The joys of parenting? Er, “the rationalization of parenting” might make more sense.
According to a recent study in the latest issue of Psychological Science, as the economic costs of parenting have grown, parents have greatly exaggerated the emotional benefits they actually get from having children.
For the study, 80 parents read information about the financial costs of having children—most notably that from birth to 18 a child costs $190,000—and were then asked questions about how emotionally satisfying it was to have children. A control group was asked to read the same financial information, but was also given information about how grown children eventually support their parents. They then answered the same questions about the emotional benefits of parenting.
Compared with the control groups, the parents in the first group said they were more likely to enjoy spending time with their kids and that they got more emotional satisfaction from parenting.
According to the report:
Many people believe that to be truly fulfilled in life, it is necessary to experience the joys of parenthood. Children are considered an essential source of happiness, satisfaction, and pride. However, the idea that parenthood involves substantial emotional rewards appears to be something of a myth.
Margaret Hartmann of Jezebel added:
The theory is that when parents stopped looking as their children as fellow workers with tiny hands well-suited for picking carrots, they started playing up the emotional satisfaction of parenting rather than admitting they’d made a huge mistake. OK, perhaps that’s overstating the facts. Obviously, there are emotional benefits to reproducing, but it may not be the 24/7 portrait of parental bliss that people say it is, particularly when disparaging friends who choose not to have children.
As always, the truth is probably somewhere in between. To say that the emotional rewards of parenting are “something of a myth” is overstating it, but perhaps there’s some truth to the idea that parents might be overstating their emotional satisfaction just a tiny bit.
But really, what parent today is having a kid for some kind of economic benefit? Maybe, you know, 60 years ago parents would’ve had a hard time accepting the diminishing economic returns of parenthood, but today? If you’re having a kid, you know they won’t be working in the fields or closing the family store. Plus—depending on your situation—you’re probably going to have to put a nice chunk of money toward college, too.
What do our resident reader-parents think? Is there any validity to this study? Are you delusional? Or, I hope, do you genuinely enjoy your children? Let us know.
—Photo glenwin88/Photobucket
No parent I know claims parenting is 24 hour bliss. And frankly, I think this study —like most studies—is irrelevant.
Parenting is hard. Parts of it suck. Other parts are transcendent. It’s the same as any other undertaking in life. Perhaps some parents are unhappy & they’re just trying to validate their decision to have kids. But I’m sure some childless couples are doing the same thing. But if your kids aren’t making you that miserable, you likely have other issues to worry about.
You’re right, of course, but this isn’t about unhappy parents and their ex post facto attempts to salvage face. This is about validating the choice to be child-free. What good is making that choice if you can’t a) imagine that a pogrom against you exists and b) defend yourself against this imagined pogrom by asserting that parenthood is serfdom that leads to regret.
I’ve heard another explanation for overstated parental satisfaction — the lack of comparison. The argument goes something like this: Parenting takes a lot of time and energy that could be spent on other activities, and parents stop doing a lot of the enjoyable things they did before having kids. They often forget what those things were like, or think of those things as part of a former life. If you’re a stay-at-home parent, so much of your time is taken up by parenting that it’s one of the main sources for ALL your experiences, both good and bad. Being a… Read more »
It stops being fascinating when twice-a-month dad tries to take credit for his kid’s erudition or middle-aged child-free woman tries to borrow her friend’s 16-year-old daughter to see if she can still relate to young people.
Penelope Trunk has touched on this several times. It’s pretty fascinating the way we make ourselves believe whatever justifies our own situation.
This reader parent thinks Margaret Hartmann is the deluded one. Even religious conservtives don’t act as if parenthood is 24/7 bliss. I think the insinuation that hordes of parents denigrate the child-free is more than a bit fishy too, frankly. Please leave the moldy ‘parenthood sucks’ trope to Amanda Marcotte. To answer your query about my own tilt at fatherhood: I make less than $30K a year. My eight-year-old and I live in a one-bedroom and she brownbags lunch. We plan to do a lot of cheap takeout when we visit Rome on her spring break in two weeks. How… Read more »
I don’t have any intention of ever having children, and I can assure that indeed “hordes of parents denigrate the child-free”. I have felt it on all sides – present, former, and future parents, really anyone who wants to put in their two cents. At first I just thought it was weird that anyone would begrudge my freedom, and now I just make sure to steer clear of people who are likely to have this viewpoint (which is surprisingly a lot of people!). Even people who are not currently parents, but would like to be someday, make it a personal… Read more »