In the middle of potty-training...

Caeleb, my oldest at 2 1/2 years, woke up in a bad mood this morning. Probably because we have started potty-training and he now knows that the first thing he has to do when he gets out of bed is go pee. He's not a fan. Though he is so, so good at this bathroom thing -- so far. But between pooping in the pool and peeing on the couch this was a perfect week to run across this article on parenting from New York Magazine.

The articles does a wonderful job of exploring some of the many reasons for parental unhappiness: from changes in how society views childhood to changing notions of gender roles, from the trend towards having children later in life to methodological issues in how we study happiness. The money-quote for me however, came at the end of the article:

"But for many of us, purpose is happiness—particularly those of us who find moment-to-moment happiness a bit elusive to begin with. Martin Seligman, the positive-psychology pioneer who is, famously, not a natural optimist, has always taken the view that happiness is best defined in the ancient Greek sense: leading a productive, purposeful life. And the way we take stock of that life, in the end, isn’t by how much fun we had, but what we did with it. (Seligman has seven children.) 

About twenty years ago, Tom Gilovich, a psychologist at Cornell, made a striking contribution to the field of psychology, showing that people are far more apt to regret things they haven’t done than things they have. In one instance, he followed up on the men and women from the Terman study, the famous collection of high-IQ students from California who were singled out in 1921 for a life of greatness. Not one told him of regretting having children, but ten told him they regretted not having a family.

“I think this boils down to a philosophical question, rather than a psychological one,” says Gilovich. “Should you value moment-to-moment happiness more than retrospective evaluations of your life?” He says he has no answer for this, but the example he offers suggests a bias. He recalls watching TV with his children at three in the morning when they were sick. “I wouldn’t have said it was too fun at the time,” he says. “But now I look back on it and say, ‘Ah, remember the time we used to wake up and watch cartoons?’” The very things that in the moment dampen our moods can later be sources of intense gratification, nostalgia, delight."

Give the whole thing a read though, parent or not. You won't be disappointed.