Parenting will not make you happy

This hedgehog had six babies but she doesn't look very happy. 

Wanna read something very confounding?

Try this article published by The Atlantic on how many children is the optimal number of children from a 'happiness' perspective.

What a very...odd...way of thinking about children.  I can't say I understand it at all, actually.  My own personal views aside, I can see why someone would choose to stop having children for medical or genetic reasons, I can see why people would say 'I want to give my child this sort of life and so I will stop having children in order to be able to afford that, either financially or emotionally'.  I can see, even, why someone would choose to stop having children because they had 'always dreamed of having this many children.'  I mean, I don't think those reasons are equal at all to each other, but they are the sort of personal reasons that people give for this sort of decision.  But...how many children will make you, the parent, the happiest??

Darling, I think perhaps you haven't got a firm grip on child-rearing.

Let me tell you, your children, be they spare in number or multifarious, are going to give you plenty to not be happy about.  If what you want is happy, then get a dog.  Dogs are great.  Dogs love you and don't take off their diapers to paint their cribs with fecal matter.  Dogs don't pee all over your one nice upholstered chair and then stick a partially thawed yogurt tube under the cushions and jump on it. Dogs don't tell you, after you just spent a ridiculous sum of money on an outing, that you are a mean parent because you said no ice cream. You want fulfilling?  Grow a cactus.  But don't have kids, please, if that's the reason you want them.

Children are messy and imperfect and illogical and above all very, very human and unless you are willing to be torn apart and put back together again over and over while attempting to help them stumble into adulthood, unless you want to spend literally The. Rest. Of. Your. Life. crying and being unable to tell if it is from stress or sadness or sheer, unadulterated love, you will spend your parenting days fumbling to achieve a perfect ideal that will never exist for you.

If happiness is vacations and bliss and weird sounding coffee creamers and all the money for all the things and all the things for you, then parenting is UNhappy.  Parenting is sacrifice and pain from the moment you look at that stick you just peed on and think "that's...that's totally a second blue line.  Now what?" all the way to the last breath you take surrounded by, you hope and pray, your children and your children's children, calling you blessed and walking you home.

Now, if you want to talk about joy, then I'm all for that.  But joy isn't something you limit, it's something you greedily grab at.  You want more joy, more, and lots of swimming in joy moments, surrounded by it.  But joy isn't happiness!  

Joy is being offered the chance to look through God's eyes for a moment.  And it's a wonderful thing even in the midst of anxiety and depression.  It's the only thing, really, that lets us feel like this parenting thing is all worthwhile.  It isn't stuff.  It isn't money.  It isn't more.  It's just...joy.

Happiness, on the other hand, is a mighty fickle mistress.

Now, to be fair, the article has slightly more...realistic moments.  Where the author admits that the early, sleepless baby years end and where more things than how many kids can I fit in my car without having to buy another car should be taken into consideration.  Again, I think I could possibly understand, though not agree with, the sort of logical maze that is necessary to go from 'I would like a baby' to 'oh but the sedan can't fit another car seat so I guess no more babies'.  What I simply can't understand is why anyone would think that children exist solely to bring the parent happiness.  

Children, my friends, children are people.  You aren't acquiring a new accessory, you are helping to create a person.