Children, A Mistake?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Germany recently beat out Japan for the title of lowest birthrate. Germany's prestigious Max Plank Institute wanted to know more. WaPo reports...

Life has its ups and downs, but parenthood is supposed to be among the most joyous. At least that's what the movies and Target ads tell us.

In reality, it turns out that having a child can have a pretty strong negative impact on a person's happiness, according to a new study published in the journal Demography. In fact, on average, the effect of a new baby on a person's life in the first year is devastatingly bad — worse than divorce, worse than unemployment and worse even than the death of a partner.

Researchers Rachel Margolis and Mikko Myrskylä followed 2,016 Germans who were childless at the time the study began until at least two years after the birth of their first child. Respondents were asked to rate their happiness from 0 (completely dissatisfied) to 10 (completely satisfied) in response to the question, "How satisfied are you with your life, all things considered?"

Maybe people who say, "You'll feel different when you have your own", are full of shit. Granted, there are people who love being with and around children. Maybe we should leave reproduction to them, rather than pushing the idea that's reproducing is expected. Is, "When will you give me a grandchild", simply revenge?

[glatt]

Newborns suck. Give them to me at about 18 months. Then it's all payoff at that point. At least in my experience. But newborns are way more trouble than they are worth at the time.

A newborn is cute if you can hold it while it's in a good mood and sniff the top of its head. And then give it back when the bad parts start. And go home and get a full night's sleep.

[Lamplighter]

The thrust of the original research is more along the lines of
why parents of just 1 child do NOT have more children,
(e.g., Germany's lower birth rate than other European countries)

The summary of the article does not speak to how they controlled for such things as:

unwanted pregnancy of 1st child, of which there could be many reasons.
difficult medical issues during 1st pregnancy or childbirth
difficult medical / genetic issues affecting the first-born / first-surviving child
the death of the first born child / children

social issues of the mother (un-wed, age (young / old)
financial issues of the mother (unemployed -> low income -> high income)

... such factors go on and on.

But even more importantly may be separating out the "happiness" of the mother vs the father.

The is such a wide difference between actual maternal vs paternal responsibilities to a newborn,
that the correlation of "happiness" of the two parents could be extremely divergent
for a whole new set of factors, values, etc.

.

[Clodfobble]

Not to mention the fact that however unhappy they are, 99.99% of them would be even unhappier if the baby were taken back out of the picture in some way.

I think it may also have something to do with the fact that Germany has some of the best stay-at-home policies of any country in Europe. Aside from longer paid leave--and now a proposed policy to have the government pay additional benefits for staying home even longer--German women have the right to reclaim their jobs up to 3 years later (in the US and UK it's 1 year, and in the US there are loopholes about how they have to hire you, but they don't have to guarantee the exact same position you used to have.)

I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but having such great benefits puts a lot of pressure on moms to stay home, when some of them may not want to. Here, if a woman wants to go back to work, people may think it's for a variety of reasons, including financial. Over there, if you go back to work right away, everyone knows there's no excuse for it except you like your job more than your baby, and the last thing new mothers need is emotional shaming. Of the mothers who do work part-time, half say they wish they could work more hours.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Not to mention the fact that however unhappy they are, 99.99% of them would be even unhappier if the baby were taken back out of the picture in some way.

You could say the same about heroin.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Ah, economic opportunity knocks, after school child care in Germany.
You vil assemble ze Volksvagon parts, or march in formation wiz ze rest of ze lazy kinder.

[it]

It's really not that complicated:

If you are a parent, you are probably going to be less happy in many ways, but that's kind of the point - you are no longer the most important person in your life - knowing that you aren't doing things to make yourself happy is kind of like knowing that you may have forgot to feed your pet fish after you've spent a day clumsily exhausting yourself trying to save the world - you don't really care that much - you are a tool for what's really important, and it's all worth while - to do anything else feels insane.

If you aren't a parent, then becoming one is like any other process that happens to turn you into someone else entirely who no longer gives much of a shit about what you want because you aren't that important anymore... Basically, the thing you used to get you the things you want - a.k.a. yourself - is no longer going to be in your own service because most of the time it will have more important things to do. Ofcourse you shouldn't do that, that's insane.