Is happiness the point?

[HT: Will Wilkinson] This has come up before, but there is a debate about whether children actually make parents happy. The 'scientific' evidence says no but the 'anecdotal' evidence says yes. Newsweek have a piece on this issue and can't resolve the debate. My best guess is that happiness isn't the point but once again it all too philosophical for a weekend so I'll leave it at that.

Children yada yada yada happiness

Happiness has been in the news today and I have written about it over at CoreEcon. But it also appeared in a recent issue of The Economist in relation to whether children make you happy.

IN EVERY nursery there is one child known as the Biter. Who suffers the most from this child's delinquency? Not his classmates, whose bite marks quickly heal. It is the Biter's mum and dad, who endure sideways glances from other parents when dropping him off in the morning and fret constantly that their own poor parenting has produced a monster.

Arthur Brooks was once the father of a Biter. For a year, his son gnawed on boys, girls, siblings, friends and so many guests that he had to be removed from his own fourth birthday party. Mr Brooks worried, argued with his wife, lost sleep and sought professional help. So he speaks from experience when he says that having children does not make you happy.

Happily for the reader, his book, “Gross National Happiness”, is not a memoir. It is a subtle and engaging distillation of oceans of data. When researchers ask parents what they enjoy, it turns out that they prefer almost anything to looking after their children. Eating, shopping, exercising, cooking, praying and watching television were all rated more pleasurable than watching the brats, even if they don't bite. As Mr Brooks puts it: “There are many things in a parent's life that bring great joy. For example, spending time away from [one's] children.”

Despite this, American parents are much more likely to be happy than non-parents. This is for two reasons, argues Mr Brooks, an economist at Syracuse University. Even if children are irksome now, they lend meaning to life in the long term. And the kind of people who are happy are also more likely to have children.

I must admit, I can believe that there exist children out there, who in retrospect, don't make their parents happy. And Brooks is right, I'd rather have my kid bitten than having them bite. But, in day to day life, I must also admit that it is the conceptual "idea of a child" that makes me happy as opposed to what they happen to be doing at that moment. In any case, is happiness really the goal here? All these issues are too philosophical for a blog post but I thought I'd at least share the link.