Parenthood

Katherine Marsh writes in the March 13 TNR that parenthood is not what it was cracked up to be. Instead of bringing fulfillment and happiness, it turns out that parenthood is difficult, and a number of recent articles and studies have suggested that parents are more “sad, distracted or depressed” than non-parents. There is even evidence to show that “having a child isnow the best indicator of whether someone will end up in ‘financial collapse.’” Parents have become more isolated over the last century, shouldering the burden of raising children without the help they used to have: “An unpublished paper by Brown University researchers using U.S. Census data from 1880-2000 shows that mothers of young children have become increasingly isolated as the number of available female caregivers per household declined.”

As a result, Marsh says, parents have lost both the traditional economic incentives and the more recent personal-fulfillment incentives: “Whereas, 150 years ago, the reasons to reproduce were in part economic – children could work the family farm or take care of you when you were old – in the modern era, economic motivations gave way to psychological ones, as parenthood became equated with happiness and personal fulfillment.” The only motivation left, she suggests, is biology.

Marsh says nothing about religious motives for parenting, a striking admission in the face of the demographic fact that religion has a strong correlation with parenthood and family size. And religious motivations, particularly Christian motivations, are entirely capable of dealing with the inevitable difficulties of parenting, since parenting can be seen as a model of self-sacrificial love.