Damned if you do, Damned if you don't?

Here are a few headlines that intrigued me regarding children and marital happiness/satisfaction, (or lack thereof).

Marriage without children the key to bliss
Married life is the key to happiness but having children can ruin it all, a psychologist claims.(Kate Devlin, Medical Correspondent, telegraph.co.uk)

Study: Marital Satisfaction Takes a Dive When Baby Arrives (Bill Hendrick, WebMD Health News)

CULTURE | TRUE OR FALSE
Having Kids Makes You Happy (Lorraine Ali, Newsweek)

Hmm... they certainly make you think, don't they?

Here are a few intriguing excerpts from the aforementioned articles:

In the couples without children, declines in marital satisfaction occurred gradually over time. Men had decreased relationship dedication, as well, over time.

In Daniel Gilbert's 2006 book "Stumbling on Happiness," the Harvard professor of psychology looks at several studies and concludes that marital satisfaction decreases dramatically after the birth of the first child—and increases only when the last child has left home. He also ascertains that parents are happier grocery shopping and even sleeping than spending time with their kids. Other data cited by 2008's "Gross National Happiness" author, Arthur C. Brooks, finds that parents are about 7 percentage points less likely to report being happy than the childless.

The most recent comprehensive study on the emotional state of those with kids shows us that the term "bundle of joy" may not be the most accurate way to describe our offspring. "Parents experience lower levels of emotional well-being, less frequent positive emotions and more frequent negative emotions than their childless peers," says Florida State University's Robin Simon, a sociology professor who's conducted several recent parenting studies, the most thorough of which came out in 2005 and looked at data gathered from 13,000 Americans by the National Survey of Families and Households. "In fact, no group of parents—married, single, step or even empty nest—reported significantly greater emotional well-being than people who never had children. It's such a counterintuitive finding because we have these cultural beliefs that children are the key to happiness and a healthy life, and they're not."

Simon received plenty of hate mail in response to her research ("Obviously Professor Simon hates her kids," read one), which isn't surprising. Her findings shake the very foundation of what we've been raised to believe is true. In a recent NEWSWEEK Poll, 50 percent of Americans said that adding new children to the family tends to increase happiness levels. Only one in six (16 percent) said that adding new children had a negative effect on the parents' happiness. But which parent is willing to admit that the greatest gift life has to offer has in fact made his or her life less enjoyable?

Parents may openly lament their lack of sleep, hectic schedules and difficulty in dealing with their surly teens, but rarely will they cop to feeling depressed due to the everyday rigors of child rearing. "If you admit that kids and parenthood aren't making you happy, it's basically blasphemy," says Jen Singer, a stay-at-home mother of two from New Jersey who runs the popular parenting blog MommaSaid.net. "From baby-lotion commercials that make motherhood look happy and well rested, to commercials for Disney World where you're supposed to feel like a kid because you're there with your kids, we've made parenthood out to be one blissful moment after another, and it's disappointing when you find out it's not."

For the sake of not making this post insanely long, (I fear it already will be), I'll say this...

It seems that marital satisfaction declines over time either way, (according to these studies that is), so it's just a matter of when. If you have children, martial satisfaction seems to decline at a faster pace, (though the studies do in fact show that children add entirely new dimensions of happiness and contentment).

Studies however are not the end-all-be-all, and I for one would like to believe that, should John and I choose to have kids, (particularly girls), we'll be just fine. I'd also like to continue to believe that we'll be happy against all odds. Given what we've been through in the past two years, I have a feeling we will be.

I'll end on this: I posted the image of this book for a reason. The fact that this book exists is a bit disconcerting. Its contents... more so.

Comments? Come on folks. You can post anonymously you know.