husband’s me time? Are you fucking kidding me?
I can play this one-up game too. I’m unmarried and not a mom. I still have to do all the chores by myself and there’s nobody to split them up with, even unevenly. If I break my leg, or get the flu I still have to walk the damn dog. There’s nobody to call to ask them to stop off at the store on their way home – I have to turn the stove off and go back out to the store to get whatever I’m missing. I have to mow the lawn and do the laundry and dust the living room and mop all the floors and scrub the bathrooms and get the car fixed and prepare for retirement and and and… I have no safety net. If I lose my job, I have no spouse’s income to keep me afloat – I’m out on the street, living in a cardboard box under the freeway.
Frankly, my hat is off to single moms. I honestly have no idea how they do it. All the disadvantages of being single + all the disadvantages of not having support as a mom. :: shudder ::
