Bundles of Misery
2006-01-06 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/02/AR2006010201513_3.html
Bundles Of . . . Misery
Parenting Got You Down? You're Not Alone, Says Study
By Elizabeth Agnvall
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, January 3, 2006; HE01
Just as we're taking down the tree, organizing the new toys and stepping onto the scale comes a study finding that may make us wonder why we do it all: Parents are more likely to be depressed than people who do not have children.
Published last month in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, the study of 13,000 U.S. adults found that parents, from those with young children to empty nesters, reported being more miserable than non-parents. The researchers analyzed data from a national survey of families and households that asked respondents how many times in the past week, for example, they felt sad, distracted or depressed.
Unlike earlier studies, this one found moms and dads equally unhappy.
So: After all the sleepless nights and drowsy mornings, the cycles of feeding and throwing up, the American Girl doll accessories bought on credit, the toothpick models of the solar system and the algebra tutors . . . we would have been happier without it all?
In a word, says study author Robin Simon, an associate professor of sociology at Florida State University, yes.
"Parents don't do as well as non-parents," she said.
Simon's own kids -- she has an adult daughter and a teenage son -- were unimpressed by the study results. "They're like 'Whatever,' " she said.
For her part, Simon felt oddly cheered: "It's validating and consoling to know that you're not alone."
But how can the findings stand? Politics, culture and history -- to say nothing of those annoying Baby Gap ads -- all reinforce the message that having children is the greatest pleasure in life.
Michael Lewis, professor of pediatrics and psychiatry and director of the Institute for the Study of Child Development at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J., says that the idea of parenthood as pure joy "was always a bit of a wonderful myth." He said he's surprised the study findings were not even more negative.
Over the last 150 years, he said, children have moved from being an economic advantage to an economic burden in the United States. We used to be able to send children to work in the fields; older kids tended to the babies. When not pressed into service, they mostly stayed out of the way.
With the advent of Dr. Spock, the parenting industry, obligatory music and soccer lessons and a colossal marketplace that propels kids to desire and parents to guilt, children have become the center of the household.
Consider the "Mom's Letter to Santa" e-mail that went zapping around just before Christmas: the mom is hiding in the laundry room using a crayon to write her wish list on the back of a receipt while the laundry is between cycles: She wants a car with fingerprint-resistant windows, a radio that plays only adult music, a television that won't broadcast programs with talking animals and a place where she can talk on the phone in peace.
"It would be helpful if you could coerce my children to help around the house without demanding payment as if they were the bosses of an organized crime family," she writes to St. Nick.
It's Not You -- Really
Lewis himself has somehow worked through all of this with his four kids.
While he's sure he had the messiest children in town -- he once found the skeleton of a decayed mouse under his son's bed -- he's raised a doctor and a lawyer. One child is in college and the fourth is in high school.
Still, he notes, even when children are doing well, "there are always issues to deal with. One hopes that it gets better. Parenting is never done. It's an endless task. Lots of pleasure, but a lot of pain."
His advice: If life as a parent leaves you gloomy, realize that it's not you. It's your . . . situation.
"Don't think you are crazy" for feeling low, he said. This study shows that "lots of people are feeling the same way."
Meredith Small, a Cornell University anthropologist and author of "Kids: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Raise Our Children," sees cultural forces conspiring to make life lousy for parents.
"Western culture is the worst place to be if you want to be a parent," she says. "If you look at any other culture, people would think that this is nutty."
She said parents have never been as alone as they are in the United States today. In places like India, lots of people sleep in one big house. When the baby wakes up at 2 a.m., six people are available to help. Higher birth rates mean there are older children to take care of the younger ones. Worldwide, she says, 90 percent of child care is done by other children.
Even in many European countries, things are better; working mothers -- and sometimes fathers -- are paid a portion of their salaries to stay home during the first year or more with their young children. Parents get six weeks of vacation and extra time off to take care of sick kids. Good child care is subsidized by the government. College and graduate schools are paid for by the government.
