Few choices are more important than whether to have children, and psychologists and other social scientists have worked to figure out what having kids means for happiness…
— from a story by Paul Bloom, “What Becoming a Parent Really Does to Your Happiness” in The Atlantic, November 2, 2021.
Since I never had kids, I enjoy reading about how much trouble they are, and author Paul Bloom was happy to accommodate me earlier this week, in The Atlantic.
The early research is decisive: Having kids is bad for quality of life. In one study, the psychologist Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues asked about 900 employed women to report, at the end of each day, every one of their activities and how happy they were when they did them. They recalled being with their children as less enjoyable than many other activities, such as watching TV, shopping, or preparing food.
Other studies find that when a child is born, parents experience a decrease in happiness that doesn’t go away for a long time.
This all makes a certain kind of sense now, thinking back on my childhood. But I didn’t notice it at the time — when I was just a kid — that my mom and dad got grumpy whenever I walked into the room. They’d be laughing and sipping their frozen strawberry daiquiris… and then they’d see me walk in, and the whole energy of the room would flip. Suddenly, the most important thing in life became whether I had finished cleaning my room.
It was like the daiquiris turned into Pepto Bismol.
“Did you finish cleaning your room, Louis, like we asked you?” they would say, frowning. “Are you done with your homework? Your clothes are in the dryer and need to be folded.”
Frowning.
And it wasn’t just me. The same thing happened whenever my older sister or brother made an appearance. Unfinished and lavish chores would instantly manifest themselves, out of thin air.
Being a kid, and not yet understanding how the world works, I thought my parents loved me. But in fact, they were constantly trying to be alone with each other, with no kids around.
Trying, and failing.
We were always there, lurking in the shadows. The source of their decreasing happiness.
Of course, that’s not the whole story. If we completed our chores properly, there was always the chance that mom and dad would serve ice cream for dessert.
Apparently, the disappearance of household bliss when children arrive is not unique to the U.S. According to Mr. Bloom, a 2016 study looked at the happiness levels of people with and without children in 22 countries, and found that parents from Norway and Hungary, for instance, are happier than childless couples in those countries — but parents from Australia and Great Britain are less happy than their childless peers. The country with the greatest happiness decline after children arrive? The United States.
So your level of disdain for your own children depends — from a global perspective — mainly upon whether your family speaks English at home.
But back to the question of chores. (Since I probably will be speaking English for the rest of my life.)
I am thinking now about my failed marriage with Darlene. We really tried to make it work, in spite of our lack of bilingual options, but we got kind of hung up on the whole ‘happiness’ question. Were we ‘happy’ together?
Now that I’ve been allowed some distance from the relationship (in both time and space) I distinctly recall having a lot of chores assigned. And Darlene didn’t even like daiquiris.
“Louis, the washing machine is making that funny noise again…”
“I’ve put the rake out on the porch where you can easily find it… next to the lawn mower…”
“I’m going to bed early, Louis. I’ve got that same headache again. But the dishes are still waiting to go into the dishwasher…”
Where, oh where, do chores come from? Are they invented by unhappy people who might — might — serve ice cream for dessert?
Pardon me, while I vacuum my office…
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.