Why Parents Hate Parenting

Annette Lareau, the sociologist who coined the term “concerted cultivation” to describe the aggressive nurturing of economically advantaged children, puts it this way: “Middle-class parents spend much more time talking to children, answering questions with questions, and treating each child’s thought as a special contribution. And this is very tiring work.”

3 responses
Interesting article. Certainly worth a read. And some valuable information worth absorbing. Three things that caught my attention:

1. “...Americans are a little too complicated about everything.”
2. "...the one superbly designed study that said, unambiguously, that having kids makes you happier was done with Danish subjects."
3. "Should you value moment-to-moment happiness more than retrospective evaluations of your life?”

Two others worth commenting on...
1. “When you pause to think what children mean to you, of course they make you feel good. The problem is, 95 percent of the time, you’re not thinking about what they mean to you. You’re thinking that you have to take them to piano lessons..." This suggests that parents are giving them too much. Kids are too busy, too structured. All lives in the family need down time together so that 95 percent of the time parents are thinking about how much their kids mean to them and not about getting to piano lessons! Life-style change required!
2. These studies are tough to absorb and accept for many reasons because there are so many variables not controlled in them. I realize that's the nature of these types of studies, but it still makes it difficult. It seems to me that the only real comparison, one that can't be done, is to have parents live two lives, one with kids and one without. Guaranteed the definition of happiness changes. And the spectrum of emotion increases for the parents vs. the non-parents. The lows are lower, but the rewards are greater, as well. There might be a million reasons not to have kids based on external circumstance. The one reason to have kids outweighs them all. Children complete a part of you that you didn't even realize was missing until they came into your life.

I guess I have something to look forward to.
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