Kristen Mae has read the studies saying that marriage and kids make people unhappy, but she’d choose it again anyway.
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Childfree couples are happier than couples who have children.
This is the headline of torrents of articles that have surfaced on the heels of the publication of a recent study called “Enduring Love?” performed by Open University of the United Kingdom.
Golly, is that not an odious claim to make? But I would think that; I’m a happily-married mom. Clearly, I am biased.
However, I would like to believe that, even in the absence of my married-mom bias, I would still wonder about the reliability of such a survey. After all, these types of studies are trying to turn happiness into a science. Happiness… into a science.
I’m sorry, but I’m incredulous.
To their credit, publishers of the study do point out the difficulties inherent in attempting to quantify—or even describe—such abstract emotions as love and happiness. But that didn’t stop them from trying to do exactly that. They asked the questions, they compiled the data, they published their conclusion: If you and your partner want to be the happiest versions of yourselves, don’t have kids.
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Hey, I have a suggestion: How about we stop comparing childfree couples to those who have children?
It’s worse than comparing apples to oranges; it’s like comparing apples to a slimy but oddly-delicious and occasionally diarrhea-inducing alien fruit from a far-away galaxy. After all, isn’t it infinitely less complicated to disagree about salt and pepper shakers, or even a maxed-out credit card bill, than about the best way to handle a kid who back-talks, refuses to turn in his homework, or runs up an eight-hundred-dollar wireless bill?
And what about time? When kids enter the equation, there is a shit-ton more stuff to do, and a heckofa lot less time to do it in. There is less time for adult conversation, less time for spontaneous date-nights, less time to have sex, less time to clean, and much, much, much (“much” times a zillion) less time to sleep. Then add to the equation copious amounts of dirt, clutter, barf, snot, tantrums, tears, and let’s not forget the big mamma-jamma: opportunities for disagreement. Those are limitless.
The equation will get imbalanced.
So, to all of the happiness-as-a-science study-conductors who continually remind us of how “unhappy” we married parents are supposed to be: DUH. Of course co-parenting with another human with whom one does not share a brain will make a person miserable at times. That’s because parenting is f*%king hard.
This is not breaking news, you guys.
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For me personally, there have been points in my marriage when, if I had taken a survey and one of the questions had asked me to rate my happiness with my husband, I would’ve given us an abysmal rating—probably just out of immature spite because I was still seething with rage over some pee-stains I had recently scrubbed from the rim of the toilet—because maybe on that particular day, being the loving, forgiving wife was too much to ask of me on top of all that other crap I had to manage for the kids.
Perhaps the survey might have caught me the morning after I had lain by my husband’s side in bed, wide awake and rage-glaring at him for hours in the futile hope that he would finally for-the-love-of-God-STOP-SNORING-already, and had briefly (just for a moment!) entertained the idea of putting my pillow over his face.
It is not easy keeping the romance alive when kids are underfoot. Every day I am freshly surprised by the difficulty of maintaining any semblance of a relationship with my husband. Sometimes it feels as though we, as a unit, don’t even exist at all. On the evenings he is fortunate enough to get off work early enough to see the kids before they go to bed, all I remember are blurred streaks of color, lightning-quick flashes of haggard togetherness.
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But what surprises me even more is the overwhelming rush of solidarity and intimacy I feel towards my husband on those occasions when time slows down just enough for the two of us to appreciate some small, extraordinary thing:
When we share a secret glance over the kids’ heads at something amazing they did, our pride flooding the space between us.
When we cry with laughter at something hilarious one of the kids has done.
When we marvel at how the kids say something with the words of one of us but the attitude of the other—our children are us!
When we cheer for our son at soccer together.
When we eat dinner together at the table, and we die laughing about burps, farts, and pig-snort sounds.
When we forget a stupid argument because one of the kids does something adorable to interrupt our anger.
When I watch my husband teach our children something new.
When we play together as a family—running, sliding, swinging, singing—. Because of our children, my husband and I are children again.
