Having Children, Happiness and Love

In a posting in practical ethics  David Edmonds suggests that having children might make people less happy. Simply bringing children into the world would seems unlikely to bring about a change someone’s happiness whilst raising children, being an active parent might. In the rest of this posting having children will refer to being a fully engaged parent and this includes non-biological parents. This suggestion seems to conflict with our intuitions about how most parents feel. Edmonds advances four reasons to account for this apparent conflict. In this posting I will examine Edmonds’ second reason. This holds that parents may be deluded as to their own happiness. This reason concurs with the views of Daniel Haybron who believes people are often mistaken as to what makes them happy because they are poor at affective forecasting (1). I will offer two suggestions as to why this apparent delusion might be illusory. Next I will consider Edmonds’ fourth reason in more detail. This reason holds that parents value something more than happiness. Lastly I will examine two reasons people might have for having children which are unconnected to parental happiness. 

Edmonds suggests that parents who think having children will make them happier might be deluding themselves. Haybron provides us with a reason as to why this delusion may be illusory. He suggests there are problems with defining happiness.

 “The trouble with the ordinary concept of happiness appears neither to be well defined nor univocal. Indeed there may be no “the” ordinary, but perhaps several, even many.” (2)

For instance, happiness might be defined either in the psychological sense as either positive affect or wellbeing and in addition to this division both of these senses might be subdivided further. This situation opens up the possibility that parents and researchers are simply using different definitions, talking about different things. It follows parents might not be deluded when they consider themselves as happy having children using their own idea of happiness but this wouldn’t be considered as happiness using the researchers’ definition. Accepting the above means the conflict highlighted by the study might well be illusory. A second possibility is that parents are not deluded and accept the researchers’ definition of happiness and concur with the researchers that having children makes them less happy in the short term. However, parents may believe having children will make them happier in the long term. Once again the conflict seems to be illusory as the researchers are concerned with happiness now whilst parents are concerned with happiness in the longer term.

I now want to turn to the question whether even if parents believe having children might make them happy that there are more important things in life than happiness. I don’t want to deny the importance of happiness in making someone’s life go well but I will argue that there are more important things in someone’s life than being happy. This is by no means a new position for in the nineteenth century Mill famously argued that it is better to be a dissatisfied human than a satisfied pig. Unfortunately, in the absence of an accepted definition of exactly what happiness is there is a problem with even starting my argument. In order for my argument to proceed I must first provide a definition. Haybron defines happiness as the aggregate of all someone’s emotions and moods at any one time and if this aggregate is positive then he is happy and conversely if this aggregate is negative he is unhappy. Clearly not all emotions carry equal weight. For instance someone’s irritation at the buzzing of a fly is not as important as love for his spouse. The most important emotions are one’s we feel attuned to, engaged with and endorse. In the following I will accept Haybron’s definition because it concurs reasonably well with our everyday usage. The question now becomes are some things more valuable in life than just having an aggregate of positive emotions? I will now argue that possibly a sense of achievement and love are more important in life than simply being happy. I will then argue that parenting can give someone a sense of achievement and satisfies her need to love.

According to Gwen Bradford achievements above some minimum threshold are difficult and must be carried out competently (3).

She also suggests that there are certain capacities which are essential to being a human being and that exercising these capacities is of value to human beings. Exercising a capacity strengthens that capacity. Among these essential human capacities is having a will and the ability to reason. I would prefer to use the term person rather than human being because someone in a coma might have neither of the above capacities but nonetheless remains a human being. Let us accept Bradford’s position and agree that achieving has essentialist value to someone irrespective of whether the achievement itself is a valuable. Climbing a mountain for instance. It might then be argued that achievement might be of more value to someone than the happiness children might bring. It is completely plausible that someone might value having a career more than having children. I will now to argue that having children, parenting them, is an achievement. Let us accept that parenting children is sometimes difficult. Let us also accept that if we are to be good parents we need to be competent. For instance good parents ensure that their children eat a balanced diet and get adequate sleep. It follows that for most people being a parent is an achievement and is valuable to them. It further follows that if having children doesn’t make people happy or even makes them unhappy that achievement gives a reason to have children. However this reason like happiness must be balanced with other reasons we have to do things. Someone might value having a career more than having children. Moreover if having children makes people happy then achievement reinforces this reason. It might be pointed out that achieving itself makes us happy and this is one of the reasons we pursue achievements. I won’t pursue this point further here.

However even if we accept the above most children would be unhappy if they thought the only reason they made their parents happy was that they achieved something by parenting them. I would agree that their unhappiness was fully justified. Moreover most children would also be unhappy with the thought that they only existed because their parents thought that they would make them happy. Children aren’t commodities. Children want to be loved. Indeed I would suggest that most parents would be unhappy with the idea that the only value they gain from parenting is due to achieving. What is achieved by good parenting matters because parents love their children. What is achieved matter more than the achieving. I have argued elsewhere that not only do we want to be loved we have a need to love, see love me for a reason . The love I’m referring to isn’t romantic love but simply ‘caring about’ as defined by Harry Frankfurt. (4) I now want to argue that someone without the capacity to love isn’t really a person at all meaning a capacity to love is an essentialist capacity of persons in the same way as having a will and the capacity to reason. According to Frankfurt having ideals, “caring about” or loving is essential to being a person.

 “He can make whatever decision he likes and shape his will as he pleases. This does not mean that his will is free. It only means that his will is anarchic, moved by mere impulse and inclination. For a person without ideals, there are no volitional laws he has bound himself to respect and to which he unconditionally submits. He has no inviolable boundaries. Thus he is amorphous with no fixed shape or identity.” (5) 

Let us accept that capacity to love is essential to being a person and what someone loves helps define him, loving is tied to identity. I argued above that the exercise of an essentialist capacity has value because it strengthens that capacity. Loving has value both to the loved one and lover, loving children has value both to children and parents. Love gives us a reason to have children irrespective of whether they will make us happy or not. In cases when children make us happy love enhances this happiness. Sometimes our children make us unhappy. Some children might become seriously ill causing us distress to their parent but this doesn’t mean that they regret having them.  Some children might commit terrible crimes but their parents might still love them. I would argue that in such cases our unhappiness is due to our love. Love makes us vulnerable and ties us to the fate of our loved ones. If our loved ones flourishes we are happy and if our loved ones are harmed or causes harm we become unhappy. In cases in which our children make us unhappy love means that we retain a reason for having children. In cases in which our children make us happy love enhances our happiness. It follows irrespective of whether having children makes us happy we have reasons due to love to have children. Finally some people say that when a childless couple keep a dog that the dog is a substitute child. This is clearly false but the underlying reasons might share a common basis. Both parent and some pet owners have a need to love and a lesser need to be loved.

1. Daniel Haybron, 2008, The Pursuit of Unhappiness, Oxford, page 231.
2. Haybron, page 43
3. Gwen Bradford, 2015, Achievement, Oxford University Press. . (
4. Harry Frankfurt, 1988, The Importance of What We Care About. Cambridge University Press.
5. Frankfurt. 1999, Necessity, Volition, and Love. Cambridge University Press. Page 114