The point of parenthood is to take us out of ourselves
Graham is the editor-in-Chief of Seen & Unseen, and a former Bishop of Kensington.
A recent research project told us that apparently, having children doesn’t make you happier. The study, reported in the journal Evolutionary Psychology looked for signs of increased ‘higher hedonic wellbeing’ or ‘greater life satisfaction’ in people with children and didn’t find them – or at least none that you couldn’t find in childless people. It’s a fairly obscure piece of research with a relatively small sample of 5,500 people, from a little-known source, the University of Nicosia in Cyprus, but it touched a nerve, with comments in The Times, The Daily Mail and elsewhere. Overall, it seems, whether you’re a parent or not doesn’t make much difference to your levels of contentment in life.
Weighing the ledger of pleasure and pain in parenthood, bringing small humans into the world and helping them grow, is a tricky business. There are the moments of laughter and sheer delight, first words and smiles, watching them learn about the world around them. Yet alongside those, there are the sleepless nights, the baby crying for hours when the parents are dog-tired and desperately want to crawl back under the duvet. Anxiety is never far away as kids get sick, have accidents, start new schools, navigate the jungle of the playground, try to make friends. Parents of teenagers have to try to build a new relationship with their kids as they emerge from childhood into adulthood with all the self-doubt and confusion that brings. Ask about happiness while holding a screaming child at three AM and you might get a different answer from gazing at the rosy-cheeked angel in the buggy the next morning.
But – is this the right question? Why should we think that children will make us happy? Is that why we have children? Do we bring offspring into the world because we think they will ‘bring us greater life satisfaction’? The assumption of the research project, or at least the reports upon it, was a sense of disappointment that children who were meant to bring us happiness failed to do so.
Because the other thing you notice when you watch adults bring children into the world is the level of self-sacrifice and devotion that it requires. Becoming a parent means being devoted almost entirely to the well-being of someone other than yourself. As we grow up from childhood into adolescence and early adulthood, inevitably we spend a lot of time thinking about ourselves. We wonder who we are, what we’re good at, what we look like, who likes us or doesn’t, what we want to do with our lives, how to extract some enjoyment out of our time, building friendships, careers, homes and so on. When a small baby comes into your life, your focus entirely changes. You have to do everything you can to keep this little one alive, to make sure it’s fed, clothed, cleaned, looked after and generally have a decent start in life. And there’s no let-up. No off switch. This is a 24-7, 12-months-a-year commitment.
We don’t become parents to make us happy, as if a child is a kind of accessory, like an extension to the house, an extra-large TV or a subscription to a health spa, which we expect will bring an extra level of positive emotion and contentment to our lives. Or if we are thinking of it in those terms, we’ve entirely missed the point.
The point of parenthood is to take us out of ourselves, to tell us that our own happiness is not the final and most important thing in the world. It teaches the lesson that love – to be able to give yourself entirely for the well-being of someone other than yourself – is what we were made for. Viewed this way, the sleepless nights, the anxious waits by the hospital bed, the worries as they head off for school, are not negative entries in the balance sheet of ‘hedonic wellbeing’ – they are the point. They are the signs, the expression, of love itself.
Becoming a parent is an opportunity for a radical de-centring of our selves. It is to learn that our own happiness is not ultimately what matters. It is a kind of dress rehearsal for a religious conversion, which involves learning in a different way that I am not the centre of the universe and I need to move aside, to concede that place to God, who is.
Of course, parenthood is not the only way to learn this. There are all kinds of ways those without children can learn this same lesson of the de-centring of the self. Things like deep friendships, committing to serve those less fortunate can do it as well. And not all parents learn it – some remain just as stubbornly selfish as before.
Weighing up the pleasures and the pain of parenthood to ask if it’s worth it in the end is to miss the point, because learning to love, to sacrifice your own wellbeing for the sake of another human being, is the beginning of wisdom. To ask whether parenthood makes you happy is just the wrong question. To ask how it might make you wise and a little less self-centred – now that’s a much more interesting one.
Brislington Community News 