Are You Happy? Are You Sure?
Parents claim to enjoy their kids; researchers say they're deluded.
by Elizabeth Mitchell
December 21, 2006
More than two-and-a-half years later, Rabhan's feelings haven't changed. "I assumed it would be at times similar to mowing the lawn. Just like your job you have now: there are hours. Parenthood is worse than 7-11. 7-11 is open at seven and closes at eleven. This is the store that never closes. This is the door that has no locks because it is never locked.
"You are surrounded by people who try to convince themselves how wonderful [new parenthood] is. Can you imagine going to dinner with some friends. They say, 'How is everything going?' And you say, 'It's going really shitty. I'm exhausted. My kid doesn't stop crying. He shits five times a day, I'm sick to death of changing him. I wish this kid would change his own fucking diaper.' Because that's what you really think. But if you said that, people's mouths would drop open. You would look like the biggest animal who ever lived.
"We all grasp onto, your kid smiles after six to eight months, but meanwhile you have got all these other months and months of just nothing, of just a blob, until the child is a year old. If people were a little bit more honest, they'd say, 'You know, you're right. It's really hard and you'll get over it,' but no one really wants to admit that because they're afraid of looking like shallow, insensitive assholes." 
"Having children is one of the few things we do where everyone around us who is old and wise encourages us to think foolishly," says Daniel Gilbert.
Daniel Gilbert, who has one son, concurs. "Having children is one of the few things we do where everyone around us who is old and wise encourages us to think foolishly," he says. "Nobody ever sits us down and says, 'Look, I know you are overjoyed about this, but you really ought to sober up a little bit and think this through.' Instead, everyone from moms and dads, to aunts and uncles, to coworkers, say, 'Marvelous!' 'Congratulations!' 'What are you going to name him?'
"We encourage people to live in a fantasy about their upcoming child, and then when they go off to the hospital and have their kid, we all kind of wink and nod. Why in the world aren't we saving people from this by preparing them for what's real? Yes, your child is going to be the source of so much joy in so many ways, but here's all the hard parts. I'm not sure that would dissuade or should dissuade people from having kids. I'm a psychologist and biologist, and this is what we're here for. There's no other purpose to our lives but to pass that DNA on. But at least we shouldn't be so incredibly surprised when we have an experience that's been had by every human being on the planet. Right? It shouldn't be novel."
Some parents might protest they never reach the state of extreme frustration with their offspring, but certainly the psychological data pegs them as anomalies. If children aren't bringing us marital misery, they are at least not improving our emotional state. So why are we so deluded into believing that children are a massive plus? For every laugh my daughter and I share running around the botanic garden or consuming salt and pepper soup she imagines she cooked, there are dozens of pulse-stopping protests, battles before which she has carefully obliterated all my countermoves.
"Perhaps parents find it psychologically advantageous to talk themselves into thinking this is a great thing," theorizes Oswald, who has two daughters. "It would be psychologically difficult to come to the view early in life, I've made a huge mistake having these children. I imagine that humans are good at the flexibility of thought that stops them from taking that view."
The media certainly doesn't warn us about what we're getting ourselves into. When was the last time you saw a tantrum played out in real-time in a movie? Even when children challenge their parents on screen, it's in a cute "I'm going to leave home with my teddy bear" kind of way. Why are there no paparazzi shots of Zahara throwing herself on the airport floor?
©2006 Elizabeth Mitchell and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Elizabeth Mitchell, former executive editor of George and features editor of Spin, is the author of Three Strides Before the Wire: The Dark and Beautiful World of Horse Racing and W.: Revenge of the Bush Dynasty. |
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