Research suggests many US parents will lie when saying kids made them happier
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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!]
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.
Add in moving away from home and family to the mix as contributors for the lack of adult conversation too.
I have made it a point to suggest to my wife, if she ever chooses go out to find work at whatever point, that volunteer work would be the best. No financial pressures.
Societal Pressure on Women in the work place is immense.
Societal Pressure on Mothers is also immense.
They combine to make it exceptionally tough on Women. But mad props to those who have persevered despite that pressure--like my Mom and many other mothers out there.
> IME, the dads I know who stay home get more of an "awesome bro!"
If you are independently wealthy, sure. Otherwise, IME, you are considered a failure for not being able to provide for your family.
Even then I'd say that many men would face thinly veiled criticism or even ridicule behind their backs.
Our peers are for the most part American born and have a very different view. The moms obsess about missing out on their previous careers and living life as they did pre-children. They seem much less happy (as do their children).
In large parts of the world raising kids is "doing something with their lives", just not in the US.
I think it's an individual thing. Healthy boundaries are a good thing to have regardless of gender. It's important to learn not to give up things that are important to you regardless of the messages society sends, and that if society has a problem with that, that's society's problem and not yours. Society is pretty big, after all, and there's bound to be some portion of it that will accept your well-considered choices.
All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood discusses this (https://www.amazon.com/All-Joy-No-Fun-Parenthood/dp/00620722...), among many other interesting topics.
I'd also observe that there are probably time-sensitive issues; much of the day-to-day stuff with small children is dreary, but the long-term prospects are quite good. I've heard lots of older people say that having adult children is great, because they're self-sustaining and yet emotionally close / connected.
Many long-term projects (probably including startups) have somewhat crappy day-to-day moments but high long-term satisfaction. And many short-term satisfactions (like eating ice cream) may have negative long-term consequences.
Bryan Caplan's book Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think is also good on these topics, and he points out that much of the supposed happiness research is overblown or misused.
Any negative comment, any off-hand comment needs to be squashed immediately. Same thing happens with self-esteem issues I think. If the negative comments don't stop from 'friends' you have to make the sometimes tough choice to find better friends. I make sure to say with force how much she does, how helpless I'd be or what a mess I'd be without her help at home.
I think like yourself my mental state is strong enough that I choose lowering myself to lift her above the haters.
So either way, you find a way to be resentful or ashamed.
Go back to work and miss your child's first steps/words/laughs. Go back to work and someone else raises your children. Someone else uses your child to teach their child how to be a leader. Someone else (accidentally) gets called "mom".
Stay at home and barely manage to tread water financially compared to your dual-income friends. Stay at home and watch your career disappear (unless you chose one of those "never need to skill up" careers that're considered "safe" for women, like teaching). Stay at home and prepare for a lifetime of resentment about men being further ahead than you career-wise. Stay at home and propagate stereotypes.
I guess though, in the end, there's no doubt that someone that chose their career will regret it at some point in their lives, where you might be able to escape without regret having chosen to stay home.
The dual-income and DINKs (dual-income no kids) families will always win when appraised financially. Home, car, health. You have to work twice as hard for the same output on one income.
"Stay at home and propagate stereotypes" feels wrong these days. The stereotype and expectation seems to have both parents working and having one stay at home is bucking the trend.
All of the negatives seem to center around the individuals valuation of themselves based on outside opinions.
I'm too close to giving real opinions so I'm bowing out of the thread. ARRGGHH!
Screw that. Don't judge your life by how others live.
My newest car is 12 years old. I have a wife, kids, and a good job and could easily have new cars every few years but instead I have no debt other than mortgage and I put the money into my retirement and college savings. I don't begrudge the choices of my friends who like to buy a lot of new things but I also don't feel any obligation to live the way they do.
Treading water financially is an accurate way to describe life in the Bay Area for families with a stay-at-home parent. The modest standard of living you describe about yourself significantly exceeds what could be expected for the median software developer in the Bay Area. Families with incomes below that would not be able to sustain their cash flow without a commute that exceeds 90 minutes or exposes them to unacceptably high levels of crime.
Our kids go to late stay programs at school because we both work, which means that if they want to do an after school activity like soccer, dance, scouts, etc that it's a "rush from late stay, change as fast as you can, go to activity."
We aren't trying to overload them or anything either, just aiming for 1 after school activity a couple of days a week.
I think 90% of the pressure is people trying to justify their life choices or requirements.
If you are working mom and you have to be for income sake or to pay student loans, you'll see stay at home mom's with a "must be nice" attitude.
If you're a working mom and you don't have to be, it's a "I'd be so bored" or "What do you do all day?" or "My job gives me purpose" because it reinforces your own life choices (whether you believe it or not).
If you're a stay at home mom because your job would just be paying for day care, it's going to be a feeling that you should be doing more.
