Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. - Cyril Connolly
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Bundle of Joy??
I've always wondered about this, and now what seemed to be a biological statement of fact, has instead been shot full of 21st century reality. It's no surprise that the demands of today's high tech, fast moving, more expensive lifestyles are the cause of much of this change.
"....parents are about 7 percentage points less likely to report being happy than the childless.
The most recent comprehensive study on the emotional state of those with kids shows us that the term "bundle of joy" may not be the most accurate way to describe our offspring. "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."
