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If you are unhappy and you know it, clap your hands

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Women are liberated and unhappy. Men are confined and unhappy. Oh gender warfare, how do I not love thee? Happily, I’ve decided to combine what could have been two posts into one, to spare you the pain of reading about our chronic malaise twice.

To read about how women are unhappy, click here.

To read about how men are unhappy, click here.

On men: I for one, still believe men are capable of being strong and chivalrous, without engaging in this sort of petty tit for tat mentality–the kind many a feminist has busied herself with for years now. If this dad is so disgruntled, perhaps he married the wrong woman–or perhaps he should take on his rightful role as a father who is more than a chauffeur. I’m sure his wife would thank him for it.

On women: was it really worth it? 1.5 children, in exchange for many, many hours in a cubicle?  Apparently not.

My two cents on gender warfare for the day.

About happiness and parenting

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We’ve had a post on “freerange” parenting, on “normal” parenting and now on happiness and parenting. I may not be a parent but I refuse to be excluded on my own blog.

I’m late on this post, because I heard about said study, declaring parenting decreases your happiness on Mother’s Day. And I was at home—ensuring my mother’s complete and unfettered misery for the sheer fact that she had me. My sister joined in the fun.

What the study says is that kids decrease parental happiness. Marriage? Increases your happiness on that nebulous Happiness-O-Meter. Kids? Decrease it. And if you feel differently—you just don’t know any better, says the Harvard professor.

Now happiness is clearly not the same to him as it is to me. I’m sure I should be at my very happiest right now. (Well, not quite. These studies, including this one, consistently say Married Folks are happier, better off, have more and better sex, are prettier, or more handsome, and the women never worry that their thighs look fat. They don’t say that last part, but I’ll tell you—I spend my days reading up on the Happiness of Married Folks and I’ve almost had it. But back to the topic at hand.)

If a lack of responsibility and the ability to sip lattes without concern for tiny grasping hands who want some too—or want your attention—or don’t, but now they are climbing up on the counter—constitutes happiness, then sure, kids really do detract from that.

In life, when I’m at a loss because I’ve just heard something that is clearly patently ridiculous and yet received media attention in spite of that, I like to refer to one of four movies: Anne of Green Gables, The Sound of Music, A Christmas Carol or When Harry Met Sally. All always hold wisdom, but in this particular case, I’ll turn to When Harry Met Sally. There’s a scene where Sally describes her carefree, vibrant, oh-so-wonderful life without children in her relationship with Joe. They break up. Sally explains to Harry:

When Joe and I started seeing each other, we wanted exactly the same thing. We wanted to live together, but we didn’t want to get married because every time anyone we knew got married, it ruined their relationship. … And Joe and I used to talk about it, and we’d say we were so lucky we have this wonderful relationship; we can have sex on the kitchen floor and not worry about the kids walking in. We can fly off to Rome on a moment’s notice. And then one day I was taking Alice’s little girl for the afternoon because I’d promised to take her to the circus, and we were in the cab playing “I Spy” – I spy a mailbox, I spy a lamp-post – and she looked out the window and she saw this man and this woman with these two little kids. And the man had one of the little kids on his shoulders, and she said, “I spy a family.” And I started to cry. You know, I just started crying. And I went home, and I said, “The thing is, Joe, we never do fly off to Rome on a moment’s notice.”

Harry: And the kitchen floor?

Sally: Not once. It’s this very cold, hard Mexican ceramic tile.

I wonder about the professor who does that kind of research in the first place. “Kids—I’m going to be late tonight. Got a really big one on the go, oh yes, I’m proving why everyone should spend more time in the office…”

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Brigitte would like to reassure Andrea: married women still worry about their thighs (and other assorted bits that tend to sag or droop or expand when left unattended). At least, I do. That’s why I’m off to karate right about nowish…

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Tanya agrees with the results of the study:  Well, partially.  Stay with me on this one. 

Note that the article compared children to Armani socks.  For someone so narcissistic as to go around telling everyone he paid $85 for his socks, children would definitely put a damper on his mood. 

Perhaps this study is more about how self-centered our society is, and less about what level of happiness we can achieve out of being parents.

 

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 Rebecca thinks of the future of the species: Anyone who pays $85 for a pair of socks is doing society a huge favour by not reproducing.

 

Children and happiness, continued

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The book is called Gross National Happiness. Read more about it in The Economist here. Some snippets:

Even if children are irksome now, they lend meaning to life in the long term. And the kind of people who are happy are also more likely to have children.

