Does having kids actually make people less happy?
My daughter has been the best that ever happened to me. And I say that, even though it has been very hard, and it sometimes still is. I do not think you can understand how hard it can be, if you haven’t had children yourself. But I wouldn’t trade the good things for anything. The happiness I feel now is much, much deeper than anything I have ever felt before. I do think it is too superficial to just look at happiness as a measurable thing, and look at costs and benefits of having a child. Since having a child I have grown tremendously as a person. I may not feel shiny happy all the time (especially not when she throws a tantrum about ice cream – or something), but I did not always feel shiny happy when she wasn’t there either. My daughter constantly amazes me and I love her so much. I have never felt the particular kind of happiness that you feel when your child (for example) speaks her first sentences before. It is totally incomparable to the happiness of being able to go to the theat
I have long felt that people who claim that having kids was the best thing they ever did are pretty much following the thinking in the quote by martinrebas, above, especially the points that: 1) if you pay a lot for something, you assume or convince yourself that it makes you happy; and 2) since many / most of your other options are cut off, the one that is left (the kid/s) must, by default, become the thing that gives you joy. I think that these combine in a way, such that if you have made the commitment to become a parent, you simply *must* convince yourself that it was a good choice, or else you have to face up to the idea that you have let yourself in for years & years of sacrifice & limitation for nothing. Many parents say that they are happy to make these sacrifices, that children give them something to live for, that previously their lives were empty, and so on. However, imagine anybody committing an equivalent amount of
