According to this article, Think having children will make you happy?, there is no correlation between having children and being happy. Yet we believe that children make us happier. The author, Nattavudh Powdthavee, believes this misconception can be explained through a mechanism called the “focusing illusion.” I’m not sure exactly what this focusing illusion is, and I haven’t given this article enough attention. I just wanted to do a quick readthrough and grapple with the problems later. I think Powdthavee mentions how positive experiences are more salient in our minds, but they are more rare. The everyday reality of child-rearing is actually kind of dull and stressful. These positive experiences don’t actually increase our overall levels of happiness.
There’s something about this conception of happiness that really troubles me. Something is wrong, but I don’t know what that something is. It’s like when I read Descartes for philosophy, and I have a hard time figuring out just why exactly he’s wrong. This will be frustrating, so I’m putting it off.
I have this thing about defining happiness as purely a realtime subjective phenomenon, but I want to make sure I’m not reading my prejudices into the article.
So I will examine it closely and give my opinion later.