Abstract
Is being a parent prudentially good for one – that is to say, does it enhance one’s well-being? The social-scientific literature is curiously divided when it comes to this question. While some studies suggest that being a parent decreases most people’s well-being, other studies suggest that being a parent increases most people’s well-being. In this paper I will present a framework for thinking about the prudential benefits and costs of parenthood. Four elements are central to this framework: (a) affect, (b) friendship (i.e., deep personal relationships), (c) accomplishment, and (d) perspective. In presenting this framework I have two main goals. One is to help us to gain some insight into why the social-scientific literature regarding parental well-being is divided in the way that it is, and the other is to provide those who are deciding whether to become parents with a helpful way of thinking through what is prudentially at stake.
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Notes
To be clear, I accept that one might reasonably use these terms as having distinct meanings (e.g., one might reasonably use “well-being” and “welfare” as having distinct meanings).
This study from Angeles claims to find a high correlation between life-satisfaction and parenthood for married parents. However, in an erratum, Angeles has asked us to disregard the results of this study (Angeles 2010b). Notwithstanding this erratum, Angeles’s point that I referenced above seems correct and important.
The 909 working women were not all mothers (i.e., some were non-parents).
One might reasonably worry that the authors of the Texas study and Gilbert have too much confidence in the reliability of the specific-episode studies. For one thing, “positive affect” and “negative affect” are very general categories, and providing specific numerical ratings for one’s positive and negative affect can seem somewhat artificial (i.e., it can seem as though one is representing one’s feelings as being more determinate than they really are). For another thing, in cases where one is simultaneously experiencing both positive and negative affect, it seems likely that one’s positive affect and one’s negative affect would blur into each other in such a way as to make it difficult to provide an accurate numerical rating for either of the two. I will not press these sorts of worries any further in this paper, but they are worth mentioning, just so that readers are aware of them.
In their latest article on parental well-being, Nelson and her co-authors discuss how child age affects parental well-being (Nelson et al. 2014b, 879–880), and they claim that, in general, parents of younger children are affectively worse off than parents of older children. This may be true, but I have some doubts about this claim as it applies to adolescent and adult children. For, while it is far more physically demanding to raise young children, the worrying about older children (with older-people problems) can be, and often is, far worse.
To be clear, when Tiberius discusses perspective, it seems that her main point is simply that having perspective is an element of being practically wise, and it does not seem that she is claiming (as I am) that having perspective is (at least for most people) an element of well-being (e.g., see Tiberius 2008, 93).
When Tiberius discusses perspective, she seems to take a wholly subjective approach, that is, an approach that makes no appeal to objective values (e.g., see Tiberius 2008, 99–101).
There may be an important connection here with the literature on how caretaking quite generally can substantially contribute to personal well-being, in large part because it forces one to focus on others and so helps to prevent one from focusing excessively on oneself. In this vein, Ashton-James, Kushlev, and Dunn have an article that argues that parents who heavily invest in their children in terms of time and care (i.e., “child-centric parents”) gain more in terms of personal well-being than parents who do not heavily invest in their children; and Kushlev, Dunn, and Ashton-James relate their argument to the more general argument that caretaking and investing in others rather than oneself can contribute substantially to personal well-being (Ashton-James et al. 2013).
Children are every bit as prideful, stubborn, and selfish as adults are. However, children, especially very young children, are almost never shallow in the way that adults sometimes are (e.g., they are almost never preoccupied with money or their own social standing in the way that adults sometimes are).
However, this point about freedom is complicated. Some thinkers suggest that there is such a thing as having too much freedom. If these thinkers are correct, then perhaps the limiting of one’s freedom that occurs when one has children might actually be prudentially good for one in that it imposes a healthy sort of order on one’s life. For a discussion of the complicated relationship between freedom and parental well-being, see Hansen 2012, 47–48.
Though I have here only focused on examples involving accomplishment, similar examples involving friendship and perspective could be provided.
Some readers might wonder why I have not appealed to Nozick’s experience machine in arguing against welfare hedonism (Nozick 1974, 42–45). My thinking here is that, since the experience machine is fanciful, and since appeals to fanciful cases are controversial, it is best to refrain from appealing to the experience machine.
In his book on happiness, Gilbert explicitly defends the view that happiness consists solely in the experience of positive affect (Gilbert 2005, 31–59). Moreover, in the section where he argues that being a parent does not bring much happiness (242–245) – and, more generally, throughout his book – Gilbert never says that there can be non-affective gains in well-being. This omission suggests that Gilbert does not believe that there can be non-affective gains in well-being.
This belief could be filled out in an objective-list-theory way, with the idea being that friendship, accomplishment, and perspective are components of all people’s well-being, no matter what. And this belief could also be filled out in a desire-fulfillment-theory way or a hybrid-theory way: A desire-fulfillment theorist might claim that, for the vast majority of people, friendship, accomplishment, and perspective are components of well-being, since the vast majority of people non-instrumentally desire these items; and a hybrid theorist might claim that, for the vast majority of people, friendship, accomplishment, and perspective are components of well-being, since these items are objectively valuable in some non-prudential way and the vast majority of people non-instrumentally desire these items.
Hansen makes a similar point near the end of his article. Throughout his article he discusses studies on parental well-being that construe well-being in terms of happiness and life-satisfaction (and thus largely in terms of positive affect), and he says that, taken collectively, these studies suggest that being a parent typically decreases well-being. But, near the end of his article, Hansen points out that, if we were instead to adopt a eudaimonic conception of well-being that entails that existential growth, accomplishment, and deep love or affection are intrinsic welfare goods, then it may well no longer be clear that being a parent typically decreases well-being (Hansen 2012, 50).
This study did find that “life evaluation”, which “refers to the thoughts that people have about their life when they think about it”, keeps improving as income improves, without ever capping out (16489).
In keeping with what I noted at the very end of “The Parental Well-Being Framework” section, there might be other general items – that is, ones distinct from friendship, accomplishment, and perspective – that should be mentioned here.
I have discussed this topic with many family members and friends, as well as with many students in my ethics classes at Chestnut Hill College. Thanks to all of them for their input and ideas. Thanks also to two anonymous reviewers from a previous journal and to two anonymous reviewers from Philosophia for very helpful comments.
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Lauinger, W. “A Framework for Understanding Parental Well-Being”. Philosophia 43, 847–868 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9600-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-015-9600-z