Does having children really make you happy?

Submitted by prideangel.com on Fri, 07/30/2010 - 2:11pm

As I turn the pages of our family photo albums, I see countless pictures of our children growing up.
Most of the shots capture moments of happiness or achievement: my daughters are laughing on care-free holidays under azure summer skies, or clutching a medal, holding a certificate, winning a race.

These albums, stored in a memory chest I have created for my family, are a record not just of my children's happiness and achievements, but my own as well. I love to look at the pictures of us, it's a sort of proof that I'm living the 'parental dream'. Or that's what I thought.

But now I'm being told that my parental happiness is a delusion and that my photo albums - like my parental memory bank - contain only the moments I have chosen to archive.

Mothers and fathers, according to the latest research by top scientists, simply choose to forget - or else don't admit to - all the other hideous stuff which makes us miserable on an almost daily basis; the tears, the tedium and the tantrums.

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From where do we derive our happiness?

Submitted by Rhona Berens on Fri, 01/21/2011 - 5:13pm.

I think the larger question for all of us to ask ourselves: From where do we derive our happiness? For some of us, having and raising children remains a source of immense happiness--even when combined with stress and challenges--for others, it can be a detractor from happiness, e.g., if we didn't want the children in the first place, if we have trouble adjusting to the new roles and responsibilities of parenthood, if we blame our children for experiences we didn't have a chance to have, and so on. Also, what's interesting to me about a lot of the happiness research about becoming parents is that, often, there's a surge in personal--meaning, individual--happiness after the birth of a baby, yet relationship happiness for parents often decreases. If this is true, and many couples experience a dip in relationship satisfaction (and an attendant increase in relationship conflict), perhaps, this contributes to the stress on individual happiness reported in the research. In other words, it might not be having kids per see that makes some of us unhappy, or less happy than might be expected, but the impact of children on our marriages and committed relationships, and our lack of skills in ably navigating that impact to improve relationship fulfillment. Those are my thoughts, at least, on this fascinating topic!