Time Magazine Inappropriateness

There was an essay on the back page of last week's Time magazine that was, in my opinion, extremely misguided and inappropriate for the Father's Day holiday. The author is Daniel Gilbert, who is a Harvard psychologist. The premise of the essay is that fatherhood does not actually make you happy...I think that this man could use some therapy himself. Although the man is an acclaimed professor, he obviously has some unresolved issues. Ironically, the man has no children (or even pets) so I am not sure how he can write as an authority on the issue of fatherhood.

He begins his argument with the following paragrah:

Psychologists have measured how people feel as they go about their daily activities, and have found that people are less happy when they are interacting with their children than when they are eating, exercising, shopping or watching television. Indeed, an act of parenting makes most people about as happy as an act of housework. Economists have modeled the impact of many variables on people's overall happiness and have consistently found that children have only a small impact. A small negative impact.

Here is one of the flaws that commonly occurs with op-ed pieces written by scientists, especially those who are trying to use generic data to support their point of view. Without all of the information in the studies to which he is referring, we have no way of drawing conclusions for ourselves. What kind of interaction with their children? Is this when they come home and find that their child has shaved the dog and flushed mommy's jewlery down the toilet? Of COURSE I'd be unhappy interacting with my child at this point in time.

He then uses three arguments to support his point (I'm paraprhasing):

1. We pay more for things that make us happy, so since children are expensive, we assume that they MUST make us happy
2. Good memories are far more powerful and long-lasting than bad memories, so we fool ourselves into believing that we're happy by selectively remembering the good memories
3. Children are like heroin, when you're involved with children, all other things that previously made you happy fall by the wayside

Wow, this guy is OUT there. I could use these arguments in the absolute opposite way just as easily. First, people pay bucketloads to play golf, and I know MANY men and women who are absolutely MISERABLE when play, but they do it anyway. In addition, mortgages are expensive, but no one considers that they make us happy. It's just a necessary evil for home ownership. Second, I witnessed a house fire several years ago, and watched the firemen pull the lifeless bodies of five children out of the burning house. I can still see their bodies, I can still remember the smell of the fire, and the firemen who literally collapsed with grief when they completed their task. I'm not saying that this overpowers my every day thoughts, and I do have hundreds of good memories that fill my subconscious. But, my point is that unless you're very good at selective memory, you don't remember the good times at the expense of the bad. Third, yes, we less frequently participate in activities that we had previously done when we were single, but we have also increased our participation in in events we had never formerly taken part in.

Yes, our lives have changed, and we'll never get back to who we were when we were swinging singles or newly married. But frankly, I wouldn't want to go back to those times. Life and happiness is about evolving, experiencing new things, and finding joy in everything we can. As trying as our child can be, (and I have to add that he was VERY trying yesterday), I think that I can speak for both my husband and myself when I say that he is the light of our lives and that he truly DOES make us happy. Dr. Gilbert is a very bitter and misguided man who needs to experience fatherhood before he again attempts to write with authority on the subject.