If you're happy and you know it, think again...

Recently sociologist Robin W. Simon published "The Joys of Parenthood, Reconsidered” in the American Sociological Association’s journal Contexts. In this article, Simon argues that survey findings suggest that non-parents are happier than parents, controlling for other variables, including age and income. Hmmm.

Given that all living beings exist to increase and multiply (true whether you're a creationist or buy the evolutionary point of view), this is a very interesting idea. It might just tick off people, especially people like me who have altered their career paths to accomodate parenthood, who haven't seen a movie in almost four years, because it's so hard to get a babysitter, who don't own a white shirt that doesn't have Spaghettio stains on it. But it's not going to shock us. This information is not like being blinded on the road to Damascus. We're pretty aware that parenthood has trade-offs.

I think that all parents have at least considered the "what ifs" of living child-free. What if we'd never had the kids? What would our lives be like? It's kind of taboo to talk about that, but I would bet money that pretty much everyone has thought about it. We'd probably take more trips, spend more time at work, have a better-decorated, possibly cleaner, house. We'd go to more restaurants (Oh, how I miss The Hot Point in Raleigh), more concerts, know more about popular culture besides when Thomas the Train will be at Tweetsie.

I know plenty of people who don't have children (not a random sample, obviously), and many of those who don't have children have, in my estimation, made the right choice for themselves. There are a LOT of people who probably would not be very happy as parents. But for most of us who have children, considering what life would be like without them is kind of like saying, what if I'd been born with two heads, instead of one? What would that be like? What would it be like if I had three arms, like that guy in Hitchhiker's Guide? I could get a hellava lot more stuff done.

What I find more interesting is the a) definition of happiness that Simon used and b) whether she tested for non-linear effects for time/age. She does concede that parents seem to derive “more purpose, more meaning, and greater satisfaction from life” than do nonparents. (Which begs the question, what DOES she mean by happiness, if that ain't it?? ) But I'm also thinking that happiness and parenthood may follow a U-shaped curve, with a big dip during the adolescent years, rising again in the adult years, bursting through the roof with grand-parenthood. (Oh, how I look forward to that.)

Anyway, it's something to think about.

Regression to the mean

Without getting too nerdy, I think it might be helpful to note that according to Wikipedia, "Regression toward the mean, in statistics, is the phenomenon whereby members of a population with extreme values on a given measure for one observation will, for purely statistical reasons, probably give less extreme measurements on other occasions when they are observed."

Or, if we are to be more literary, as Flannery O'Connor would have it, everything that rises must converge. Or, if you are living in my house, everyone who rises must converge. My sweet, highly verbal Ginny o' the morning will be the wailing, thrashing Ginny o' the night. My wailing, slow-rising Baby Dan will be a triumphant wrestling machine by day's end.

And so it goes with all of life. My academic career, peaking (perhaps) with my dissertation and an academic award in 2003-04, has come to this: I am the maid of all work, the wiper of tails, the reader of Clifford board books. Forget about the Canterbury prologue--I can now recite Sheep in a Jeep from memory. I was once happy about my ability to thread together a complicated literature review from any given theoretical standpoint on short notice. I am now thrilled to be able to find a clean shirt and pants for three people on short notice.

It's not all bad, of course. Staying at home wouldn't conform to the law of regression to the mean, if there weren't some perks to go along with the inevitable downsides. I get to spend unlimited time with my kids, who do seem to be less stressed these days. I think my house is cleaner--if you don't count the things that are just too hard to do with the kids around (dirty bathtubs, for example). I think in some ways I am less stressed--I do still do my job part-time, but I'm less wrapped up in it than I was, which is probably a good thing. I'm also having a little more contact with some of the other moms that I'm friends with--which I hadn't had time to do before.

But you'll also notice that I haven't posted for a month. There's a good reason for that. I'm still trying to find time to do my own stuff, which is hard to come by. I'm hoping that I'll find some way to manage my time better, or else I'm going to do more than regress to the mean--I'm going to regress all the way to pure T biyatch.