Parenthood is worse than divorce, unemployment – even the death of a partner | Hacker News Reader

Parenthood is worse than divorce, unemployment – even the death of a partner

washingtonpost.com

7 pointsveidr9 comments

These studies are silly. How happy are you? Rate this from 1-10. There is more to life than just how happy you are at a given moment. A good study would ask people twenty years later what the most meaningful and memorable thing they did was, and how important it was to them. I suspect being a parent would be #1 on many lists (for those who had kids).

  How happy are you? Rate this from 1-10.

Is there any way to quantify emotion? Emotion is subjective and you have to ask people to rate their emotion somehow.

   A good study would ask people twenty years later what the most meaningful and memorable thing they did was, and how important it was to them.

People would then simply rationalise their investment in the children, right? I believe this would be the, "Sunk Cost fallacy". The parents invested so much time and effort into the child. Why would they suddenly denigrate their years of back breaking labour? They would definitely view it in a positive light down the road.

It could also be, and I know that this is something of a radical opinion, that being a parent makes (some) people happy? That the long nights and loss of freedom are offset by the moments of pure happiness that a kid brings?

I mean, you appear to have about as much potential for emotion as a broken toaster so this obviously does not apply to you, but the first smile, the first time a baby catches your finger and hangs on to it as if his life depended on it, the many times where you're quite obviously the most important and delightful thing in his life, the feeling that at least for a little while, you're endowed with godlike wisdom and wit to someone else... I'd take all the stress and fear and tiredness of being a new father all over again to experience these.

And I'm not saying that "down the road", I'm a relatively new father, my kid is only 7 months. I realise same might consider this disqualifies me - I might not capable of a rational opinion on the matter, being in the thick of it. In that case yes, sure, if we disregard the opinion of new parents and that of parents that have been parents for too long, being a parent is a horrible, horrible experience that no one should have to endure.

Hehe. I understand that the way I wrote my comment might have seemed tactless, crude and crass. Apologies.

Please do not misunderstand me. I perfectly understand that people find babies extremely cute. I do too. Hell, if we as a species did not, the both of us would not be here writing comments.

Being a parent is indeed stressful, frightening and tiresome and I am glad that you recognise this fact. I would not know this personally due to the fact that I am not a father. However, I am self aware of my own actions. I have caused stress and fear in my parents. This would be enough to throw a person of any undertaking. However, children are cute; they are bundles of joy and parents view their lives as more complete with kids. If I had any, I would rationalise it the same way as any parent would. "It's my kid. He/She is so cute. Look at it play".

However, parenting does come with an immense cost and people do rationalise their suffering. Pointing that out was the intention of my comment. However, I do not think kids are bad/malicious/horrible. They are great. They just require a lot of upkeep.

Anyway, congratulations on having your kid. Things get a lot less stressful as they age.

I'd love to see a follow-up where they access sleep-deprivation in the first year of parenthood.

It's just anecdotal, but I've noticed new parent unhappiness seems to correlate strongly with how long it takes until the kid starts sleeping through the night...

Yep, but just about everything about parenting is anecdotal -- there's such a tiny amount of actionable data out there. But then you have kids, and you have to take a lot of action... so hunches, intuition, and anecdotes play a huge role.

I think you are right, the sleep deprivation is the biggest thing -- and that is what I was forewarned about by other parents, and certainly my experience bore that out (my kids are 3 and 0.75 years old).

I am sure you could do a study of you found a cohort of people who for some other reason were similarly sleep deprived, and you would probably see similar negative net happiness.

I wonder how much the isolation and financial burden of modern American life plays into this. The usual narrative is that in the past, not only were a couple's parents involved in raising the kids, the couple also had a much stronger involvement in the community, so members were able to help each other out. But in the quest for home ownership and rampant consumerism, we've lost that sense of community, and raising children has become a burden since we're all living to work.

Modern American life probably had very little influence, because the study was performed in Germany.

Well I would not be too surprised at this fact. I mean kids are an absolute burden. They require a lot of time and attention. Kids are going to be shitting, crying and whining a lot of the time. All of that will definitely cause a lot of emotional stress to the person. If not for biology, which causes us to make irrational decisions (in a sane world, would anyone torture themselves by having a kid and dumping $245000 on something. It simply is not a good investment), nobody would be having any kids. Kids are a massive emotional, psychological and monetary burden. I caused stress and tension to my parents. If I have any, they will do the exact same thing to me. Nobody should be surprised that this occurs. The scientific study seems to be a tad useless. These are known facts.

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