Here, Small said, nuclear families aren't large enough. "Parents are tired, they are overworked, they are extended, they are irritated and they've got nobody to help them."
A Dissenting Voice
So short of sending the kids back into the fields, having more babies, inviting the neighbors to live with us or charging the kids rent, what's an overwhelmed parent to do?
Family therapist Neil Bernstein, who has offices in the District and Virginia, offers this simple advice: "Get a life."
For the record, he doesn't necessarily accept the study's conclusion that people with children are more depressed. Still, "What parents need to know and should take away from this is that it's important to look after your own mental health, not to live vicariously through your child," he said.
People should have their own interests and look after their relationships the same way they look after their children. And if it all seems too overwhelming, it's worth seeking help from a professional.
"Being a good parent does not mean being totally absorbed in your children," he said.
Bernstein, who has been treating Washington area children and families for 25 years and has grown children, cites his own experience.
"Not only did parenting not make me depressed, but it was without question the happiest years of my life," he says. "I wouldn't trade them for anything, and I couldn't imagine being anywhere near as comfortable or happy with myself had I not been a parent."
And for those who have chosen not to have children? Simon said her study validates that their choice might just be the healthiest one of all.
"At least if you're going to do it," she says to those contemplating parenthood, "know what you're getting into."
Elizabeth Agnvall is a regular contributor to the Health section. E-mail:health@washpost.com
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/02/AR2006010201513_3.html
Bundles Of . . . Misery
Parenting Got You Down? You're Not Alone, Says Study
By Elizabeth Agnvall
Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, January 3, 2006; HE01
Just as we're taking down the tree, organizing the new toys and stepping onto the scale comes a study finding that may make us wonder why we do it all: Parents are more likely to be depressed than people who do not have children.
Published last month in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, the study of 13,000 U.S. adults found that parents, from those with young children to empty nesters, reported being more miserable than non-parents. The researchers analyzed data from a national survey of families and households that asked respondents how many times in the past week, for example, they felt sad, distracted or depressed.
Unlike earlier studies, this one found moms and dads equally unhappy.
So: After all the sleepless nights and drowsy mornings, the cycles of feeding and throwing up, the American Girl doll accessories bought on credit, the toothpick models of the solar system and the algebra tutors . . . we would have been happier without it all?
In a word, says study author Robin Simon, an associate professor of sociology at Florida State University, yes.
"Parents don't do as well as non-parents," she said.
Simon's own kids -- she has an adult daughter and a teenage son -- were unimpressed by the study results. "They're like 'Whatever,' " she said.
For her part, Simon felt oddly cheered: "It's validating and consoling to know that you're not alone."
But how can the findings stand? Politics, culture and history -- to say nothing of those annoying Baby Gap ads -- all reinforce the message that having children is the greatest pleasure in life.
Michael Lewis, professor of pediatrics and psychiatry and director of the Institute for the Study of Child Development at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J., says that the idea of parenthood as pure joy "was always a bit of a wonderful myth." He said he's surprised the study findings were not even more negative.
Over the last 150 years, he said, children have moved from being an economic advantage to an economic burden in the United States. We used to be able to send children to work in the fields; older kids tended to the babies. When not pressed into service, they mostly stayed out of the way.
With the advent of Dr. Spock, the parenting industry, obligatory music and soccer lessons and a colossal marketplace that propels kids to desire and parents to guilt, children have become the center of the household.
Consider the "Mom's Letter to Santa" e-mail that went zapping around just before Christmas: the mom is hiding in the laundry room using a crayon to write her wish list on the back of a receipt while the laundry is between cycles: She wants a car with fingerprint-resistant windows, a radio that plays only adult music, a television that won't broadcast programs with talking animals and a place where she can talk on the phone in peace.
"It would be helpful if you could coerce my children to help around the house without demanding payment as if they were the bosses of an organized crime family," she writes to St. Nick.
