Is One Kid Enough?

[archerships]

Is One Kid Enough?
By: Marina Krakovsky
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20050222-000001.html

Conventional wisdom dictates that people become parents because children bring joy. But do they really? For scientists studying the subject, simply correlating parenthood and happiness can't answer this question, since happy people might be more likely to have kids to begin with. But a recent study that compared happiness levels in adult identical twins—some of whom are parents and some who aren't—may be getting to the bottom of the issue.

The study, headed by sociology professor Hans-Peter Kohler of the University of Pennsylvania, found that people with children are, in fact, happier than those without children. But such happiness gains differ for mothers and fathers.

In comparing identical twins, Kohler found that mothers with one child are about 20 percent happier than their childless counterparts; and while fathers' happiness gains are smaller, men enjoy an almost 75 percent larger happiness boost from a firstborn son than from a firstborn daughter. The first child's sex doesn't matter to mothers, perhaps because women are better than men at enjoying the company of both girls and boys, Kohler speculates.

Interestingly, second and third children don't add to parents' happiness at all. In fact, these additional children seem to make mothers less happy than mothers with only one child—though still happier than women with no children.

"If you want to maximize your subjective well-being, you should stop at one child," concludes Kohler, adding that people probably have additional children either for the benefit of the firstborn or because they reason that if the first child made them happy, the second one will, too.

I'm surprised that a firstborn son makes the father so much happier than a firstborn daughter. Personally, if I ever have a child, I would prefer to have a daughter.

Comments

[mindwalker.livejournal.com]

I wonder if any studies have been done that show that people have children because sex brings joy ;)

BTW, if I ever had children, I think I'd prefer a daughter as well.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Well, prior to widespread contraception, I've no doubt that the joy of sex was a primary reason for children. But nowadays? It would be interesting to know how many kids are the results of "accidents".

[evillinn.livejournal.com]

Huh. Thats interesting.
I wonder how large the study is, though? I'd love to see information on a larger study, and one possibly not restricted to twins. I don't think it'd really be that hard to design a study, but it'd have to be a fairly long running one.

I'm not surprised at all by the first born son thing. There is still a strong trend for that whole "carry on the family name" desire in most of America.

Interestingly, I've always sort of wanted a son. I think I'd be a better parent to a boy than to a girl.

[chutzpahgirl.livejournal.com]

I only scanned the paper, but I think 34,944 people is the right answer. And they were all Danish.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Why do you think you'd be a better parent to a boy than a girl?

[evillinn.livejournal.com]

Well, mostly its a sort of gut feeling, honestly.
It does have a little bit to do with some broader feelings about how I connect with men/boys vs. women/girls, but that is a whole set of subtleties that I'm too tired to get into now. ;) It has something to do with worrying that I'd put more pressure on a little girl, as well as the feeling that I've always understood men/boys better. All of that said, I know damn well that none of my previous experience with people could possibly reflect how I would relate to my child, so I'm probably full of hot air.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Thanks! When I examine why I'd prefer a girl, I think it's because I think that guys like me are relatively common, whereas girls like me seem relatively rare. ( Of course, there's no guarantee that either a boy or girl would be anything like me, in either temperament or interests. )

[tinymammoth.livejournal.com]

Stress at time of conception influences gender of the child:
http://www.salon.com/health/log/1999/08/31/gender/index.html

So I'm skeptical of trying to measure the happiness produced by the child's gender when the child's gender might be a product of the pre-existing levels of existing unhappiness or happiness.

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

it was only for fathers.

[tinymammoth.livejournal.com]

"Their report concludes that "psychological stress related to severe life events may alter the sex ratio through changes in sexual activity, changes in hormones around the time of conception, reduced semen quality, or an increased rate of early male abortion.""

Changes in sexual activity and changes in semen quality could be a result of the father being stressed, and this could also lead to the father having a girl. So I think it's plausible that the apparent effect could be partially explained by this factor rather than a preference for sons.

[madbard.livejournal.com]

Reasons This Study Is Stupid:

1) The use of twins does not in any way account for ideological, cultural, and experientially-derived differences in levels of happiness. If one twin is childless and also just was fired from his or her job, the latter factor may have a far more profound effect on happiness than the existence of children.

