children and happiness
Meghan is reflecting on Will Wilkinson’s reflection on a Newsweek article on how having children doesn’t make people happy. The assumption all around seems to be that this tells us something about the costs of having children. But shouldn’t we also consider the possibility that this tells us something about the costs of monitoring our own happiness? Or the costs of having defined happiness in such a way — and having organized the structure of our lives around the pursuit of happiness in such a way — that having children compromises it? It’s interesting that we’re more willing to do a cost-benefit analysis of having children than to do a cost-benefit analysis of eagerly participating in a culture of narcissism.
Here’s my thought for the day. In 1991 Rolling Stone interviewed Bob Dylan on the occasion of his 50th birthday, and at one point the interviewer asked Dylan if he was happy. This seemed to puzzle him a bit, and he was silent for a minute. Then he said, “You know,” he said, “these are yuppie words, happiness and unhappiness. It’s not happiness or unhappiness, it’s either blessed or unblessed. As the Bible says, ‘Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly.’”
And on that note, let me congratulate our Scene colleague and technical virtuoso Matt Frost: Beatrix, Eliza, and Ignatius have arrived!
Alan, You’re absolutely right. It is easy to continue in one’s prejudices as long as one is emphatically unwilling to critically examine them.
You do realize that to perform a cost-benefit analysis of participating in “a culture of narcissism,” whatever that is, is logically equivalent to doing a cost-benefit analysis of whatever it is you think not participating in one involves. But you seem quite opposed doing THAT cost-benefit analysis, because it you seem to have already performed a cost benefit analysis of performing that cost benefit analysis. You seem to have concluded that even to CONSIDER the costs of having children is to have lost something for which there is no sufficient compensation. But have you actually done this analysis honestly? Or have you just proposed it as a question-begging rhetorical flourish?
Why you gotta front?
And congratulations to Matt and Mrs. Matt! I’m sure you’ll beat the odds!
— Will Wilkinson · Jul 18, 04:03 PM · #
Will, in general, I am all in favor of question-begging rhetorical flourishes — in fact I consider them my speciality — but in this case I don’t think that’s what I’m doing. You write, “You seem to have concluded that even to CONSIDER the costs of having children is to have lost something for which there is no sufficient compensation,” but I don’t see how you infer that from my post. My argument is simply that if we’re going to note that two values are in conflict, we probably ought to interrogate both of those values, not just one. I’m not questioning the value of having children in this particular post because there seem to be plenty of people doing that already. Surely it’s okay to pull in the other direction? — unless you think that a commitment to one’s own personal happiness is so transcendent a value that it’s not negotiable, which (as far as I can tell) you don’t think.
— Alan Jacobs · Jul 18, 04:22 PM · #
“My argument is simply that if we’re going to note that two values are in conflict, we probably ought to interrogate both of those values, not just one.”
Agreed. But I sort of worry that if I could show you that the benefits of a “culture of narcissism” (is the what not having kids throws you into?) outweighed its costs, we’d end up having a further disagreement about what really counts as a “benefit” and a “cost”. And so it goes.
Seriously, what do you have in mind by “culture of narcissism”? I guess I need to know what it is in order know whether or not I think it’s on balance a good or bad thing.
— Will Wilkinson · Jul 18, 05:01 PM · #
“You seem to have concluded that even to CONSIDER the costs of having children is to have lost something for which there is no sufficient compensation.”
I don’t think Mr. Jacobs should shy away from that inference, but rather from the way it is framed – as a matter of “compensation” – which would be a way of giving in to Mr. Wilkinson’s (apparent) description of his “worldview” as a matter of a redoubled cost-benefit analysis.
That’s why the Dylan quote is effective – it points to a different source of, for lack of a better term, human motivation, human decision; and it isn’t necessarily Christian.
I’m pretty sure Mr. Wilkinson could prove beyond any doubt the benefits (as opposed to costs) of a “culture of narcissism,” but I’m equally sure such proof wouldn’t have any persuasive power over whether I (and, I’m sure, many others) decide to marry and have children – or how I’ll feel about them once I have them.
— Tony · Jul 18, 05:55 PM · #
I sort of worry that if I could show you that the benefits of a “culture of narcissism” (is the what not having kids throws you into?) outweighed its costs, we’d end up having a further disagreement about what really counts as a “benefit” and a “cost”. And so it goes.
Could be, though I think it would be worth talking about. There are different sorts of costs and different sorts of benefits — think of Dylan’s distinction between being “happy” and being “blessed” (and you’re right, Tony, this was from Dylan’s reconnecting-with-Judaism phase) — and getting some clarity on what those are could help a discussion like this.
