According to this week's Newsweek article, having kids might not be all it's cracked up to be.
The most recent comprehensive study on the emotional state of those with kids shows us that the term "bundle of joy" may not be the most accurate way to describe our offspring. "Parents experience lower levels of emotional well-being, less frequent positive emotions and more frequent negative emotions than their childless peers," says Florida State University's Robin Simon, a sociology professor who's conducted several recent parenting studies, the most thorough of which came out in 2005 and looked at data gathered from 13,000 Americans by the National Survey of Families and Households. "In fact, no group of parents--married, single, step or even empty nest--reported significantly greater emotional well-being than people who never had children. It's such a counterintuitive finding because we have these cultural beliefs that children are the key to happiness and a healthy life, and they're not."
And while this is the most recent study, it's certainly not the only one.
In Daniel Gilbert's 2006 book "Stumbling on Happiness," the Harvard professor of psychology looks at several studies and concludes that marital satisfaction decreases dramatically after the birth of the first child--and increases only when the last child has left home. He also ascertains that parents are happier grocery shopping and even sleeping than spending time with their kids. Other data cited by 2008's "Gross National Happiness" author, Arthur C. Brooks, finds that parents are about 7 percentage points less likely to report being happy than the childless.
What do you think? Is the study spot on? Or is it missing one of the more crucial facets of parenting - the amount of love you can give to and receive from a child? Or what about the sense of purpose and meaning a parent can get from raising a child? And on the other hand - perhaps this study is only stating the obvious: that children are far from perfect; they're expensive, time-consuming, and stressful.