Not exactly a resounding endorsement, but I’ll take it. But the article actually makes the point that conservatives are happier than liberals:

…the data show that American conservatives have been consistently happier than liberals for at least 35 years. This is not because they are richer; they are not. Mr Brooks thinks three factors are important. Conservatives are twice as likely as liberals to be married and twice as likely to attend church every week. Married, religious people are more likely than secular singles to be happy. They are also more likely to have children, which makes Mr Brooks confident that the next generation will be at least as happy as the current one.

Church, marriage and children make you happy? I thought they make you embittered, tired and fanatical. I’ll have to get at his primary sources.

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Tanya adds: Oh, you know what they say! Those conservatives need to put on a happy face, lie to themselves and everyone else, to make everyone believe they are happier. It’s the secret code. I’m playing devil’s advocate, obviously. But, lo and behold, that is what they say! Look at the very first comment about the article:

By emoting an air of real or put-on happiness, [conservatives] are more likely to keep themselves in, and even sell to others, a sense of stability as things are now thus promoting their cause.

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Rebecca adds: It all depends how you define happiness. The definitions I like are the Aristotelian one, which can be boiled down to “happiness is living a life you can be proud of” or moral self-approval, and also John McCain’s:

I discovered that nothing is more liberating in life than to fight for a cause that encompasses you, but is not defined by your existence alone. And that has made all the difference, my friends, all the difference in the world.

A life that includes building a family, and preparing your living arrows to go out and make the world a better place, of putting the well-being of your children, family and community ahead of your own transient wants and desires, provides for many of us moral self-approval and also a cause greater than ourselves. If this is what you want out of life, I think it’s a safe bet that children will increase your happiness.

 

By contrast, for many people today “happiness” is essentially a synonym for hedonism, and is pursued by avoiding anything that might bring even a moment’s discomfort or self-sacrifice. If you define happiness as “never feeling sad, tired, foregoing a pleasure or taking on a burden,” then parenthood might not be your cup of tea.

 

Index that

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This article from last Saturday’s National Post must be one of the most shallow analyses of parenthood and reproduction I’ve ever read. And I’ve read a lot. One notable excerpt made me laugh out loud:

Why are people choosing to have fewer children? After all, voluntary childlessness seems to violate the Darwinian premise that our genes predispose us, like all other creatures, to try to reproduce.

I don’t think we can be faulted for failing to try to reproduce. As the mother of inquisitive children, I can tell you that copulation is everywhere. Our problem is not the trying. The actual reproduction that results from all the trying, well, uh, that’s another story.

That being said, this article made me take stock of my own happiness index. Being five times a mother, I figured I should know. Maybe this made me reflect because I was particularly grouchy that day. Because reward, when it comes to parenting, is something we feel more than something we know. It is both inanely obvious and impossible to describe. It chews us up and spits us out and makes us grateful for the ride. It is like nothing else, which probably explains why conventional happiness indexes miss it all together.

The contentment that comes from being a parent is not physical – although those newborns sure smell good – nor is it emotional. In fact, the emotions it triggers can be downright negative: may the person who has never felt exasperation after repeating the same simple instruction a gazillion time – don’t jump on the couch, leave your brother alone, when the baby cries it means he doesn’t like it, the cat is not supposed to make that noise – cast the first stone, but it sure won’t be me! The contentment that comes from being a parent is a contentment of the heart, a sense that we are partakers in something much bigger than ourselves, a feeling that we are given a mission we can’t refuse. It also pushes us to limits we didn’t know we had. Limits of patience, yes. But also limits of self-sacrifice, love and tolerance. When my first child was born, I thought I could never love anyone else that much. Until the second one came along. And the third. By the fourth, I had learned one of life’s most valuable lessons: each additional child doesn’t take away from the mother love-pie, it’s the pie that gets bigger.

And this is my unscientific observation: Parenthood makes me happy because I love. And the more I parent, the more I love. But the more I love, the more I suffer because loving children is not the same as loving ice cream. When they cry, I cry. When they fear, I fear. When they stumble and fall, I stumble and fall and then have nightmares about it. And as they grow and become more independent, I am torn between beaming with pride and collapsing in a heap because each step they take away from me is a step that separates me from a piece of my own heart. The heightened sensitivity that comes from being a parent has made me more aware of forms of happiness I would have otherwise ignored. And while each additional child makes me cry, fear and stumble more, children also make me more sensitive, loving and patient. Happier.

Happy-index that!

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Tanya is picturing Véronique breaking into song:

 

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6P2w5GkXmU]

 

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