Posted on 12/05/2019 2:50:53 PM PST by Morgana
We’ve reached a barking point in American history. (Yeah, I’m sorry for that one.) A few years ago, for the first time ever, the number of dogs in this country surpassed the number of children under eighteen. According to Statista, there are 90 million dogs in America today, up from just 68 million in 2000. And a higher percentage of American households own dogs than ever before.
By contrast, there are just over 73 million children. That still sounds like a lot, but as a percentage of the population, children have never been rarer. In 1960, for instance, over one-in-three Americans were under the age of eighteen. According to government projections, by 2050, children will make up less than a quarter of the population.
As you’d expect, this drop in birth rates corresponds to a drop in marriages. What you might not expect is that it also corresponds to a drop in happiness. The General Social Survey in 2018 found that Americans today are more miserable than they’ve been in decades. And replacing family with dogs isn’t reversing the trend.
Of course, what we increasingly hear today, in print and on television and movies, is that what will make us happy is the freedom that can come only from singleness and childlessness. Writing in The Atlantic recently, Mandy Len Catron bemoaned “What You Lose When You Gain a Spouse.” According to her, family life is isolating and unfair to outsiders, because spouses give most of their attention to each other and to their kids. When people get married, she writes, they retreat into “socially neglectful cocoons.”
London School of Economics professor Paul Dolan goes even further in his book, “Happily Ever After.” He says the only reason married people report being happier on average than singles is that they’re lying to save face. The book was corrected, by the way, when this claim turned out to be unsupportable.
In reality, the statistics are clear: Married people really are happier than those who are unmarried—by an average of ten percentage points. But is that because marriage makes people happy, or because happy people are more likely to get married?
A new paper by the Institute for Family Studies offers a surprising answer. Instead of looking at the effect of family itself, author James McQuivey decided to look at the effect of the desire for family. He asked over a thousand men and women how much they value having an emotionally intimate relationship, sexual faithfulness, and children. He then combined these answers into a single measure, which we might call a desire for a traditional, nuclear family.
He discovered that scoring higher on this measure predicted greater happiness and overall life satisfaction—regardless of whether or not the respondent was actually married or had kids!
It’s one of those results that makes you do a double take. After all, you’d expect people who want a family life and haven’t found it to be dissatisfied. But on average, they’re not. As McQuivey says, “[i]f you merely have the desire to pair bond and procreate, you are already happier than average…”
Act on that desire, he adds, and your happiness jumps, while your life satisfaction (a separate metric) “practically leaps off the chart.”
In other words, contrary to the thesis that getting married and having kids dooms you to misery, committing to a family is one of the most effective means ever created to train people to care for others. And a cornerstone of psychology is that other-centeredness brings human beings happiness.
Look, dogs are great and all, but we were made for communion with other people. The family bond is so central to our design that merely pursuing it leads to greater happiness.
For a society like ours, one in the midst of family and happiness shortages, the solution is obvious, but it won’t be found at the dog park.
They won’t take my money and home away from me.
Its sad how its turned out, i don’t like it this way, but i don’t shy away from unpleasant truths and reality.
I know a childless couple who battled over their dog in divorce court. The judge divided custody. The dog traded homes every other week.
That sounds an awful lot like one of the "kill all men" raging feminists.
Why are you putting men in quotation marks?
Can we do the same with women? What “woman” thinks it’s okay to take full advantage of laws and try to ruin a man’s life because they break up/divorce?
I agree. This whole "long term boyfriend" thing bugs me. Seriously. What's the point. If you're with someone for a full year and you haven't called the cops on each other, what are you waiting for?
Grow up! My wife and I knew we wanted to marry each other the moment we met and so we quickly did. Four kids and 14 years later, we couldn't be happier. "Long term boyfriends/girlfriends" are just wasting time and it's time that's going to pass quickly.
Feminazis have made marriage a hazardous position for men. The Left has successfully destroyed marriage in this country.
Top baby name in the U.S. is now Mohammed, so some tribes are having babies. Heads up!
I second this wholeheartedly.
“I’m unfit to be a parent. I hate children and avoid them if at all possible.”
I love children and enjoy being around some of them — nieces, nephews, etc. But I always knew I’d be unfit to be a parent, so am not a parent by choice.
“That sounds an awful lot like one of the “kill all men” raging feminists.”
No, it doesn’t. I’m a man, retired Navy, a husband, father, and grandfather. It sounds like a conservative man saying that males should man up and act right.
“Fur babies” — my pet peeve.
And if they are all alone in their later years it is nobody at all’s obligation to take care of them. Children are God’s retirement plan.
People who never tried to enroll get the retirement they earned.
“”Long term boyfriends/girlfriends” are just wasting time and it’s time that’s going to pass quickly.”
Dr. Laura always used to say that a woman in that situation is just acting as the man’s “unpaid whore.”
“All rich uncles out there offer do the same”
Already on it. My 2 youngest nieces will get a nice payout if/when they are married and have kids.
I like the 3rd kid trigger.
Who do you think is behind the feminist movement? Who do you think drove those women to do what they do? The answer might shock you, and them!
If you dont like MGTOW then remove the stuff making guy chose it.
That shaming BS isnt going to cut it while the same people just ignore that stuff.
From what I see in this densely populated lower income city is much the same. That of working Hispanics, mostly Central Americans who have children, though not a lot, nor are necessarily married, yet who affirm faith in "Christo," and esteem family, and have their G-parents and relatives visit, and overall make more of community, and are more content with less, than their "yuppie" new neighbors.
Who seldom have kids, or interact much with the others in the neighborhood, and typically display an aversion to Christian faith.
Both they both vote overall liberal, the former not because of agreement with social values (as with the latter), but the welfare assistance and lack of real commitment to the Lord Jesus and of discernment.
1. She is the last person to tell anyone that.
2. No girlfriend is “unpaid”.
“Not a problem with muzzies and mexicans.”
Because the American tax payer is paying for their kids.
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