Seriously, what do you have in mind by “culture of narcissism”? I guess I need to know what it is in order know whether or not I think it’s on balance a good or bad thing.
Sorry, that was shorthand — an occupational hazard of blogging. I meant to refer to Christopher Lasch’s 1979 book of that title.
— Alan Jacobs · Jul 18, 06:02 PM · #
You can make the point more simply:
“Is it more important to have children or to be happy?”
(Don’t get sidetracked on defining “happy.” Use the Newsweek article’s definition as “emotional well-being” because if you say “true happiness is more than emotional well-being” you’re just having a more indirect version of the same debate about what is genuinely important/ good/ worthwhile.)
— Michael Straight · Jul 18, 06:06 PM · #
Michael, is the meaning of the phrase “emotional well-being” any more self-evident that the meaning of the word “happiness”?
— Alan Jacobs · Jul 18, 06:08 PM · #
Isn’t there a much simpler problem with this finding in that people who have children mostly want them and people don’t have them mostly don’t want them?
— Brendan · Jul 18, 06:59 PM · #
When the founding fathers referred to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” I find it hard to believe that they didn’t foresee having a home and family (including) children, as part of the picture.
— Julana · Jul 18, 08:15 PM · #
You know, I’ve held the same view as Megan for many years which is why I haven’t married. I didn’t want my partners to get a raw deal. Funny thing though, my partners always seemed to think that by not marrying I was getting a great deal and they were getting a raw deal. I guess either way, if your a man, a lot of women will construe your position as the better one, which goes to another belief I have. Most speculation about gender advantages and disadvantages is self-serving twaddle. The human capacity for self-deception, regardless of gender, is nearly infinite.
— Kevin · Jul 18, 10:00 PM · #
Once again, Wilkinson privileges his own framework for interpreting every conceivable issue, and then criticizes others when they refuse to do so. Not everyone in the world thinks that life is nothing more than an exercise in capital accumulation, and not everyone thinks that every aspect of human existence is quantifiable and translatable into currency.
— Freddie · Jul 18, 10:25 PM · #
Fiddle de de. I signed onto this site because I was told it was the best of neo-con thinking these days. Is the movement THIS dead? Kriky. This is embarrassing.
— Ryan Lanham · Jul 18, 10:29 PM · #
I signed onto this site because I was told it was the best of neo-con thinking these days.
Like Rick Blaine, who came to Casablanca for the waters, you were misinformed.
Is the movement THIS dead?
Even deader. Trust me, I should know.
— Alan Jacobs · Jul 18, 10:37 PM · #
If Will is promising not to reproduce, then I wish him all the happiness in the world.
— Steve Sailer · Jul 18, 10:45 PM · #
Whenever I encounter an uncommon name, I always wonder how you shorten it. So what do you call an Ignatius? Iggy?
— Freddie · Jul 18, 10:56 PM · #
Well, I thought it was a lovely post, speaking as a failed narcissist. I might confess envy of both successful narcissists and those unburdened with the malady.
I will happily (!) speak of my kids, who don’t seem to me to suffer so, but all three of them seem as well to have decided against kids. The youngest is 31 and no sign whatever of likelihood. To the degree illuminating sentiments have been expressed, it’s a matter of the world going to hell and not wanting to bind a child to suffering it. They may turn out to have a point.
I suspect the lodestone of Lasch’s book is telling; I would expect a Wheaton academic to use it as a reference as I would not expect of a Cato fellow. It crystallizes a divergence in life-and-world-views.
those Frost kids are huge! Lady Frost is a mighty woman. Congratulations in triplicate!
And love the Dylan quote. Couldn’t be expressed more perfectly.
(The two words, happy and blessed, seem interchangeable in English translations of the Bible.)
— felix culpa · Jul 18, 10:57 PM · #
Alan,
Easily one of the best posts ever on this blog and I second Mr. Sailer’s question.
— Roy Bland · Jul 18, 11:02 PM · #
Having had much sport with this subject already, let me ask: Has anyone attempted to force Will Wilkinson to become a father? Or to compel Megan McArdle to marry? So long as Will is free to remain childless and McArdle is at liberty to spurn proposals of marriage, what is their cause for complaint? Whence this suggestion that “society” is attempting to impose anything on them?
— Robert Stacy McCain · Jul 18, 11:02 PM · #
Kerry Howley took me to be saying something in this post that I didn’t say, and perhaps Will W. did too, so I’ve made a clarifying comment over at her place.
— Alan Jacobs · Jul 18, 11:47 PM · #
Hi everyone. Thanks for the kind words.
Will, after conceiving spontaneous triplets, carrying them to term, and delivering them at the sizes cited, I can safely say that beating the odds is Mrs. Frost’s specialty.
