Strollerderby : empty nest

Kids: Bringers or Destroyers of Marital Happiness?

Kate Tuttle — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 17:01:00 GMT

So, does a child bring greater love, happiness, and intimacy to his or her parents, or is having children instead a marital challenge only the strongest can endure? According to several new studies (discussed in a recent New York Times health column) marital happiness declines when children are born, and stays low until they grow up and leave the house. Empty nesters, whom popular media and self-help books would teach us to pity, turn out to be among the happiest of all married people!

As with so many "groundbreaking" new research results, this one leaves me surprised anyone is surprised. Of course having children is backbreaking, infuriating, heartbreaking and absolutely incompatible with so many of the things that make life truly fun (spontaneous travel, sex and drinking, for instance!). On the other hand, surviving the early years of parenthood and reaching a state of satisfiction with one's adult children and spouse would seem like a slam dunk in the happiness department. The studies cited in the Times article dealt mostly with women's happiness, which they described as peaking when women hit their 60s and presumably had launched their children into the world (although with many of us now having kids into our early 40s, some of us will still be scouting colleges and paying tuition deep into our mid-sixties). Less studied was the effect of having children on men's happiness, but one study seemed to address the gender inequality so common in family life:

The arrival of children also puts a disproportionate burden of household duties on women, a common source of marital conflict. After children, housework increases three times as much for women as for men, according to studies from the Center on Population, Gender and Social Equality at the University of Maryland.

Didn't Ann Landers famously ask people to write in and say whether or not they were glad they had had kids, and wasn't the nation shocked when a full 70% of her respondants (10,000 people!) said that if they had it to do over, they would not have had kids? Having children is hard work, folks, and while it's no surprise they put enormous pressure on our marriages while they're young, it's really kind of heartening to hear that maybe, when all these grueling years are past us, we can enjoy true marital bliss in our empty nests (if our 401Ks rebound enough by then for us to afford them!).

More by this author:

Would You Toilet-Train Your Child On National TV?

Biracial Twins -- Is One "Black" and One "White"?

Death by Peanut: Epidemic or Urban Myth?

Is This Baby Obese? Aussie Mom Says No

A Dispatch from the Other Side

Amy Kuras — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:32:00 GMT

When you’re right in the thick of this parenting small kids thing, it’s easy to think it will never end, that you’ll always be busy, stressed, wiping noses and butts and rarely having a moment when someone doesn’t need you right this second.

But really, this slice of life is very small in the grand scheme of things. For some reason Halloween is triggering that for me, remembering how last year I was beginning to get very obviously pregnant and my daughter was enthusiastically embracing Halloween for the first time. Looking at my sweet pudgy baby son who fits so snugly into the crook of my arm, I realize it seems like just a few months ago his sister, who’s now so tall I can hardly carry her, spent most of her days carted around like this too. And I know sooner than I like to think, they’ll be doing God knows what at grownup Halloween parties and hopefully will remember to call me on Sundays.

This column from the Boston Globe really brought it home for me – in it, a mother of grown kids tells how the friends she made when she was raising her children have stuck together through the years. It started with a dinner to console and commiserate with each other the year the kids left for college, and is still going strong now, 13 years later. Some of those grown children join them now, as do grandchildren.

It reminded me that someday this will all be over – and that someday is coming much sooner than I think.

Having Kids Ruins Marriage

Cole Gamble — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Marriage, as many studies have shown, go a long way to increasing a person's happiness and longevity. Just as long as you don't have kids.

This recent study finds that people who have children experience a significant unhappiness in their marriage during the child rearing years.

Children actually do make couples happier—before they arrive. Pregnant or planning for pregnancy couples get an upswing in happiness, but that tanks once junior arrives on the scene. Married couples, should their unions survive the unholy process of childrearing, go back to being totally blissful once the kids leave the house.

When is happiness at it's lowest point? Right after childbirth and when the kids hit adolescence. Duh.

Some experts argue that it's not the actual act of having children that causes the unhappiness, but social factors that come with it. Says University of Nottingham's Richard Tunney, "... in countries like Britain having children is hard. Your finances are hit, childcare in this country is appalling and, for women especially, their careers suffer. That is not the fault of having children per se, but of society."

So how about it, parents? Is society ruining your marriage?

Empty Nest Syndrome Strikes Some Parents Early

Rachael Brownell (Redsy) — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Sarah Ebner experienced Empty Nest Syndrome when her son was only 2 1/2. According to some experts it is possible to experience some version of Empty Nest Syndrome (the experience of loss and grief after a child leaves home) at previously unrecognized phases of development such as your youngest leaving for preschool, or beginning Kindergarten...

Ms. Ebner explains that she didn't feel similarly distressed when her oldest started Kindergarten because she still had a baby at home. It wasn't until the baby was old enough to engage in outside activities that she felt the stirrings of Empty Nest Syndrome.

I wonder if there's a counterpart syndrome: Empty Nest Envy? When I see the well-tanned exercised and well-rested people in their 50s and 60s (the ones who stop my little goslings for a kiss or pinch in the store), I daydream about the days of pottery and flower tending.

On the other hand, the longing those people have for my life is instructive.

[Photo: Daily Telegraph]

Helicopter Parents Make Boomerang Kids

makeitadouble — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 15:30:00 GMT

A generation of Helicopter Parents has in turn raised a generation of Boomerang Kids whose career paths follow a wide arcing curve that is ultimately leading them back to their point of origin; their parent’s homes.

An unstable economy, a weak job market, student loan debt and sky-rocketing housing costs have all been identified as contributing causes for this trend of nearly 60% of children returning to the nest, treating the family home like a free hotel and staying up until 3 am watching Adult Swim and Robot Chicken, but previous generations who haven’t been mollycoddled every moment of their life have had to deal with harsh times and financial adversity and you didn’t see them asking Mom to pick them up some Rogaine while she’s at the store.

Articles offering advice on how Mom and Dad can live in domestic harmony with their twenty-somethings like getting them to pay rent, agreeing on household chores and not waiting on them hand and foot may be necessary for some families, however it’s not too late for those of us with young children to stop Helicopter Parenting and start parenting like some other form of aviation like a Cessna light aircraft, the kind used for skydiving. Imagine 18 years of child rearing where instead of hovering and overprotecting we teach our kids to freefall and pull the parachute chord on their own; it’s easy if you try.

Maybe then we’ll be comparing the next generation of kids to some other archaic weaponry like a slingshot or a catapult; once launched the projectile travels further and further away from its point of origin. Who’s with me?

And if that doesn’t work, we can all just turn off the lights, crouch down and pretend we’re not home.

(photocredit:www.jonkeegan.com)

Don't Rent Out That Bedroom Yet: Kids Not Growing Up as Fast

Karen Murphy — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 12:06:00 GMT

What's the very next thing a good and concerned parent does right after submitting applications for the preschool wait list? Why, planning empty-nest vacations in the Caribbean, of course! Seriously, when you gaze out into the nebulous Land of the Future, don't you see it paved with a convertible that will eventually replace that minivan? And theater tickets, and days when you no longer have to change diapers/make school lunches/wipe noses/wipe butts? Because the kids are all off on their own?

You may have to wait for your dreams to come true, if this new study is to be believed. Apparently "young adults" are now postponing moves that would have been rote 30 years ago, and they're staying in school longer, leaving home later, getting "real jobs" later, s ell as marrying and having kids later.

Which all adds up to one thing, really: your kids are going to be on your dime much, much longer than you anticipated.

Welcome to hell.

And I'm really, really sorry about the convertible. And the Caribbean vacation.