Yeah I think that is a good point although I don’t know if I’d say ‘significant differences’ – the effect size here seems really small and also I’d expect since they don’t control for income etc and just take the mean that potential gains in e.g. well-off moms are more than canceled out by worse-off moms who have a hard time making ends me, and I’d guess that EAs are in general more in the well-off category, although of course not exclusively.
Just anecdata-wise I don’t know many moms in my bubble who’d say they were worse off—it could be that they are and social desirability bias is at play or it could be that like in these papers they are and the effect size is just so small they don’t really feel it, I don’t know.
Knowing you Jacintha, curious what you would say in your own N=1 case but would understand if you didn’t want to post it on the forum!
Yea thanks Devon and thanks for posting your experience! I know Devon’s kids and can confirm they are the best and also his wife is definitely the best. I also love that you are writing this series so thanks so much for sharing!
As a general reply to your post: I, too, think my daughter is the best and being a mother to her brings me an incredible amount of joy and love and laughter and meaning and learning that would have been impossible to comprehend before going through it.
However, I do think I made significant tradeoffs against my own wellbeing and my impact, I still make those every day, and 3,5 years in I still feel guilty both ways—simultaneously to my child and to all the other children and animals I could be helping. This remains an almost daily struggle for me (where it doesnt appear to be for my husband!). I definitely don’t think I became more productive essentially in any way and I think for me it’s definitely strongly negative for my work output; I have less time, poor sleep, am sick way more often, have to stay home to take care of sick kids more often, am less flexible, can’t travel too much, can’t stay for the after drinks, can’t spend my evenings reading that book that person recommended etc etc.
On top of this I feel I took significant hits to my personal liberty and autonomy, to my body and physical wellbeing, to my friendships and to my romantic relationship with my partner (though it’s also been incredible seeing him as a father). For some people those are fine tradeoffs to make, but it feels important to recognise that those tradeoffs are there, and they’re painful, and that parents might be prone to significant optimism bias. Whether that tradeoff is worth it is probably also down to how you value each of these (e.g. autonomy). I am happy with the choice I made, but I do think it’s probably in a way more reasonable not to want to have kids than it is to want to have them.
In terms of some specifically female anecdata from my N=1 case:
My personal experience was that pregnancy was really rough and I had to reduce my work hours pretty much immediately and for most of the pregnancy.
My birth was also very rough. I nearly died despite being otherwise very young and healthy, and it took me a lot of time to recover from it. Others might not have this experience (I hope they don’t) but from my read of the data, the cumulative odds of developing at least 1 serious complication during your first childbirth (such as pre-eclampsia, severe vomiting, severe tearing or incontinence) is probably >50%.
I found breastfeeding surprisingly demanding and an unexpected blocker to my naive dream that me and my partner would have full equity in dividing the load, costing much more time than I thought and being very limiting in when I could go where. I experienced lots of brain fog during my breastfeeding period and essentially felt like a pretty dumb version of myself for 10ish months (with significant worries I would ‘never go back to my old self’).
This is reasonably short term (though some physical symptoms can persist for a long time) and I acknowledge experiences vary quite widely but as a woman you have to be able to accommodate a pretty wide range of outcomes.
My daughter is 3,5 so my dataset is clearly biased towards the younger years and maybe the costs to women are pretty front loaded and centered around pregnancy and early years—maybe they even out considerably in later times. I now feel much more like myself and as far as I can tell I have not become permanently stupid.
I think you’re right to point out that there’s lots of mediating factors to the wellbeing number I shared, e.g. if you’re well-off, the effect is very different. Usually when people ask me if I think ‘people should have kids’ I try to reframe the question to ‘under what conditions’ - I think income is indeed a significant predictor, as is having a supportive partner, access to good and affordable child care, solid paternity leave, maternity leave, flexible work arrangements. Statistically speaking and just predicting on these factors, Devon, your experiences should be at the very upper end of the spectrum. Hope that if any women pop by here it’s useful to get a female data point as well :)
Thanks Zoe—It is a good point as I think men’s and women’s views could differ here quite a bit.
My general take on my partner (can’t prioritize asking right now, but it is a good prompt for another post in the series!) having discussed these things over time is she is way more satisfied with life in general than she was before kids. I think she’d endorse the productivity and leadership upgrades, but prob feels the sting of working fewer hours more.
It is worth noting the post is mostly about how this affects EAs, which she is not, so I might be a tighter reference class here, although I have met a lot of families and they do seem to have different takes by gender, so maybe she is the right reference class. I don’t know! If you have specific questions I’d be happy to answer offline.
Thanks for writing this. As a woman, I’d love to get your wife’s takes on this too!