Gotta go.
— Matt Frost · Jul 19, 02:30 AM · #
Michael, is the meaning of the phrase “emotional well-being” any more self-evident that the meaning of the word “happiness”?
It’s at least a great deal more restricted to the domain of feelings, whereas people from Aristotle to Alasdair MacIntyre equate true happiness with a life lived in fulfillment of one’s telos, which would make the question a tautology: “Which is more important, having children or doing that which is most important?”
Also, I believe the researchers the original article references made a stab at some measurable definition of emotional well-being. Even if you just ask people, “Do you feel happy all the time/ most of the time/ some of the time/ seldom/ never?” you’d get something. And you could ask “Is it worth it to have children if, on average, people with children report feeling happy less often than people who don’t have children?”
— Michael Straight · Jul 21, 03:25 PM · #
The thread seems dead, but what the hell. I think this is the second time I’ve seen Freddie say something like this:
“Once again, Wilkinson privileges his own framework for interpreting every conceivable issue, and then criticizes others when they refuse to do so. Not everyone in the world thinks that life is nothing more than an exercise in capital accumulation, and not everyone thinks that every aspect of human existence is quantifiable and translatable into currency.”
I find the idea that I think “that life is nothing more than an exercise in capital accumulation, and not everyone thinks that every aspect of human existence is quantifiable and translatable into currency” really really really really weird and certainly unsupported by my writing. For example, I wrote a very long paper about happiness for Cato. In it I argue, among other things, that money isn’t all that matters, that happiness isn’t all that matters, that values are likely plural and incommensurable, that we have not succeeded in quantifying happiness, but we should keep trying. Is it that last bit that throws you?
And yes, I think the opinions I accept are more worthy than the opinions I reject. Am I special?
— Will Wilkinson · Jul 22, 01:57 AM · #
Congratulations. Thanks for sharing those wonderful photos.
— Joules · Jul 22, 04:30 AM · #
I’m not thrown by anything, though I’m probably assuming too much from what I’ve read of yours. It might be the case with me (as you’ve suggested is the case with Alan Jacobs and Noah Millman) that I haven’t read enough of your work to be able to fairly respond. But in the writing of yours which I’ve consumed, you demonstrate nearly unbroken fidelity to the a kind of pinched vision of human life that, to me, over-prioritizes money. I just think that you privilege capital acquisition over almost anything else, but again, I may not be drawing from a representative sample. And when I say that I don’t like the framework you seem to enforce, it’s not that I expect you not to argue what you believe. It’s that I think you act as though there is only one mature way to interpret the world, one which is capital-dominant, and you don’t seem to concede that framing the world that way is itself a mode of argument.
— Freddie · Jul 22, 03:03 PM · #
Freddie,
I can see where you get the impression of my over-emphasizing money. I’m pushing back hard against what I see to be an extremely pernicious and inhumane error. It is my considered view that the value of wealth to almost all the manifold aspects of well-being is badly underestimated, and that the massive humanitarian consequences of economic growth and higher incomes are not sufficiently recognized (indeed, they are vehemently denied by what I think are ill-informed people). Money is a mere means. But it is an effective means for the achievement of many of the most important things in life — health, longevity, the fulfillment of potential, the opportunity to be creative, happiness. There is, in my view, no single thing that would increase human well-being more than rapidly increasing average incomes. The easiest way to do this is by massively liberalizing immigration restrictions in rich countries. The second easiest thing to do is to increase rates of economic growth in countries with already sound institutions through better regulatory and fiscal policy. I take these to be moral imperatives not because I fetishize money and growth for their own sake, but because alleviating suffering and promoting human flourishing are important to me, and there are no alternatives that promise a fraction of the humanitarian payoff.
You’re talking to a guy who chose to be an art major, then went to grad school in philosophy, and now works at a think tank. I think of my luxury to dabble in painting, philosophy, and politics, and to not need to care much about money, as a side-effect of the massive wealth of the society in which I live. I want others to have similar advantages. Forgive me if rich people who don’t think money matters drive me up a wall.
— Will Wilkinson · Jul 22, 03:23 PM · #
Alan, given how you define a culture of narcissism at Kerry’s place, as one where we all eagerly participate in monitoring ourselves, and specifically monitoring our own happiness, I don’t see how much these results have to do with a culture of narcissism. The results themselves do not specify how much time the people spend thinking about their happiness, nor do they show a correlation between that consideration and how they view their choice (or non-choice) to have children—though that is simply because they didn’t address that question.
Is the culture of narcissism as simple as placing a positive value on happiness?
— Justin · Jul 23, 05:06 AM · #