Maybe it just me, but it seems like interwebs are full of pieces about the hassle of children and the growth of childless couples. I used to think I wanted children, but that was when I was in a different relationship status. Now, I don't know what I think about this whole baby thing. Does it make me selfish? Would having children make me happy? Maybe, maybe not. According to a recent article in the New York Magazine...children are making my generation miserable. Oh, the torture of modern life.
From the article:
"From the perspective of the species, it’s perfectly unmysterious why people have children. From the perspective of the individual, however, it’s more of a mystery than one might think. Most people assume that having children will make them happier. Yet a wide variety of academic research shows that parents are not happier than their childless peers, and in many cases are less so. This finding is surprisingly consistent, showing up across a range of disciplines."
The whole article reminds of the brilliant book, The Way We Never Were by Stephanie Coontz. We continue hold up the family of the past as this relic and something to be admired and achieved. Yet, there are benefits and disadvantages to every new generation of families and it's time that researchers, especially demographers and sociologists, push to examine and define families in a new light. Children don't serve as workers anymore for the family farm, but have became an emotional investment. For some, the emotional investment is just not worth the time or money...but it certainly doesn't make childless people any less worthy or interesting than those with children. It just means that we are forming different types of families and need new definitions and policies to support all groups appropriately. In the mean time, try not to be sad about the children that you do or don't have.
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Studies of this sort can have a very benficial result if it encourages people to children as a choice not as something they do because they assume they should or, worse, because they are expected to do so.
They can have a bad effect if they dissuade people from having children because the costs of doing so are more obvious than the benefits.
My daughter is a teenager an can be a PITA. But she has also brought so much into my life. It would be a shame if people who could and would enjoy the great pleasure of nurturing a child don't have it.
At the same time, there are a lot of pretty awful parents--not necessarily bad people but people who are not cut out or really interested in the hard work and sacrifice that comes along with being a parent. They and, indeed all of us, would be better off if becoming a parent were an option not an expectation.
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