:eek:
Regarding marriage, it’s not a “fixer-upper;” what you see is what you get.
If one wants kids and the other doesn’t, go your separate ways. It’s a pretty sure bet that the one wanting kids is NOT going to change, and the one who does not want kids is NOT going to change.
I realize that there are dozens of “yeah, but…” situations out there, but in my own experience (first marriage extremely crappy–all the signs were there, I just didn’t choose to read them. Second marriage blissful–all the signs were there, I read and understood them and accepted them–all good), change will rarely happen just because one of you wants it to happen.
Sometimes you have to just walk away…
Well I owe Lynn an apology after learning that she did not in fact choose to have a child and took every precaution available to prevent a pregnancy. That changes things. It is brave and difficult to admit what she has.
Well, yes. That’s my point. How then does another person decide you are wrong in your self-assessment, that you are “deluded”?
The problem, as the author appears willing to admit, is that people mean different things by the term “happiness” and that the meaning is contextual and subjective.
For example, my immediate level of “happiness” as measured by self-assessment at any one moment may be highest when I’m eating Doritos and watching TV, rather than when writing the Great American Novel™. Writing is hard work, and eatind Doritos and watching TV is fun. But I may believe a life in which I wrote the Great American Novel™ to be, overall, a more satisfying and, yes, “happy” life than one in which I did nothing but eat Doritos and watch TV, even though I struggled every single day with writing.
Is that belief a “delusion”? Or just a different choice of values? How on earth can anyone reliably and scientifically weigh “life satisfaction over achieving the Great American Novel™” against “immediate pleasure over eating Doritos and watching TV”?
Needless to say, being a parent presents some of the same issues (at least, for some parents). Less ‘Doritos and TV’ and more work in your life, but perhaps (again for some) greater satisfactions.
It appears from my brief review of the work that the writer himself admits this is an issue but then ignores it in presenting some of his conclusions.
Oh, calm down. Researchers have tried to operationalize happiness in all sorts of ways. From what I can recall of the study, happiness was defined in some specific way, the participants were interviewed prior to having children and after, their happiness index recorded, and then they were asked how happy they were. How happy they said they were was inconsistent with how happy the index indicated they were. Or something. I don’t remember. But there’s no reason to get all upset about it. I was only describing one of the ways I try to deal with the fact that I can’t have children yet.
Regardless, I doubt anyone can argue that the reality of having children is very different than the idea of having children. One could say the same for marriage or many other major life decisions. I try to remember that when I feel like I can’t wait any longer.
That’s it! The overall point of the book, I think, was that people are really bad at predicting how happy they are going to be in a given situation. Meaning, when I think, ‘‘Oh, I will be so much happier when I have a child,’’ I actually have a very poor ability to judge how happy I will actually be. This is true not just for having children, but for practically anything we do. We’re very bad predictors. That’s all I was trying to say. Sorry if I offended anyone.
I’m not in the least offended. 
I simply question the reasonableness of such an analysis, which I think hinges on differing meanings people assign to the term “happiness”.
For example, no-one seriously doubts that parenthood is a huge responsibility and full of work and worry. These are all terms that people do not associate with “happiness”. But of course the same is true of almost all major undertakings. Building a house with one’s own hands, writing a novel, climbing a mountain - all are things involving responsibility, work and worry. If you were to test someone while they were hanging from a mountain ledge, or struggling with writer’s block, or spreading tar on roofing, most would probably rank pretty low in terms of happiness compared with eating Doritois and watching TV.
(Lynn, thank you for answering my questions. You are brave.)
Yup. This is exactly the reason why I do not necessarily agree with his conclusions – though I do think he has a more general point, as olives said, that people delude themselves about what will give them happiness, I’m not sure this is the best example for precisely the reason you give, that “happiness” is something that it’s very hard to measure and that has components over different time periods.
