After writing an essay about research indicating that childless people are happier than parents, I began to ponder the modern celebration of endless adolescence. There are websites devoted to deliberate childlessness, for example, as well as organizations that affirm intentional singlehood (and not in the monastic sense, for which, at least, there is some precedent in the early Church). There are websites for adult video gamers, for crying out loud, and of course every professional and college sports team has at least one website haunted by fanatics.

Some time ago I saw survey evidence regarding the milestones of adulthood, which researchers defined as: 1) leaving home, 2) finishing one’s schooling, 3) getting a job, 4) getting married, and 5) having children. Whereas in 1960, 65 percent of American males had passed these milestones by age 30, in 2000 only 31 percent had done so. The data for females was little different. Here we have an immediate casualty of America’s burgeoning inability to grow up — the fact that we have to use the clinical terms “male” and “female” more frequently, because “man” and “woman” must be applied with greater selectivity.

We are, it seems, a nation in regression. At least in the past we might have had the cold comfort of shame, but now it seems that the new mood is to proclaim childishness as a virtue. In general, however, I side with the writer at Happily Childfree, who proclaims: “If you don’t want those kids, it’s better to not have them.” I certainly don’t want to persuade any of that organization’s adherents to change their minds; we have enough self-centered people raising children already.

I have a friend in the Orthodox Church who tells me that the Church will not marry couples who express the desire to remain childless. The communion that yields life is so central to the Christian’s journey to godliness, in other words, that those who are unwilling to commit themselves to striving for it are judged unfit for marriage. It’s an idea that’s old-fashioned and revolutionary at the same time, and I think I like it.

At the core of this embrace of the Culture of Me, as I’ve written elsewhere, is the mistaken notion that individual happiness is the heart of human purpose. Hence the gleeful trotting out of research purporting to show that childless people are happier, or that marriage yields no real gain in happiness. These claims may well be true, but the people who bandy them about fail to discern that happiness is transient and shallow, whereas joy is deep and abiding. Joy is won — and here is the real bummer, for the permanent adolescent — by walking a path of suffering. This is why some people nod when they hear C.S. Lewis’s notion that the Christian life is sorrowful joy and joyful sorrow, while others shake their heads in puzzlement.

A new study suggests that having children doesn’t make you happy.  Or perhaps I should rephrase.  A new study suggests that people with children report lower happiness levels than those without.  This is unexpected, to be sure:

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.

This is a complicated matter.  How would one explain such results?

For the childless, all this research must certainly feel redeeming. As for those of us with kids, well, the news isn’t all bad. Parents still report feeling a greater sense of purpose and meaning in their lives than those who’ve never had kids.

But still, how do you explain that parents show less happiness than non-parents?  The easy answer is that kids are no fun, but it seems it would be more complicated than that.  My answer is that happiness isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. 

Things are looking good here in Western Civilization, and according to the English magazine The New Statesman, record numbers of people are claiming to be happy and healthy.  But wait!  These same people are also claiming that the world is falling to ruin around them.  In a recent BBC poll, here’s what happened:

Some 93 percent of respondents described themselves as optimistic about their own family life, up 4 percent from the previous time the survey was conducted, 40 years ago. Yet more people - 70 percent, across race, class and gender - believe families are becoming less successful overall. While we apparently thrive in our own families of many shapes and forms, as social commentators we prefer to look back, misty-eyed, to the gendered certainties of our grandparents’ generation.

What is true for families is true for neighbourhoods: we think ours is improving while community life is declining elsewhere. We tend to like the people we know from different ethnic backgrounds but are less sure about such people in general. We think our own prospects look OK but society is going to the dogs.

Is this a severe case of mass cognitive dissonance?  How to explain such a paradox?