The Science is In….

And the Bible is right:

3 Sons are a heritage from the LORD,
children a reward from Him.

4 Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are sons born in one’s youth.

Psalm 127:3-4 (NAS)

Well OK, it’s social science, but there’s a great item in Saturday’sThe Wall Street Journal on the net benefits of having kids — from an economical perspective. It’s really odd living in a society that celebrates singleness as the ideal and people who have large broods as some sort of odd religious whackos living in Texas and having a father who’s into jazz… ummm… let’s move on. Why is it odd??? because the evidence is overwhelming that being married and having kids leads to more happiness. It’s odd because a post-Enlightenment post-Christian West supposedly wedded in science and Reason irrationally fears commitment for life to a spouse and children and the obvious benefits of it. Even the divorce rate is overblown (correcting the number for 2d and 3d marriages which have abysmal divorce rates), but given that it’s so easy to divorce and so easy to marry it’s hardly unsurprising.

So anyway… back to the Journal essay:

It’s also true that modern parents are less happy than their childless counterparts. But happiness researchers rarely emphasize how small the happiness gap is. Suppose you take the National Opinion Research Center’s canonical General Social Survey, and compare Americans with the same age, marital status and church attendance. (These controls are vital, because older, married and church-going people have more happiness and more kids). Then every additional child makes parents just 1.3 percentage points less likely to be “very happy.” In contrast, the estimated happiness boost of marriage is about 18 percentage points; couples probably have fewer highs after they wed, but the security and companionship more than compensate. In the data, the people to pity are singles, not parents.

A closer look at the General Social Survey also reveals that child No. 1 does almost all the damage. Otherwise identical people with one child instead of none are 5.6 percentage points less likely to be very happy. Beyond that, additional children are almost a happiness free lunch. Each child after the first reduces your probability of being very happy by a mere .6 percentage points.

Happiness researchers also neglect a plausible competing measure of kids’ impact on parents’ lives: customer satisfaction. If you want to know whether consumers are getting a good deal, it’s worth asking, “If you had to do it over again, would you make the same decision?” The only high-quality study of parents’ satisfaction dates back to a nation-wide survey of about 1,400 parents by the Research Analysis Corp. in 1976, but its results were stark: When asked, “If you had it to do over again, would you or would you not have children?” 91% of parents said yes, and only 7% expressed buyer’s remorse.

You might think that everyone rationalizes whatever decision they happened to make, but a 2003 Gallup poll found that wasn’t true. When asked, “If you had to do it over again, how many children would you have, or would you not have any at all?” 24% of childless adults over the age of 40 wanted to be child-free the second time around, and only 5% more were undecided. While you could protest that childlessness isn’t always a choice, it’s also true that many pregnancies are unplanned. Bad luck should depress the customer satisfaction of both groups, but parenthood wins hands down.

I can vouch for the first child being the most difficult cost-wise — emotionally, financially, etc. It’s a huge adjustment as our very own John FN can now attest. But the others are barely noticeable from a cost standpoint. The main adjustments are re-prioritizing. Unless your kid is a holy terror or a drug addict, most of the changes require parents to not be selfish.

Like any good relationship it takes some investment — but as the article goes on to state later — not so much investment that you lose yourself totally or lose your kids. Like most things in life — it requires balance. I (and my parent colleagues for the last 10-20 years) spend a lot more money and effort worrying if I’m being a good parent than my forbears did — and I have almost all the advantages of modern society to help. I would tell you young singles and those with only one kid able and willing and wanting to have more. I have 3 and wish I’d gotten married younger so we could 4 or 5. Have more kids or at least don’t be dissuaded by cost or the adjustments you had to make for the first one — it gets easier.

So the post-modern powers that be have convinced us that children are a burden — something with which one is punished (and for kids born out of the traditional life can be much more difficult for the parent — funny how we punish the child). If that logic is taken to it’s conclusion then children are “bread gobblers” if we have so many that the balance sheet and worthy of elimination.

The research shows the exact opposite — what people have known for millennia… that children are a blessing and their benefit societally, personally and emotionally can never really be accurately measured. In this age of Science the facts are on the side of parents who marry a bit younger and have more — not less — or no kids.

And like all good investments — you’ve got to spend some to get back a lot more in return.

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