True, but I think the idea here is that if you ask someone in advance how much they are going to enjoy being a parent, they’ll predict that it will make them, say “20 points” happier, but if you ask them after becoming a parent how happy it has made them, their answer is usually considerably less than “20 points”, and sadly, sometimes it’s even negative points.
It’s not that parenthood doesn’t make people happier, or that people just expect it to be fun all the time and it’s not. Apparently, this can also happen to people who have realistic ideas of the time and effort involved (although I think they’re more likely to make a lower assessment to begin with). It’s just that in general, people aren’t good at predicting what will make them happy, or how happy it will make them. And furthermore, we’re not even that great at knowing what currently makes us happy. For instance, I might be feeling really happy today, and think that it’s because of factors X, Y, and Z, when the reality is that my happiness is more closely tied to factors A, B, and C. So I spend a lot of my energy trying to maintain or improve X, Y, and Z, while not really paying attention to A, B, or C. Then, if something happens to negatively impact A, B, or C, my happiness (by my own assessment, mind you) takes a nosedive, and I don’t really know why, because X, Y, and Z are still all great.
It’s like when people say, “I’d be so much happier if I won the Lottery!” Everyone thinks that more money = more happiness, and it does, but only up to a certain (fairly low) level of daily comfort. Beyond that, it’s my understanding that people get an initial hit of happiness at winning, but then generally return to their previous level of happiness.
In other words, regardless of how you define happiness in your own life, if you’re an average person, you’re not nearly as good at knowing what will make you happy as you think you are.
ETA: I haven’t read this book, but I’ve heard a lot of discussion of it, and of the concepts in it and research behind it, and in a very general sense, I think there’s some validity to it.
Again, I see no more value in this than any anecdote. For example, when are you supposed to ask the parent “did having a kid make you X points happier”? Right after labour? When dealing with a squalling, colicy infant? Or on Christmas Day when they are seven? Or when the kid first says “I love you daddy”?
Answers are likely to vary widely.
The problem is once again that increasing day-to-day contentment and ease isn’t what most people mean when they say “being a parent makes me happy, I’m glad I did it” (well, those that say it and mean it). People don’t (or at least, most people don’t) become parents to make them “20 points happier” or whatever in their daily life. They believe - and in some cases I can anecdotally and purely unscientifically add, genuinely - that it will give them certain greater and different satisfactions, things that they would regret and miss if they did not do it, that add richness and depth to life. But such things are not easily measurable and I think discounting a self-assessment of them is simply a value judgment, not evidence that people who hold them are “incorrect”.
In short, what I’m saying is that what we have here is a measuring error or bias. The researcher is measuring only one dimension of “happiness”, but that does not give a full picture.
The thing is, you really don’t know what anyone’s circumstances are unless they are willing to open up that wound again. And most people would rather just hide the wound and pretend to be happy. What about if I’d been having sex with a different man every day of the week? What if I’d only been using one method of birth control? And what if I’d been able to get an abortion, if I was willing to spend a year’s salary on it, and had to go somewhere and wait a day or two between exam and termination, and if I had to undergo a transvaginal probe first?
It’s very, very painful for me to talk about this issue. Most of the time, I prefer not to think about it. So when someone offers up something that you think is cold and callous, you might consider that they have to talk about it clinically, because otherwise they are liable to go into a big rant.
My point is, you were trying to shame me for my words. I do not accept being shamed. Don’t judge when you don’t know all the facts. There are a lot of women (and probably a lot of men) who don’t enjoy being parents, but won’t speak up because of shaming tactics.
I don’t know if I accept the apology or not.
You quoted me, but I can’t or the life of me fathom how your post replies to me. Did you mean to quote someone else?
My own mother never wanted to have me. Which is why I always roll my eyes at that anti-abortion argument: “What if your mother aborted you?” Well, she would have. If she could have. But she couldn’t, living in the era she did. She had no mother to guide her, absolutely no one who would tell her about the facts of life, or about birth control, and she ended up being seduced by a married teacher.
