So Dads are Happier? Why It Doesn't Bother Me
I spend a lot of time mining the small moments of motherhood.
On my blog, My 3 Little Birds, I ask my readers (who are primarily mothers and grandmothers) to shine the spotlight on themselves a little bit each day.
I believe there’s value in gaining insight into how the motherhood journey shapes us as people.
But.
There’s no denying that in between all those moments of butterfly kisses and lessons learned, there’s a lot of stress. It’s messy. There are slammed doors and bee stings and not just a small amount of worry.
My husband jokes that mothers are hard-wired for all this worry. His theory is that it’s instinctive. It’s protective, and serves to perpetuate the species.
I’ll be honest. When I wake in the night in a cold sweat over my fears for a boy who was bullied at school, or I can’t stop thinking about what could go wrong during my toddler’s routine medical procedure, I don’t exactly feel like I’m helping humanity.
Most of the women I know are like me. They push worry off into the margins of their days, when the house is quiet and the bellies are full. They confess to their husbands in a worried whisper that they just can’t stop the dread, can’t turn off the fear, can’t make the heart that aches stop hurting for their little ones at times.
Most of their husbands are like mine. Less afraid, somehow. More able to tell themselves that it does no good to worry about those things in life we can’t control.
It begs the question: do men have it easier? And in short order, are they happier?
The research says yes.
When I read Christine Carter’s analysis on The Huffington Post of a study that revealed that parents report higher levels of positive emotion than non parents, I was intrigued by a critical detail explaining why: fathers are driving the averages up. In other words, when women become mothers, they don’t become happier, but when men become fathers they do.
Fascinating stuff, right?
It leaves me wondering if there’s a connection between the (anecdotal) lack of worry among fathers and their (evidentiary) happiness as it compares to mothers.
I like to think I know myself pretty well, and one thing I know for sure is this: as long as I’m a mother I’ll worry. I’ll worry about bad drivers and boogey men, rogue bullets and riptides. I’ll worry about dives into the deep end and strange rashes that dot the skin. I’ll worry if I tell them too little. I’ll worry if they know too much.
The stakes couldn’t be higher.
But I also know this: that the flip side of worry is a love so strong that it, too, wakes me in the night. If all this means that mothers experience more “negative emotions” than fathers, I’m willing to bet that the flip side of their worry is the same depth of love.
I, for one, wouldn’t trade an ounce of it to be able to report that I’m “happier.” Would you?
This is so true! I often accuse my hubby of not worrying enough. But I guess I worry enough for the both of us.
Oh I’d never trade a second of it. The worry, care, late nights, even diaper changes- are a reward unto themselves and only someone who has realized this can ever understand. I once read a quote, and I forget who said it- but basically summed up, it said ” unless you know why the child waves at its parents every time it passes them on a merry-go-round, and why the parent will always wave back- you know nothing about life” and its true, but with those rotations comes worry, and joy.
Love this post and your wonderful writing. I absolutely see the difference in my husband since our son was born. He is a changed man – he’s clearly happier, he’s more patient, and he’s definitely more social (he just stopped to chat with another father of an infant at a coffee place over the weekend – that would NEVER have happened before becoming a dad himself). That’s not to say that he doesn’t carry his fair share of worry for our child (perhaps it’s because our boy was born extremely prematurely), but it’s clear that I’m the worrier in the family. The funny thing is, though, that I think my son’s prematurity and health challenges have actually mellowed me out (a little). I don’t panic as much as I did with my nieces and nephews (so, it could be experience alone), but I think that having big, giant scares in my son’s very early life have made the more minor things easier to face and forget. (I’m still a good worrier, though, don’t let me fool you.)
I think alot of men don’t worry because they know someone else will. It’s almost a typical thing men do (yes, I’m generalizing). I know if I didn’t do something that was needed (like packing diapers in the diaper bag for a day out) he wouldn’t think to do it. I was always doing everything so he didn’t (or wouldn’t) have to think about it. So of course he had less worry. I think it also falls out into typical gender roles. For example, a day at the beach: I would think of all the stuff we would need to bring, gather it together, make a lunch, etc. and he would pack the car and drive. There wasn’t much for him to think about. And he would go off and play with the kids while I worked to get stuff done, so of course he’d be happier. Again, I’m generizing with my own experience.