It's Not You -- Really
Lewis himself has somehow worked through all of this with his four kids.
While he's sure he had the messiest children in town -- he once found the skeleton of a decayed mouse under his son's bed -- he's raised a doctor and a lawyer. One child is in college and the fourth is in high school.
Still, he notes, even when children are doing well, "there are always issues to deal with. One hopes that it gets better. Parenting is never done. It's an endless task. Lots of pleasure, but a lot of pain."
His advice: If life as a parent leaves you gloomy, realize that it's not you. It's your . . . situation.
"Don't think you are crazy" for feeling low, he said. This study shows that "lots of people are feeling the same way."
Meredith Small, a Cornell University anthropologist and author of "Kids: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Raise Our Children," sees cultural forces conspiring to make life lousy for parents.
"Western culture is the worst place to be if you want to be a parent," she says. "If you look at any other culture, people would think that this is nutty."
She said parents have never been as alone as they are in the United States today. In places like India, lots of people sleep in one big house. When the baby wakes up at 2 a.m., six people are available to help. Higher birth rates mean there are older children to take care of the younger ones. Worldwide, she says, 90 percent of child care is done by other children.
Even in many European countries, things are better; working mothers -- and sometimes fathers -- are paid a portion of their salaries to stay home during the first year or more with their young children. Parents get six weeks of vacation and extra time off to take care of sick kids. Good child care is subsidized by the government. College and graduate schools are paid for by the government.
Here, Small said, nuclear families aren't large enough. "Parents are tired, they are overworked, they are extended, they are irritated and they've got nobody to help them."
A Dissenting Voice
So short of sending the kids back into the fields, having more babies, inviting the neighbors to live with us or charging the kids rent, what's an overwhelmed parent to do?
Family therapist Neil Bernstein, who has offices in the District and Virginia, offers this simple advice: "Get a life."
For the record, he doesn't necessarily accept the study's conclusion that people with children are more depressed. Still, "What parents need to know and should take away from this is that it's important to look after your own mental health, not to live vicariously through your child," he said.
People should have their own interests and look after their relationships the same way they look after their children. And if it all seems too overwhelming, it's worth seeking help from a professional.
"Being a good parent does not mean being totally absorbed in your children," he said.
Bernstein, who has been treating Washington area children and families for 25 years and has grown children, cites his own experience.
"Not only did parenting not make me depressed, but it was without question the happiest years of my life," he says. "I wouldn't trade them for anything, and I couldn't imagine being anywhere near as comfortable or happy with myself had I not been a parent."
And for those who have chosen not to have children? Simon said her study validates that their choice might just be the healthiest one of all.
"At least if you're going to do it," she says to those contemplating parenthood, "know what you're getting into."
Elizabeth Agnvall is a regular contributor to the Health section. E-mail:health@washpost.com
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
no subject
Date: 2006-01-06 04:51 pm (UTC)I don't think that it's always parenthood per se that causes the misery, though. Some people are OK with the high-aggravation/high-reward aspect of parenthood (something I personally would never choose in any situation). The article points out SO MANY of the reasons why parenthood is unnecessarily difficult:
children have become the center of the household
"Being a good parent does not mean being totally absorbed in your children"
In places like India, lots of people sleep in one big house. When the baby wakes up at 2 a.m., six people are available to help.
My (extremely happy) childhood involved a lot of "go play outside". While my parents were always extremely affectionate and were always there if we needed them, we did not depend on them to be playmates, and it was always clear that they placed each other very high on the priority list, sometimes above us kids. They didn't play with us very much. It makes me a little sick to see how people obsess so much over every goddamn thing kids do these days, and how structured kids' lives can be (whereas my mother encouraged me to quit some of my activities when I took on a few too many during my freshman year in high school). And people these days seem to fret SO MUCH over whether they're doing the right thing. I can't help but think we need a little more of that "go play outside" mentality these days.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-06 04:58 pm (UTC)I think that we have come to the point in our culture where we have become so risk-averse and zero tolerant to any mistake that many have become bound by the total lack of failure in any way.
