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.
Vladimir Lenin.
Purpose was to take women out of the home.
BTW The founders of NARAL
Bernard Nathanson (who later became pro life) Dr. Lonny Myers and Lawrence Lader. These men got the 60s feminist on board to abortion.
Oh they coming up here with kids too but DNA says those ain’t their kids not even their family memebers so who kids are they and what were they going to do with those kids once they got here?
Of course you can.
When I was parenting my wife and child relied upon me.
I couldn’t have freedom of responsibility, but then I never particularly valued that.
College tuition is much lower for dogs than children, and the doggy professors don’t spew lefty propaganda!
A voice of reason, good.
So what was your point in posting something a dictator said?
My position is that marriage/relationships and kids are not worth it for men in today’s society. How can you try to equate my position to something a dictator said?
If someone relies on you, then you have to answer that call. That’s not independence.
Of course I was independent.
Nobody supported me. I earned the money, I made the decisions.
You seem to conflate hedonistic license for independence and your childish view is telling.
People are murdering their babies at the altar of a woman’s convenience. What can we expect to be the result?
Oh, and Muslims don’t abort their children.
Twenty years from now . . . welcome to the Amerikan Caliphate.
Children grow up to become responsible adults, whereas dogs ....
I’m old and tired of all the barking and whimpering and peeing and crapping everywhere. And the dogs are no picnic either.
Wait.............what? They’re not counting the Migrants and their children as Americans? Somebody totally F’d up in their research, wouldn’t want to be them when the socialists get their hands on them!
The future belongs to those who will show up to claim it. Without continuity your culture is dead within so much as a generation. Sure, your descendants may still give up their birthright “for a mess of pottage” or “sell the family farm” or grow up to mock the culture a values of their fathers anyway. But to give up progeny is to give up period. Without posterity you conserve NOTHING.
Those who show up for the future will claim it, be they the descendants of Muslims or Mexicans.
Not every wants, or should have kids.
My parents shouldn’t have had me or my sister; I don’t want kids.
“As Paul Joseph Watson calls MGTOW’s “Men Groping Their Own Penises””
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Paul is mistaken.
MGTOW is not necessarily about being celibate.
If a MGTOW wants sexual release he usually is of a mindset to hire a sexual worker. No mess, no fuss.
MGTOW is built around the basis of warning men about the greater-than-better chances of getting screwed by the ex-wife.
Of course, in these days, MGTOW should also be on the look-out from damages sought by Common Wives.
Note: I believe in strong Christian marriages.
I do, however, read a lot of eclectic material.
“The child is ignored by the parent.”
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I believe there are three types of parents:
1. Parents who are okay with being parents and not friends to their offspring. These parents are often the ones TARGETED by government groups because they do not like the standards the parents have set for their children.
2. Parents who are hooked on drugs or other forms of illicit behavior that precludes loving instruction and caring of their children. These are probably the number TWO risks to their children.
3. Parents who willingly abuse their children via sexual abuse or other forms of physical or psychological (sp?) abuse. These are probably the number ONE risks to children.
I wish could be swayed from my beliefs on this issue.
Life has shown me too many times that this is the current way of the Western World.
“I was also cursed with horrible DNA, I cannot be allowed to have children.”
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Hi, wastedyears-
I am a close friend with a woman who explained clearly to her boyfriend that she had 2 brothers who were severely autistic. On the Autism scale... never did figure out how to phrase it, correctly.
Any way. She and her entire family informed this young man of the extremely strong odds of any male child being autistic.
He rolled the dice, and lost. Their eldest child was a healthy and lovely girl. Their second child was a boy who displayed severe autism.
He couldn’t except it. It destroyed the marriage. It turned his love of this woman to almost sheer hatred.
Had this young man, soon to be a father, took the time to look within himself, perhaps he could or would have chosen to not marry my friend.
So, it’s good to hear/read someone who can accept their flaws and are honest.
It must make relationships hard as deuces, though.
I like dogs better. We don’t have to buy health insurance on dogs. Our vet is cheaper, nicer and more educated than most doctors. The dogs are happy with a few treats. They don’t care if I buy myself a gift. If we go out to eat they are happy with the leftovers.
Yes they are spoiled and all 4 of them live in the house.
SNL recently did a parody song called “My Dog Is My Boyfriend.”
It wasn’t particularly funny, but quite close to a segment of society today.
A friend’s single daughter comes to mind; she’s already letting herself go (in her 20’s) and totally obsessed with her puppy.
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