| Sounds like you're a dude with sexist assumptions about parenthood: "the mother necessarily has to do 1.5 or 2 full-time jobs." I'm a dad with two kids and it's fair to do that my wife AND i both have 2 full time jobs: yes, as a man, I do laundry, bathe the kids, put them to bed, drive them to activities, cook, do dishes - as much as she does (some more, some less but it evens out). Welcome to the 21st century - turns out parenthood can be 'man's work' just as much as it can be 'woman's work.' Onward from that initial poor and sexist assumption. . . If you want to read up on the empirical reasons for having kids based on 'happiness' as the criterion, check out 'Stumbling on Happiness.' In that book, it documents that, yes, parents are overall less happy than non-parents (moment-to-moment). Despite this fact parents arguably can have deeper moments of happiness (however less infrequent). As my mom once said wisely - "no one ever reasonably decides to have kids." If you're using reason and rationality as deciders, most likely you won't have kids. . .and that's fine since our planet seems pretty full and humans consume way too much. |