If you're a stay at home mom because you choose to you should feel nothing but contentment with it because you made the choice.
This is a hard lesson that a lot of people, myself included, are experiencing because we've all been sold a different bill of goods our entire lives. There's even a book on it called The Two Income Trap.
The simplest way to filter out negative chatter is to identify whether somebody is trying to make themselves feel better about their own choices or not. That's 90% of the negative chatter that I observe.
It is. I think feminism left our culture with the belief that it is OK for a woman to opt in to do anything she wants. But we didn't also get the message that it's OK to opt out.
Want a career? Great! Want to raise kids? Great!
Want to not have a career? Bad! Want to not raise kids? Bad!
It's unfair. I've watched almost every single woman I know in my age bracket (late thirties today) struggle with this dilemma in her life at some point. Instead of feeling that they can do anything, they feel they have to do everything.
Case in point, this quote:
“We know that these problems have been endemic for decades now, and we’ve watched the maternal employment rate in the U.S. steadily erode relative to other countries.”
A higher maternal employment rate is now a yardstick for societal health? If that's not evidence of a clear bias on the part of the researchers I don't know what is. The personal fulfillment and societal value of working moms vs stay-at-home moms is a matter that can be debated, but to display such clear bias toward the latter as the 'correct' option makes one question all of the study's conclusions.
Not all parents may understand that having children may mean drastic changes to lifestyle, and may not have been prepared for the ~27 years of stress that having children bring on.
Oddly enough, having kids gives me a purpose in Society, that otherwise being a 36 year old man would not have. Too old to join the military, too young for end-of-life services, too set in my buying habits for marketing to care at all about me.
As the wise Stringer Bell once said, you're like a 40 degree day.
But being a dad, society is all about that: my lack of physique is called "dadbod" and women can profess to fetishize about it, my asanine advice to my kids are subject of a comedy twitter account, my no-more-give a dame attitude for fashion sense is celebrated, and I even have a national holiday to celebrate being a Dad--which gives me a legit excuse to do what I want to do (which for most dads involves cooking food on a grill for their families)
Except when it comes to family law, then the dad gets fucked into complete attrition.
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.
Not to be too harsh, but this is Calvinist BS.
Listening to great music isn't hard. Watching a great film isn't hard. Simply spending time with loved ones isn't hard.
All are, in my view, worthwhile.
Yes, there is a satisfaction in accomplishing something difficult. But that neither makes it inherently worthwhile, nor does it mean all worthwhile things are hard.
Why not invent another life-stage past childhood for young adults, during which they are expected to learn, find mates, and raise young children? Really, we're most of the way there with college, but with the weird and biologically contrary expectation that the students avoid having children. Our biology and our psychology seems to encourage human beings to have children at a younger age than our society would have it. Also, the removal of children seems to reduce sexuality to only its hedonistic dimension, which I think is a bit out of balance. (Nothing wrong with hedonism, but that aspect exists in a larger context of life.)
Why not restructure colleges and vocational schools in this way?
Even a disaggregation of the OP data is unlikely to assist in the decision of wether or not to have children. Instead, hearing a personal experience from someone with whom you are reasonably familiar is more relevant. This also assumes you know yourself fully so you can perform a comparative analysis.
That said, I find the above PG quote personally useful. I decided to delay children until I am over 40 (PG was 46 when he had his first child), able to make my own schedule, have financial security so one parent has the option to stay home, and made a solid attempt of most of my major goals.
Those requirements do create a risk of becoming too old for children. But for those of us who have time, why not take sincere advice from someone well known that made it work.
And if you never have children, just forget the PG quote and take comfort in the OP conclusion instead.
[1] http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec03/ Edits: grammar, clarity
You would be surprised. Americans receive very strong lifelong messaging about how they should live their life to optimize for immediate comfort. Having and raising children definitely causes strain on one's ability to fulfill the lifestyle that has been marketed to them.
The "what ifs" can go on forever. At some point one has to rationalize whether or not all of this is worth it, to invest so much of oneself into another human being without first considering themselves.
The hereditary history of physical and mental illnesses that run in my family, the economic/environmental projection for the rest of this century as well as the hypotheticals that you listed tip the scales in entirety towards the costs rather than the benefits.
None of the nebulous, ineffable personal fulfillments that parents speak of have ever sounded like a basis for a good moral argument for forcing a new life into this world.
Instead let me ask, What if you, as a thoughtful and responsible person do not raise another thoughtful and responsible individual? And instead leave it to the thoughtless and irresponsible. We have to live with that too.
The second part to that is a different question entirely, and one that goes beyond just one's own happiness.
I know this is a small selection of college educated people with comfortable lifestyles, but when every single person I know discloses to me when they're in a truthful state that we're better off not having kids..it makes you think.
