Gatherings with girlfriends and parties in a bar with friends, theater premieres and football matches, dinners in gourmet restaurants and workouts in fitness clubs, another higher education and an incredible career … Do you have children? Then forget all of the above.
Children deprive our lives of a great many pleasant, useful and important things – such is the common point of view, which at least once had to be heard by all of us. How fair is she? John Dick, the creator of the CivicScience online platform for sociological and marketing research, decided to find out with numbers in his hands. Since the launch of his project in 2010, millions of Americans have answered CivicScience questions. Dick selected the responses of 1 people aged 050 to 053 and analyzed them by comparing the attitudes towards life of those who have children (25 people) and those who, for various reasons, did not acquire them (54 people)*. Here are 656 conclusions he came to.
1. Childless people get better sleep. They were 75 percent more likely to report sleeping an average of 8 hours a day or more. Happy owners of children were 29 percent more likely to admit that they sleep 6 hours a day or even less.
2. Childless people lead a healthier lifestyle. They were 73 percent more likely to say “never” when asked if they ate fast food. They are also 38 percent more likely to visit a health club at least once a week. Parents are 54 percent more likely to smoke at least one cigarette a day, 17 percent more likely to say they don’t exercise at all, and 10 percent more likely to think they are overweight.
3. Parents are more limited in finances. They are 41 percent more likely to use coupons for all sorts of discounts “whenever possible.” Alas, this does not help the situation: childless people were twice as likely to be able to save more than 20 percent of their monthly income. This is probably not least due to their higher level of education. They are 23 percent more likely to have graduated from at least college, and 29 percent more likely to have graduated from university.
4. The social life of childless people is incomparably brighter. They are twice as likely to admit that they visit expensive restaurants at least once a month. 62 percent more likely to report that they love to travel. And 86 percent more likely to feel free to spend money on their own pleasures.
5. The same applies to cultural life. Childless people are 95 percent more into popular TV shows and 41 percent more into music. They are also 39 percent more likely to go to the movies at least once a month.
6. Parents show higher levels of anxiety. They are 27 percent more concerned about the crime situation in their places of residence.
7. Parents experience more stress. People who were childless were 23 percent more likely to say they didn’t experience any stress in their lives at all. (There’s an interesting contradiction here, though. Those same childless people are 16 percent more likely to admit to taking medication to deal with stress or anxiety. It’s likely that parents in a similar situation simply don’t have the time to get to the doctors and get a prescription.)
8. Parents are more likely to dream of going back in time. One of the questions on the CivicScience questionnaire goes something like this: if you had the opportunity to travel in time, would you rather go to the past or to the future? So, parents are 12,5 percent more likely to dream of returning to the past, and childless people are 30 percent more likely to rush into the future. It seems that the former have something to regret and yearn for, while the latter indulge more and more in the pure flight of a dream.
9. And finally, the last. The previous eight points seem to be pretty obvious about who feels happier, right? But no! To the question “Are you happy today?” parents respond with a firm “Yes, very much” 33 percent more often. And childless people are 27 percent more likely to consider themselves unhappy or even very unhappy.
The conclusion is obvious. The birth of a child really deprives us of many important, interesting, useful and enjoyable things. Offering in return just the smallest thing – happiness.
* More details at qz.com