Since it would probably be rude to print this out and hand it to someone everytime they tell me about the "joys" I'm missing by not having children, I'll post a link to this great article - Having Kids Makes You Happy, True or False - and include a few good quotes. With some of the folks I work with, not having children rates right up there with Satan worshipping.
In Daniel Gilbert's 2006 book "Stumbling on Happiness," the Harvard professor of psychology looks at several studies and concludes that marital satisfaction decreases dramatically after the birth of the first child—and increases only when the last child has left home. He also ascertains that parents are happier grocery shopping and even sleeping than spending time with their kids.
Other data cited by 2008's "Gross National Happiness" author, Arthur C. Brooks, finds that parents are about 7 percentage points less likely to report being happy than the childless.
"Parents experience lower levels of emotional well-being, less frequent positive emotions and more frequent negative emotions than their childless peers," says Florida State University's Robin Simon, a sociology professor who's conducted several recent parenting studies, the most thorough of which came out in 2005 and looked at data gathered from 13,000 Americans by the National Survey of Families and Households. "In fact, no group of parents—married, single, step or even empty nest—reported significantly greater emotional well-being than people who never had children. It's such a counterintuitive finding because we have these cultural beliefs that children are the key to happiness and a healthy life, and they're not."
Wednesday, July 2
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It is SO RUDE of people to make judgments or comments about people who don't have children. You shouldn't feel bad about giving this person a copy! If they are aggressive enough with you to share their opinions, then you can be equally aggressive with them. Hooray for this article - having children is NOT a key to having a fulfilled life. To me, the decision to have children is not about being happy or unhappy with your life, it's just another choice about how you want your life to be, like choosing a career, a spouse, a home, a pet, etc. Have you ever seen "Jon and Kate Plus 8" on TLC? That couple loves their children and they enjoy them, but their life is a daily hurricane. And even one child is a tremendous responsibility and lifestyle change. Everyone has to do what's right for them.
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