When we watch cartoons together as a family and realize we’ve arrived at full-circle from our own childhoods.
When I watch my husband read a book to the kids after working an impossibly long day.
When we snicker together in the front seat of the car as we listen to the child-chatter emanating from the backseat—the most adorable sounds ever to grace humanity (well, to us, anyway).
And this is only a sampling of these yummy moments, ones I wish like hell I could put in a bottle.
From these fleeting highs, we derive all the happiness we need to stay strong in our commitment to a life which, on even the simplest of days, can be best-described as total pandemonium. For us, this life is bliss. Okay, maybe it’s intermittent bliss in an ocean of chaos sprinkled generously with aggravation… but that’s enough for us.
We parents chose this life, and we choose it again and again, every day that we stay. And even after it’s been scientifically proven that we’d be happier if we had done things differently, we would still choose this same life again.
Because love. Love trumps happiness.
If you want to be scientific about it:
Love ≥ Happiness.
Photos: Parker Knight/flickr
I’m married and childfree by choice, and _I_ think those happiness studies are dubious as well. Maybe people with children are happier in general, maybe people without children are happier in general, either way it’s not very useful information. Ultimately, we’re talking about individual choices, so the happiness surveys may be pretty useless. These studies are great ammo in the pseudo-war between the childed and the childfree, but they’re basically meaningless on the individual level. Frankly, I could read a perfectly researched study that says people with children are on average 10 times as happy as people without children, and… Read more »
“No Man in Particular”… you are the Voice of Reason.
Wow! Hard to believe how vitriolic people can be, especially when you stated out of the gate that you were simply trying to point out a different perspective. Not going to waste time on that . . . What I remember is the mind-numbing exhaustion that having two young children brings, but then, THEN, they get a little older, and go to bed and STAY in bed, and we had a few years of enjoying each other again between their bedtime and ours. Now my kids are teenagers and in true form, stay up later than my hubby every night… Read more »
Women are “slightly less happy” if they have kids? Unmarried parents are happier than married parents? I call bullshit. Being married, when you have kids, isn’t about having joy in every single goshdarn moment. It’s about having stability, and raising well-adjusted kiddos. Is that scenario possible for every single parent? Nope. It’s not for me- My ex abandoned us. So I’m not throwing stones at those who don’t have the “ideal” of married parents and happy kiddos, but I’m absolutely throwing stones at a half-assed study that tried to quantify things that aren’t really measurable in any meaningful way. Are… Read more »
“The better question is, what’s best for society as a whole.” The long-term survival of society depends on people having children. That’s clearly true. But, that’s not a persuasive reason for having kids. That argument only shows up when people talk about NOT having children. That argument has seldom persuaded anyone to have children. It’s never persuaded any childfree person to change his/her mind. Whatever positive social effects there are from children are largely unintended consequences, not conscious reasons for having them. How many people actually have children because they want to help society? Any? That’s not the most common… Read more »
I look forward to reading the article about how single people are happier and more importantly the study itself. Who sponsored the study? Is the study broken down by gender and age? And what is “happy?” How do you measure “happiness?” A good friend of mine who appeared in all respects to be “happy” single, has been single for as long as I’ve known him (15 years), surprised me by telling he was getting married. People can be happy single and then get married and be happy too. My wife and I were childless for almost 8 years, we were… Read more »
Tom – I read the study. 80% of respondents to the survey were women. I personally felt the results would have been more convincing if there had been a more equal percentage of men who had responded. Not to mention all the excellent points you bring up.
80% ?!?! … How the heck can that be a good enough sampling to come close to being fair?
excuse me while I take my foot out of my mouth … It was early when I wrote what I did, didn’t have my pot of coffee ..Now that I know there was a link to the report, I will look at it and get back atcha.
No worries, Tom – I personally have no business writing ANYTHING if I haven’t had my coffee yet. 😉 I’d still be interested in your feedback.
Powerful article and a great defender of parents-by-choice!
