Worth-It-Ness
Image by infomatique via Flickr
So I’ve been thinking a lot about Jennifer Senior’s story about parenting in this week’s New York Magazine. “All Joy and No Fun,” it’s called. It’s about how an overwhelming majority of scientific studies on the topic conclude that having children makes people less happy—a “finding duplicated over and over,” Senior writes, “despite the fact that most parents find it to be wrong”—and the resultant question of why we keep doing it. I liked a lot about it. It’s the cover story, and the cover line is “I love my children. I hate my life.” This is a sentiment I can very much relate to, even though I have just one child.
The story presents plentiful evidence and anecdotes detailing the misery of parenthood: the endless work, the stress on the marriage, the loss of freedom, the destruction of social life. (I would add something that the story elides—the great, ever-present fear, which I’ve mentioned before.) It investigates the ways in which parenthood has changed over the past 30 years and examines the differences between our notions of happiness and joy and purpose and reward. Senior ends with the thought that retrospective appreciation of the positive aspects of raising children outweighs moment-to-moment happiness or the lack thereof—even if this amounts to a sort of delusion:
“It’s a lovely magic trick of the memory, this gilding of hard time. Perhaps it’s just the necessary alchemy we need to keep the species going. But for parents, this sleight of the mind and spell on the heart is the very definition of enchantment.”
Hmm. I don’t know that this jibes so well with my personal experience. I don’t think I’ve found parenthood enchanting. Debilitating seems like a better word. Even in retrospect; my memories are not so halcyon. Those first three years? Amazingly horrible. (The kid is five; and it must be said, it’s been much less horrible lately.) Indeed, the question of why people continue to do it is a very interesting one to me. And the question of, Is it worth it? Would I recommend it to someone who asked? This is complicated and difficult and probably impossible to confidently answer, really, due to the non-existence of time travel or the ability to know the outcome of paths not chosen. I mean, of course there are lots of wonderful things about parenthood. I’ll start off with this: I love my kid and I am very happy that he exists. So in that way, because his existence would be impossible without my being a parent, it’s hard to say that the endeavor is not worth it. I do not regret his existence. But if I’m to be honest with myself, and with this hypothetical person asking me a question, I do think I am, all things considered, less happy than I was before becoming a parent. I miss the freedom of childless adulthood—being able to do pretty much whatever I wanted to do whenever I wanted to do it. That was a great source of happiness to me. Gone. And the abundance of uninterrupted time with my wife. And I miss relaxation—the fullest state of which, I think I have probably said goodbye to forever. These are important things. I go a good ways with hedonism. And I’m not entirely sure I’d like to argue that the happiest life is not the best one to lead. Removing the kid’s existence from the equation, which we should try to do, especially if we’re considering the recommendation to the hypothetical prospective mother or father, I’m hard pressed to say that parenthood is worth its attendant and enormous hardship and sacrifice.
But still, I think, I say it. The reason why might get both over-worded and kind of fruity, but I’ll try to express it anyway. And it does have to do with some of the semantic distinctions Senior raised in the New York article. It relies on the idea that richness of experience, or something vague like meaning, might be more important than happiness. It is: parenthood is worth it because of the knowledge it bestows. I don’t mean the everyday learning about life or whatever that takes place along with, and very often because of, the aforementioned hardship and sacrifice. Much of this, I think, we could learn other ways. (Bootcamp, maybe. Or prison.) Rather, for me, the most profound and enlightening moment of parenthood remains the very first one. The very first time I looked at the kid, thirty seconds after he was born, lying on the tray of the scale in the delivery room. In the crazy sense of connection I felt with him, a more tangible sense of connection than I’d ever felt with anything before—one that came as a result of the understanding, or the feeble attempt thereof, that this tiny breathing human shape, this thing lying in front of me, outside of me, was in fact made half out of me—I had as close to what I’d describe as an out-of-body experience as I’ve ever had, best comparable to a zoom-lens perspective effect in a movie, or, really, psychedelic drugs. Later that night, talking to my friend Dave, who’d had his first kid five years before, and two more since, I struggled for words to describe it. Dave laughed.
“It’s like walking through a door, right?” he said. “And suddenly there’s this whole other world you never even knew existed.”
And that’s what it is, with that first moment of parenthood, my world got immeasurably bigger. My outer world and my inner world and this weird new emotional bridge between the two. It was the very definition of mind-expanding. And this type of knowledge, which I don’t know of any of any other way to acquire, has great value to me. It is different from joy or happiness, but it is still something that is very good. It’s worth it.
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Your kid is five and you think it is getting easier? You have just passed through the easiest phase of child rearing, minus the incubation period. I don’t know if you have already done so but I strongly advise that you get some basic child development info and commit it to memory. Understanding how childrens’ brains function and develop and what is realistic to expect in terms of their behavior makes your job a billion times easier. Parenting is probably the most complicated job you will ever undertake and it helps if you prepare and study a bit. Also, of course having children means trading off complete adult freedom, but not forever. If you are lucky and work hard they grow up and become responsible for themselves.
Actually, I understood what he meant by “easier”. The first five years of a kid’s life is physically exhausting for parents, what with the lack of sleep, the constant running after toddlers, and their need to be front and center 24/7. As soon as they start school, the physical demands are significantly lessened.
Of course, every stage of childhood and parenting has it’s challenges–I’ve got two teenagers who are navigating all the same social and academic issues we all faced at that age; it’s a time of life I don’t wish on anyone.
But I have to say, “the pursuit of happiness” is a malleable construct. I may have had more freedom to do as I please pre-marriage and children, but I also remember being far more empty and purposeless. Families give people a reason to get up in the morning, because it’s no longer only about you.
In response to another comment. See in context »Toddlerhood officially ends at the age of 3 (basic child development info) and any parent who actually makes a child front and center 24/7 is seriously deluded.
In response to another comment. See in context »Babies and toddlers do require a higher level of personal care and physical interaction but their needs are very simple and easy to satisfy, in general terms. The increasing complexity of the personal relationship as a child grows demands much more from a parent in mental and emotional energy.
Ideally people who plan to have children would do so with the knowledge that it means being completely responsible for a small human being for a number of years.
The first 5 years might be the most exhausting time, but they are also the cheapest. The older the kid gets, the more expensive it becomes to be a good parent.
I’m a father of three. My wife and I share the work of raising our children as much as we can. It isn’t easy, and there are times when it can be downright unpleasant. But if that is the only thing you’re looking at to decide whether having children is worthwhile, you’ve missed the big picture.
It is true that, unlike generations past, we serve our children instead of the other way around. Modern medicine, morals, and technology are changing society’s views regarding children.
Let me return to an old notion: Children are our retirement plan. We can not expect to retire unless there is someone to care for us, whether directly through personal care, or through the financial support that they’ll fund one way or another.
We need to recognize this fact. As birth rates are dropping (many European countries have birth rates below population sustainability, while the US maintains a rate just above sustainability), we need to find ways to encourage people to have children.
The question of whether rearing children is a worthy activity ought to be refocused so that those who choose to raise children are not banished socially and economically from the rest of society.
The alternative is that our society shrinks and dies.
I see these articles as a cry for help, not as a criticism of raising children.
There is no greater responsibility than the molding of another human being. There is also no greater joy (or sorrow) than the role of parent. “Worth it” doesn’t even begin to cover the emotional value of being a mother or a father. Life without my children — well, I can’t even imagine such an existence.
Unfortunately, apathy is epidemic in this country (perhaps, in the world) when it comes to parenting. The children raised by self-centered, uninvolved parents will definitely grow up with “No Joy.”