Safety nazis abound everywhere. You can't even go to work anymore without your safety goggles and steel-toed boots even if you work in a feather factory.
Nobody is allowed to die even if they are 142 years old. Keep them on life -support forever!
Raising children is now a scientific endeavor. Every move is choreographed and rehearsed and every second is planned from cradle to graduation. It's a sadness really.
Life is messy.
Live it.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-06 05:07 pm (UTC)Heh. I tell people the same thing... "Life is messy... now get in there and find something to wash off!"
Actually, I usually say this about sex.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-06 06:07 pm (UTC)Interesting point about the risk aversion. It isn't just physical safety either -- people are always worrying about self-esteem, which means they actively try to prevent kids from being emotionally hurt rather than helping them learn to deal with the inevitable broken heart that life brings.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-06 06:11 pm (UTC)But it makes the touchy-feely guidance counselors happy so lets be all for it...
;)
no subject
Date: 2006-01-06 09:00 pm (UTC)I read this article and thought "DUH." Kids just seem like so much trouble. And I'm only listening to HAPPY parents. Although to be honest, it seems like a lot of the trouble is caused because one partner is a lot less helpful than the other, and resentment grows from that. I'm pretty sure that' show it would be if John and I had kids, too - but mostly because he would only do it FOR me and not because HE wanted them. WHich is to say, he wouldn't feel an obligation or responsibility to help as much if he didn't want them in the first place. I hypothesize that this is the situation a lot of women get themselves into and then spend the next 18 years complaining about.
None of this makes me wish I'd had kids.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-06 05:16 pm (UTC)there were plenty of miserable times without reward.
wouldn't have missed it for the world. to experience blissful highs, i seem to need the capacity to experience lows. it's almost as if i get the greatest pleasure from challenges, which by definition have high frustration & working levels.
of course, my grad school example only lasted two years, heh.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-06 05:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-06 06:13 pm (UTC)FSU Sociology Dept
Date: 2006-01-07 06:06 pm (UTC)The impression I gathered of social science research -- not contradicted by the article at hand -- was that it was largely conducted by running publicly available data sets through software that looks for corelation between variables. This is all well enough, but one should recall that a study with 100 variables offers 4950 pairs to examine for corelation. If you use the typical 95% level of certainty that means you can expect 247 false results and at the more stringent 99% level you can still expect nearly 50.
If all the results were impartially reported -- if we were as likely to hear, say, that blue-eyed people got slightly better than average gas milage, as we are to hear that parents reported themselves less happy than did the childless -- then these false results should not degrade our opinions of the restults as a whole. But, if we suspect a degree of tendentiousness in the reporting then we may be tempted to attribute the result to cherry-picking by a researcher more interested in confirming an opinion than in evaluating a hypothesis.
I must confess my own bias at this point: it has been my own very-unscientific impression that people with children are happier, on average, than those without. It is the "on average" part that leads to my problems with the study at hand. Questions about frequency of feelings of sadness and depression are as likely to me measures of variability as of central tendancy. If (as I doubt) the census data also asks about feelings of joy and hope then we might be able to get some feeling for the average moods of parents and the childless.
Re: FSU Sociology Dept
Date: 2006-01-09 06:13 am (UTC)Well, as
I do agree with your broader point about cherry picking in sociological research. Such research should be regarded as provisional at best.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-22 03:09 am (UTC)While I'll hardly claim my life is BETTER than it was before I had Sylvia, I had serious issues with depression when I was much younger. Long before I had kids, or even a wife.
A friend of mine and his long-time girlfriend (as in 13 years) never had kids. She killed herself last year because she was depressed about some health issues.
I think it's WAY too broad a set of attributes to try and draw a direct correlation.