It does, but to me it says a lot more about how hedonistic and consumer focused the middle+ classes of western society are than of some sort of inherent negative associated with having children.
I get fulfillment for my job some of the time - though its not the be all and end all in my life and it pissed me off sometimes too. I get a lot more from whitewater kayaking and mountain biking and generally being outdoors in my spare time. Some of my friends have had kids, and most have given up or seriously cut down on the amount that they devote to the sports they loved.
Did you have something that gave you a lot of fulfillment before you had kids?
Yes, and I still do. I am a soft dev, so job is quite fulfilling, I also like mountain hiking, friends, etc. But having a kid is something different, it is just not comparable regarding the level of satisfaction. For me the relationship with my kid is the most fulfilling thing a world can offer. (But of course I wouldnt believe that before I had one)
No.
> Did you have something that gave you a lot of fulfillment before you had kids?
Many things, and I still do.
But it's certainly a trade off, trying to live out media images of motherhood/fatherhood need to be avoided, and kids don't have to be the most fulfilling thing in anyone's life.
Because getting out to have drinks with friends becomes so rare. In that moment, you are fulfilling one of their social needs that has been so neglected it seems like the only thing that matters. What they're really saying is that by not having children you'll be able to continue as you are right then. Take it as a thank you from them for having that drink.
Maybe they're actually saying not to have children. I don't understand all the projection.
Thanks, I like your response. I thought I was just offering an alternative interpretation for why they said it, but maybe I need to get out more with friends ;-) OTOH I do not regret having children, nor do I advocate that people avoid having them.
Note to self, consider weather speculation is actually projection.
Part of the question is, "Over what time horizon?" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12050597). Many people with very young kids say it's the pits, but ones with older ones seem to do much better. And many people over age 45 or so who don't have kids seem to wish that they'd had kids.
I'm guessing that there's also a strong "grass is greener" element. In discussions about what to do in high school or college, half the responses always say "Study harder!" and half say "Party more!", with both sides seemingly recommending the thing they didn't do.
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.
These policies are not there to combat individualism, but to enable it with taxpaid support networks. Most of them are not poor aids, but state benefits that everyone enjoys, like the free or cheap high quality daycare used by the poor and rich alike.
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.
And further subsidize child-bearing? Property taxes already directly fund public schools in most localities in the US.
This actually isn't true; while abortion (both the act and its legality) are condemned in strong terms by the Catholic hierarchy, opinion polling has consistently shown the US Catholic community has roughly the same distribution of views on abortion and its legality as the general public.
Further splitting hairs, what they actual broke down was weekly Mass attenders vs. others, not weekly communicants. Those aren't the same thing.
But, yes, unsurprisingly, adherence to authority on the one point correlates with adherence to authority on the other.
Not in my experience. My kid cost me money, but quality of life increased a lot since everything is now much more enjoyable. Also, kids do not pay back their parents with money, but they pay back much more with their love, and making life much more enjoyable for the parents.
Now whether you want to argue about marital satisfaction being a good proxy for happiness, which is a loosey-goosey term, is another question.
I would say that "small" happiness is less due to the huge amount of work and stress. On the flip side "large" happiness (or fulfillment) is higher. Whether that makes sense is a very personal decision.
I'm also very early in the journey. I have no idea how it will turn out in 15 years. I am happy that I'll have someone to hand things down to. I'm also happy some of my genes will survive even if all other evidence I existed disappears.
No way you'd get a straight answer to that since it's way, way too close to "do you wish your kids were dead?" It'd probably be tough to come up with any question that probes that sentiment that wouldn't be strongly affected by that problem.
My answer would be "go back in time and decide to have these children? 100% yes, no reservations. Go back in time but no guarantee (or even likelihood) that the kids will be the same? Probably would not want kids." Maybe shifting the question to focus in the direction of that second part would help, though I doubt it'd be enough to make it useful.
http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/soc_glance-2014-en/03/02/...
The point of the article is the U.S. has a weak social net to help parents compared to Europe. I feel that. In the short term I'm broke and worried all the time (because day care and housing in Silicon Valley will kill you). In the long term it'll all be fine, and maybe I'm mostly chafing against having to budget (both money and time) for the first time in my life.
They should have asked people without kids "If you could do it all over again, would you have kids this time"?
I wish part time work were a good option for more people.
Like for example the headline of this very article. I guess it was not written by the author.
Why is it that when there is so little money out there for real research, there always seems to be plenty floating around for BS like this?
Is this your first time reading a news publication or something?
If they just kept giving Minsky the money like they should have, we could have strong AIs Terminatoring us right now, and we could just get it all over with.
Of course there's adoption.
The reason I'd have kids is for that connection only a father can have to his child and the joy a large extended family can bring as my children eventually have children and so on which is completely selfish. But I'd say there's nothing wrong with it in my eyes.