Far too many people are trying to downplay parenting and justify their choices in not having children. make you wonder why!
Great article! I agree, having kids is harder than I dreamed and hard on our relationship but there are very special moments where we enjoy each other because of our kids.
And I don’t understand where the haters are coming from, she never said anything about having kids so someone will love you but apparently if you don’t have kids that’s the go to defense. This wasn’t an attack.
On the web today there are lots of online articles out there about how great it is to have kids and how great it is not to have kids, and in many cases these are basically attack articles in some sort of weird “my life is better, you’re an idiot” kind of war. Any article that talks about happiness and children triggers a lot of people who just assume that the article in question is just one more assault by the enemy. Some hair-triggers out there on both sides. This comments section is just a convenient soapbox, which is why… Read more »
I loved the article but maybe that’s because I have kids. Okay, but I never really wanted kids so I can see where those opposing kids might be coming from. What I heard in this article was that happiness can’t really be measured and that having kids just means more love. It doesn’t mean more love in the sense that you are loved more just that there are more people and therefore more of an abundance. (notice I’m following the no punctuation theme mostly because I’m not sure where it goes) I dislike controversy but I’m going to say it… Read more »
Something is very wrong with you if you can not see the beauty in this blog post. Every single article out there says how much happier childless couples are and this is just Kirsten’s take on how that isn’t ALWAYS true. Overall it may be, but not 100% of the time. I am happily married with kids. We aren’t all miserable fools suffering because of children. Honestly children brought a closeness to our life nothing else could. There are more issues with kids that force you to work together, probably why many families end up divorced because they cannot work… Read more »
Exactly. I NEVER stated that that having kids makes a person happier. The point, ultimately, is that I choose love. Even if it means taking the harder road, even it means moments (or months lol) of unhappiness.
So…if I’m worried that I’ll never find a man to love me I can always just pop out a few kids because they WILL LOVE ME FOREVER. THEY HAVE TO! I MADE THEM! Um, not all kids love their parents. I’d rather have friends and a life and a career (and, gasp, happiness!) than create a life and expect it to love me.
“Atypical,” I’m just going to assume you didn’t even read the article.
I am not sure but I don’t think that Atypical or Jen read the article. There are certainly some very confusing and un necessarily defensive comments to what I believed was a fairly balanced article.
uh, i read the article.
Your reaction to the study and your need to write an article basically screaming about how amazing and happy and above those non-kid people who can’t possibly understand anything you’re talking about because they don’t have kids and they don’t have kids and you do have kids and they don’t have kids and no one could possibly be happy or live a life full of love or appreciate small moments or have any sort of positive life experience because they don’t have kids and you do have kids and they don’t have kids and them not having kids invalidates your… Read more »
I love this. I never realized until I’d been married for a while that love is not the ever-present constant tv and movies pretends it is. There’s no such thing as happily ever after. Intimacy ebbs and flows. It grows with us…and against us. We can’t fight it anymore than we can fight the current or the tides. We just have to go with it and hope that in the end we wash up on shore together 😛
LOVE the article, especially the mini-moments of pure joy with your husband. I would have to bet, all the childless couples’ happy moments don’t equal the amount of happiness from each item on that list – that can’t be measured “scientifically”.
Ah, nice way to pit the voluntary child-free against the parents. You can place bets all you like, knock yourself out. I’ll be too busy enjoying relationship and marriage, going 14 years child-free strong, and needing not a single rugrat so far to feel validated, alive, in love, and happy.
Maybe instead of attacking the writer, you could make a list of your own happy moments with your SO or on your own, whatever you prefer. I don’t think she’s implying that everyone must have children or they don’t know what happiness is. What she’s saying is that the study is flawed because the happiness is generated by living in a loving home with our kids every single day, and yeah it’s not ongoing bliss, it’s hard as hell at times, but that the love overcomes the crappy stuff. Can you be happy and fulfilled without kids? Abso-freaking-lutely. I think… Read more »