She probably spent her whole life regretting I was born to her. She got kicked out of school, had to spend all of her days taking care of a squalling brat; it ruined every chance she had of marriage, ruined her sister’s chances for marriage, would have ruined mine had I stayed in India. Is it any wonder she gave me up?
Too many mothers have babies like this. Lynn kept hers, married, and raised the kid, presumably with love and kindness. How could I ever fault her for a second when mine didn’t even want me and didn’t keep me? Tossed me aside like garbage? I both resent it and understand her at the same time.
Go ahead, Lynn, say what you need to and what you feel. Don’t have children if you are not sure! I’ve been told all my life to have children. I know if I had one, how I’d feel - I’d resent it forever.
My brother has always liked little kids.
His wife was terrified of having a kid who’d inherit a genetic illness a distant relative has.
They doubled up on BC methods, but the tension she felt from knowing there was a possibility of getting pregnant still was one of the things that made their sex life… complicated and, from what I know, not particularly pleasant.
Once she was able to get checked for that gen and got the “all clear”, she switched to “ok, since the average time for a couple to get pregnant after dropping the Pill is two years, and three years from now will be a perfect time for me to have a daughter, let’s get to it!” Their first child, a boy (oops) was a hole-in-one (“b-b-but the average…” “is not the only possibility!”); number two is a girl.
Sometimes I see them with their kids and I wonder what did they think they were getting. Like my mother did, they seem to be raising some imaginary children rather than the ones they actually have… “Wanting to have a baby” doesn’t exactly mean the same as “being willing to raise a human being”.
I understand. For what it’s worth, I regret what I said and you’ve made me think about this issue a little deeper.
In that case, I do accept the apology, and I thank you.
For me, having a child has been the most challenging thing I’ve ever done - and I think that’s true for many people. It’s just a giant set of paradoxes. I have never been as stressed out, or as happy.
I have also heard about the study saying people with kids are less happy - but I wonder if they allowed for some intangibles. Yeah, I’m not as happy in terms of being able to do what I want, when I want to. In fact as a parent, I continuously have to weigh the 500 things I NEED to do to take care of the kid/family versus carving out time so I don’t go nuts (being introverted does not help). This is constantly stressful and I have tried to learn my limits before I have arrived at my limits.
However - I had never experienced the depths of joy that I feel now as a parent. It may not be a consistent feeling, but there are moments of sheer complete joy that I have never felt before and can not imagine living without. How do you compare those moments against the day-to-day “unhappiness” of chores/errand/worry and stress? I think it is worth it for some people - and maybe not for others. I never fancied myself to be a very “maternal” woman, but it has been the best thing I have ever done (or will ever do) as well as being the hardest, and at times most unpleasant thing.
There’s no way you can understand what you are in for before you experience it when it comes to kids. I have sympathy for people who discover having kids is not what they wanted after the fact - I can totally see how that could happen.
And you really need to have the conversation before you get married - even if things change later - you can at least know you went into it with open eyes, then adjust as needed.
I took your post to mean that you thought I was judgmental and self-righteous. I was trying to explain myself better so maybe you did not think that.
My husband and I are kind of in this situation. He wants to be a dad, some day, and that’s been clear ever since we started dating. I’m unsure about kids - and have been since we started dating - but I strongly suspect that I’ll change my mind once I’m in a time and a place to have them. So we’re coming at the issue from different angles, but ending up in about the same place - kids as an idea are good, but for heaven’s sake not now.
Kids aren’t happening unless/until his health issues resolve and he can support a family, so it’s a moot point for the time being anyway. (I may keep working, but we want to be sure we can live on his income as a backup plan.) Depending on what happens in the future, we could possibly end up in conflict about this, and we’ll deal with that if necessary. If we never do have kids, I probably won’t feel bad about it. He might, though.
I was making a joke about the nature of the SDMB.