2) Clinical psychology has no rigorous or meaningful way of measuring happiness, let alone countering the confounding factors involved in such a measurement.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

1) Have you read the paper yet? They do try to control for a number of factors (socioeconomic factors, eduction, health status). Ideological and cultural factors are controlled to some extent because a) as twins, they grow up in the same environment, and thus, probably share the similar religious and ideological beliefs b) all the twins are from Denmark, which is fairly homogeneous culturally speaking.

2) Asking someone "How satisfied are you with your life, all things considered?" may not be the most rigorous way to measure happiness, but what would you have them do instead?

[madbard.livejournal.com]

It seriously doesn't matter. This is one of the most complex, unpredictable, and unquantifiable aspect of human mental life. Psychology as a field does not have anywhere near its shit together to be able to measure something like this. The mere fact that an experimenter would expect two twins growing up in a similar culture to be psychologically comparable tells me that s/he is working from a Skinnerian backwater, philosophically speaking.

Moreover, if the twins really did grow up in such a narrow environment, any results of this experiment would be inapplicable to the rest of the world.

> Asking someone "How satisfied are you with your life, all things >considered?" may not be the most rigorous way to measure happiness, but >what would you have them do instead?

Human happiness can not be meaningfully experimentally measured, in the sense of a rigorous survey suitable for a scientific conclusion. I've taken plenty of psychology research methodology courses, but anyone with a casual understanding of psychology could tell you the same thing. I might trust a measurement of low-level contentment - hunger, drive satiation or so on - provided they carefully controlled for experimenter effect and other confounding factors. But as for higher-level happiness in the broadest sense of the word, I wouldn't trust many psychologists to be able to define the term, let alone quantify it rigorously.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the feedback! So would it be fair to say that you believe that that none of the psych research into the causes of human happiness has any scientific merit? If not, who do you think has done work good enough to merit reading their papers?

[madbard.livejournal.com]

I think individual psychologists may have great insight about human happiness, and may be sources of good advice in one-on-one therapy or personal/anecdotal monographs. I just don't think that clinical psychology as a discipline has the quantitative tools or philosophical grounding to be able to make authoritative rigorous generalizations on the subject.

My objections are most strongly motivated by articles that guise personal value-judgments with the veneer of science. For example, "Research shows that people with children are happier."

[madbard.livejournal.com]

(I meant to precede with previous with "BTW, to clarify...")

[madbard.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the pointer. I'll check it out.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Yes, differences in initial levels of happiness could influence the number of children. How do you think that can be controlled? As far as I can see, that could only be controlled by matching for happiness prior to having children.

[pooka.livejournal.com]

I wanted a boy.

DG wanted a girl. He got two.

Kinda wondering how much fun he thinks it is now that one's a teenager. :D

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Heh. Anything about raising daughters that took you by surprise?

[pooka.livejournal.com]

Short of everything?

I think it's the TWO that's the shocker, because they couldn't possibly be more different from each other.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I would be happy with all girls.

well, maybe

[ch.livejournal.com]

if economics is the dismal science, what then is psychology?

still, those are an interesting set of hypotheses.

as a new father i can relate that i was extremely anxious about having a kid and concerned what it would be like. but the experience has been amazing so far. my son is made of awesome; he's so much fun and so delightful. and, for the record, prior to the birth (we didn't know the sex ahead of time), i said i preferred we have a girl. now i can't even imagine that.

[seanlynch.livejournal.com]

Back before the "zero population growth" movement (i.e. before I was born) I might have considered having only one child, but now I feel that I need at least five, because any less than that and I'd feel like I was giving in to their commie propaganda.

[kenshi.livejournal.com]

Setting aside cultural biases for a moment, there is a reasonable genetic explanation for a father to experience a greater increase in happiness for the birth of a son. The Y chromosome is passed down entirely from father to son. With a daughter, all Y-chromosome genes are lost. One may speculate that a Y-chromosome-linked gene related to a preference for raising sons among males might gain some traction evolutionarily.

[h-postmortemus.livejournal.com]

I think trying to scientifically evaluate or measure happiness is pretty fucking stupid. But hey, more power to them...