Just wanted to say this is a good question because I think there’s good reason to believe there are significant differences in effects of having kids on fathers vs mothers (see e.g. this paper which suggests kids might increase wellbeing for dads but decrease wellbeing for moms: https://sonjalyubomirsky.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Nelson-Coffey-Killingsworth-Layous-Cole-Lyubomirsky-2019.pdf)
Yeah I think that is a good point although I don’t know if I’d say ‘significant differences’ – the effect size here seems really small and also I’d expect since they don’t control for income etc and just take the mean that potential gains in e.g. well-off moms are more than canceled out by worse-off moms who have a hard time making ends me, and I’d guess that EAs are in general more in the well-off category, although of course not exclusively.
Just anecdata-wise I don’t know many moms in my bubble who’d say they were worse off—it could be that they are and social desirability bias is at play or it could be that like in these papers they are and the effect size is just so small they don’t really feel it, I don’t know.
Knowing you Jacintha, curious what you would say in your own N=1 case but would understand if you didn’t want to post it on the forum!
Yea thanks Devon and thanks for posting your experience! I know Devon’s kids and can confirm they are the best and also his wife is definitely the best. I also love that you are writing this series so thanks so much for sharing!
As a general reply to your post: I, too, think my daughter is the best and being a mother to her brings me an incredible amount of joy and love and laughter and meaning and learning that would have been impossible to comprehend before going through it.
However, I do think I made significant tradeoffs against my own wellbeing and my impact, I still make those every day, and 3,5 years in I still feel guilty both ways—simultaneously to my child and to all the other children and animals I could be helping. This remains an almost daily struggle for me (where it doesnt appear to be for my husband!). I definitely don’t think I became more productive essentially in any way and I think for me it’s definitely strongly negative for my work output; I have less time, poor sleep, am sick way more often, have to stay home to take care of sick kids more often, am less flexible, can’t travel too much, can’t stay for the after drinks, can’t spend my evenings reading that book that person recommended etc etc.
On top of this I feel I took significant hits to my personal liberty and autonomy, to my body and physical wellbeing, to my friendships and to my romantic relationship with my partner (though it’s also been incredible seeing him as a father). For some people those are fine tradeoffs to make, but it feels important to recognise that those tradeoffs are there, and they’re painful, and that parents might be prone to significant optimism bias. Whether that tradeoff is worth it is probably also down to how you value each of these (e.g. autonomy). I am happy with the choice I made, but I do think it’s probably in a way more reasonable not to want to have kids than it is to want to have them.
In terms of some specifically female anecdata from my N=1 case:
My personal experience was that pregnancy was really rough and I had to reduce my work hours pretty much immediately and for most of the pregnancy.
My birth was also very rough. I nearly died despite being otherwise very young and healthy, and it took me a lot of time to recover from it. Others might not have this experience (I hope they don’t) but from my read of the data, the cumulative odds of developing at least 1 serious complication during your first childbirth (such as pre-eclampsia, severe vomiting, severe tearing or incontinence) is probably >50%.
I found breastfeeding surprisingly demanding and an unexpected blocker to my naive dream that me and my partner would have full equity in dividing the load, costing much more time than I thought and being very limiting in when I could go where. I experienced lots of brain fog during my breastfeeding period and essentially felt like a pretty dumb version of myself for 10ish months (with significant worries I would ‘never go back to my old self’).
This is reasonably short term (though some physical symptoms can persist for a long time) and I acknowledge experiences vary quite widely but as a woman you have to be able to accommodate a pretty wide range of outcomes.
My daughter is 3,5 so my dataset is clearly biased towards the younger years and maybe the costs to women are pretty front loaded and centered around pregnancy and early years—maybe they even out considerably in later times. I now feel much more like myself and as far as I can tell I have not become permanently stupid.
I think you’re right to point out that there’s lots of mediating factors to the wellbeing number I shared, e.g. if you’re well-off, the effect is very different. Usually when people ask me if I think ‘people should have kids’ I try to reframe the question to ‘under what conditions’ - I think income is indeed a significant predictor, as is having a supportive partner, access to good and affordable child care, solid paternity leave, maternity leave, flexible work arrangements. Statistically speaking and just predicting on these factors, Devon, your experiences should be at the very upper end of the spectrum. Hope that if any women pop by here it’s useful to get a female data point as well :)
Thanks Zoe—It is a good point as I think men’s and women’s views could differ here quite a bit.
My general take on my partner (can’t prioritize asking right now, but it is a good prompt for another post in the series!) having discussed these things over time is she is way more satisfied with life in general than she was before kids. I think she’d endorse the productivity and leadership upgrades, but prob feels the sting of working fewer hours more.
It is worth noting the post is mostly about how this affects EAs, which she is not, so I might be a tighter reference class here, although I have met a lot of families and they do seem to have different takes by gender, so maybe she is the right reference class. I don’t know! If you have specific questions I’d be happy to answer offline.