Happier People?

I read my news on Yahoo every morning, probably like most people do now.  I think only the elderly read the newspaper or watch television news anymore.  Anyway, I was looking at the news the other day and I read an artical that said recent studies have shown that adults without children are happier than adults who have children.  It further stated that adults with older children are happier than adults with younger children.  I have been pondering this for days now, and I think that they need to look at several things...not just happiness level.  Because I can’t really argue with the whole not as happy statement, and where I can't speak for every parent, for me I am not as happy on the whole.  I was a far "happier" person before I had children, but my life felt a little empty, like something was missing.  After I gave birth to Casey my life began feeling fulfilling, I feel that my life has purpose and I have a reason to move on through it.  So I am thinking that they also need to look at how fulfilling people who don't have children feel their lives are.  I know that there will always be those people who consider children to be too much of a burden to have, but I think that most people with children will say that they feel a greater self-fulfillment than those without children.

                 They said that we parents of younger children are also more stressed, and I will happily get on that band-wagon!  I am more stressed than the people I know who don't have children...but lets be fair, they don't have to worry about the health and well being of another person or persons.  I think the majority of my stress comes from worrying over my children's health and what I should or shouldn't be doing with them.  I worry and lose sleep over everything...Yes, I know children have been growing up on this earth for over 6,000 years and they have all been fine, but these are my children and I am responsible for them to God...I have to return them someday!!  I also think that mother's find things to worry about...we look for the stupidest things to worry about.  For example:  I was recently reading an article about my daughter's health condition that was listing out some new findings, one of which was that they found that females with this condition have an extremely low chance of being able to breast-feed their children.  And here I am one day crying over having to explain that to her someday in the future...although there is some argument as to whether or not I should tell her at all.  This is the stupidest thing in the world to worry about, but here I am in distress over it.  Parents also have to worry about the safety of their children...ALL THE TIME!!  Heaven help us who have stairs in our houses or hard wood flooring or fireplaces...because HOLY CRAP, do you have any idea what kind of trouble a child can get into in a fireplace?!  We have a gate at the top of the stairs, a gate at the bottom of the stairs, a locking clip on the fireplace, at least 12 cupboards in the house are child proofed, and every outside door has 3 locks including one at the top where Grandma practically has to get a chair in order to get outside the house.  I know you are all thinking that this is all a little excessive, but trust me these are all very necessary, otherwise we mothers who find things to worry about will never get any sleep!!  One night about a month or so after we moved into the house I got up at 2 am to pee (I was pregnant at the time) and I noticed that the light downstairs was on, being that only my parents are normally downstairs at 2 am I was curious and went down to see what was going on.  I find my Miss Casey sitting downstairs on the couch watching the news…yeah this is why we have 3 locks on all the outside doors.  So yes, in my opinion we parents of young children are under an astronomical amount of stress, and not just during the day at a job…no, our stress runs 24/7!

I have watched, over the last 5 years, couples younger than us say that they don’t want to have children, even couples in our church.  I have heard all varieties of reasons for this:  “I can’t give up my job to have kids”, “staying home would just drive me crazy”, “kids are too hard”…the list is almost never ending.  I wonder if this is why they are so much happier…because they have decided that they are doing the easier job by going through life without the hope of posterity.  I will someday sit at my childrens’ high school graduation and may be if they graduate from college, and I will cry my happy tears and wonder what those people who never had children have to be happy about now.  Who will look after them in their elder years of life?  Who will come visit them when their partner has died and all their friends are gone?  Is that what a fleeting moment of happiness now brings them in the future?  I think that I will keep my kids and my stress, and I will keep the joyous moments I have in the middle of my stress filled days.  I have a 1 year old who is learning to talk and plays with the dog.  I also have a 4 year old who is getting ready to start Kindergarten and is sitting next to me eating her fruit snacks out of a toy truck she is playing with.  I sit with a smile on my face and enjoy the small quiet moments in between the screaming and fighting, because this is what makes life full and worth living!