In case you don't read Time Magazine, the last article is always an Op-Ed article, which I happen to always read and think "I KNOW, right? I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thinks that way!" Part of this week's article pasted below. Didn't want to paste the entire article... I just think in our society, people unanimously agree to lie about certain things, one of them being how perfectly great it is to have kids. I think it's really sad for some young people to believe the lie without question, only to get a harsh reality check after it's too late.
Except from "Does Fatherhood Make You Happy?" Time, June 19, 2006
Studies reveal that most married couples start out happy and then become progressively less satisfied over the course of their lives, becoming especially disconsolate when their children are in diapers and in adolescence, and returning to their initial levels of happiness only after their children have had the decency to grow up and go away. When the popular press invented a malady called "empty-nest syndrome," it failed to mention that its primary symptom is a marked increase in smiling.
Psychologists have measured how people feel as they go about their daily activities, and have found that people are less happy when they are interacting with their children than when they are eating, exercising, shopping or watching television. Indeed, an act of parenting makes most people about as happy as an act of housework. Economists have modeled the impact of many variables on people's overall happiness and have consistently found that children have only a small impact. A small negative impact.
Those findings are hard to swallow because they fly in the face of our most compelling intuitions. We love our children! We talk about them to anyone who will listen, show their photographs to anyone who will look and hide our refrigerators behind vast collages of their drawings, notes, pictures and report cards. We feel confident that we are happy with our kids, about our kids, for our kids and because of our kids--so why is our personal experience at odds with the scientific data?
See full (not long) article here: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1202940,00.html
2 comments:
i added the link to the article to the entry. should've done that before. It gives 3 reasons to the question posed at the end of the article. Also ends on a happy note.
I hereby present me and VKo's not-infrequent happenings of ESP i.e. discussing sthg well before it's a "hot potato" in the public domain...
P.S. VKo pls don't worry... it's "abridged". (Worst comes to the worst take me off)
15 May
Vanessa: um, don't even get me started on kids
me: ok, when i said psychological i meant i don't think i can do it. i think i have a HUGE chance of screwing up.
18:35 Vanessa: but of course, no one cares about the mother, they just think u should have kids because they're cute
yeah, that's also what i mean, i'd screw up b/c first I'd go crazy, then i'd screw up
18:36 me: well, i freaking well care. because when the kid's screwed up i'll have to live with unbelievable guilt for the rest of my life.
18:44 Vanessa: the weird thing is, if i adopted instead, i'd have a completely different outlook. i'd feel like this is my mission. but if i have my own, i'd feel like i brought this upon myself
18:45 anyways! we can change subject
me: i was JUST going to ask u abt adoption..........
18:46 me: well, just about from the screwing up point of view, i don't feel any better if i screwed up an adopted kid than one that came out of my womb. so i feel on that count, i'd feel equally guilty
so probably lead to same result
18:48 Vanessa: well ultimately i think the adopted kid would be better off with me than being an orphan... and i almost feel like i would be less neurotic with an adopted kid
but i think the sense of purpose is greater
18:49 me: i can c where ur coming from
18:52 Vanessa: well i just think it's important to have kids young... one is b/c is healthier for both mother an d child, but two is u have more energy to spend with kid and live to see ur kid grow up longer
18:54 trust me, ppl like u and i, we have a more realistic view of the world
I know, VKo. We've always been more avant-garde than most. Hahaha
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