Ask a parent and they might say... My relationships with my children are
absolutely the most important thing in my life, even more important than my
relationship with my partner. The joy of being parents, I don't know anyone
who says that's easy. But the reward is amazing. We have a lot of gratification from just sort
of raising these like beautiful boys who are doing amazing things every day. But not everyone wants to be a parent. And research suggests those without kids are
actually happier. Parenthood is like a rollercoaster ride of
ups and downs, of highs and lows. And life without children is simply much
more stable. It has much less variation. Meet Amy Blackstone, author of "Childfree by
Choice." She herself has chosen to be childfree. She's also been conducting
research on the subject for the last 12 years. By my mid-thirties, I had three
friends share with me that they were pregnant themselves. I started to really worry that
something was wrong with me. What I was relieved to discover is that
there is no scientific evidence that there's a thing called a maternal instinct that
drives women to become mothers. There are legitimate reasons why being a
parent could make you less happy. First, there's money. The average cost of raising a child from
birth to 17 in the U.S. was estimated to be over $233,000 in 2015. That doesn't include things like a college
education. We have made parenthood so stressful here in
the United States. Meet Jennifer Glass, a demographer and mother
of two, studying the relationship between parenthood and well-being around the world. Generally having kids does not make you
happier. There's a happiness bump right after a
healthy baby is born, and that tends to dissipate over the course of a year. And after that time point, what we see is
gradually diverging happiness between parents and non-parents in the United States. In general, fewer people are choosing to have
children. In 2019, the American birthrate hit a record
low. Today, about 15% of women reach their 40s
without ever having had a kid. For some, the logistical hurdles to becoming
parents can be even greater. Johnny and Seb have been married since 2011
and have two sons by surrogacy. They faced many challenges bringing their
eldest, Vaughn, into the world. It took us a little over three years actually
to successfully get pregnant and have our first son. First time around, it was
estimated that it would cost roughly around like $90,000. The final number was probably close to like
$180,000. That was just the cost of surrogacy. After two surrogates, three egg donors and
four attempts, they successfully brought Vaughn into the world. They welcomed Aston
in December 2019. In the end, it was, of course, not the
easiest to kind of handle all of the emotional issues and the financial issues
that cropped up because of it. By now, we are fairly relaxed because I think
we are fortunate enough to have jobs that allow us to put enough money to the side to
allow for exactly those expenses, including a good education. Raising children, as we have by now
experienced, is connected to a lot of extra burden and you cannot live your own life
anymore. It's thankless! It's all about the children
and you're going to give them the best set of opportunities. You want to see them happy
all the time and it's at the cost of your own individual life. I am personally very excited by the notion of
raising kids who, whether they be gay, straight or anything else, I am just so
ready to support that and help them along and not give them kind of the struggles and
challenges that I had with my parents. I know this is very cliche, but you look into
their faces and they look at you and smile back at you. That offsets so much of the
maybe personal level of happiness reduction that it's kind of like, OK. Donnya and Tam got married in college and
very shortly after graduation, unexpectedly got pregnant. It's like, I have this body, but it's no longer mine. Like I'm pumping and I'm breastfeeding and I
have cramps. It's just the whole ordeal. And so it was really hard to feel that sense
of happiness. So that's where I had to shift and find out
my hobbies, what I like to do and getting in on self-care and just pursuing different
dreams that I had. It was during this period of self-reflection
that Donnya realized her passion for entrepreneurship and started her own
business. That's when I started to become, like happy,
you can say, fulfilled. Having a family has been always my goal since
I was a small kid. So, you know, having kids, having a wife,
that's like fulfillment and having that fulfillment, you know, that's what gives me
happiness. It does get a lot when it comes to paying for
all these things, especially diapers and wipes and clothes. Our kids are giants, they grow out of
everything. And so it's just this constant spending. Being a parent, it's wonderful. And I've grown a lot, like, you know, small
things, like you learn about, you know, be patient, be loving, be caring. It's unmatched, like having a child. Of course, there are those days when things
get rough, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. We love our children. I would never in a million years say that
parents don't adore their children, they don't want the best for their children, and
they don't feel that their children are incredibly important sources of life
satisfaction for them. But that's not the same thing as happiness
and it's not the same thing as financial well-being or physical, good physical health
or good emotional health. Jennifer attributes the financial difficulty
of raising children in the U.S. to modern social structures. People generally live in cities. They have to work away from home for long
hours. They have to find substitute care for their
children. Partnerships are less stable and wages for
many, many people have been stagnant or falling, while the costs of preparing
children for the future labor market have escalated dramatically. Jennifer says Americans frequently mention
this notion that, "If you can't afford kids, you shouldn't have them." It ignores the fact that our labor force does
not provide jobs that pay enough for people between the ages of 18 to 40 to have kids. On top of that, there's the gender wage gap. Women may lose over $400,000 over a 40-year
career compared to their male counterparts. And minority women stand to lose more than
double that. Parents in the U.S. are far less happy than parents in European
nations that have all kinds of supports for parents. It really does take a village to
raise a child. And if we care about children and their
future and their role in our society, I think we have to think of the rearing and the
caring for children as a collective activity. And that's what many, frankly, socialist
countries do that we fall down on. We think of parenthood as this very
individual thing that parents themselves are entirely responsible for. And the research shows that that contributes
to a lack of happiness for them. With the financial and emotional challenges
American parents face, it's understandable why some folks are childfree by choice. Do I ever feel like I'm missing out by not
having kids? The short answer to that question is no. But I do recognize that there are some
things that I am missing out on. And the same is true in that I didn't choose
a career as an astronaut. Parenthood is like a rollercoaster ride of
ups and downs, of highs and lows, and life without children is simply much more stable. It has much less variation. You know, I got to get up late because I
don't have anyone I have to take care of in the morning and I'm going to eat when I'm
hungry as opposed to eating on a schedule with someone else in my house there, all
those little small things that I think contribute to our daily sense of
satisfaction and happiness that make a difference. Since child-rearing is so pricey
in the U.S., you might think that a childfree couple has heaps of savings. If you look at how we spend our money, we
donate more money to causes that matter to us than parents do. So it's not that we're only spending our
money on ourselves. And because we're not spending our money
rearing kids, many of us are able to sock away money for retirement in a way that
parents may not be able to do. I know that's definitely true for me and my
husband. That's a huge priority for us. My financial well-being would be better off
if I had not had children. And that's true of all childfree people in
the United States. They are financially better off. The question of happiness and parenthood
really comes down to a question about autonomy and choice. When people are given
the autonomy and the choice to make the choice that's right for them and when
they're supported in that choice, that they are fulfilled and happy.
