The Happiness Scale: Childcare or Doing Dishes?

A recent New Yorker contained a review of two new books on happiness research. We learn along the way that happiness research is an actual field of scientific study, more or less launched by a seminal paper published in 1978. Who knew?

These juicy tidbits, tossed our way so effortlessly by New Yorker staff writers, are precisely why I read the magazine cover to cover. And precisely why I suffer so every December 31 when I collect the year's unread issues from the bedside, the bathrooms, the coffee table, and the handbags and force myself to throw them out, an act showing considerable strength of character, in my view. I have to fight against the Grandma Myrtie gene.

Grandma Myrtie read the Lansing State Journal every day, and at some point--she must have been in her eighties--she could never quite finish the day's paper. But she refused to discard them because she still wanted to read them. Was still sure she would read them. By the time she was 90, the newspapers were stacked waist-high against walls and heaped on every chair and couch. My house would be thus littered with New Yorkers if I followed my genetic impulse.

Back to the happiness research (yes, we're still on that topic, and I'll soon get to the point). Not eight lines after the field-of-happiness-research tidbit came this wow statement--offered only parenthetically, mind you: "Studies have shown that women find caring for their children less pleasurable than napping or jogging and only slightly more satisfying than doing the dishes."

Ah, scientific support for what I have believed for years.

Recently a friend with a toddler posted on Facebook: "Eat breakfast, have playdate, walk to park, eat lunch, take nap, visit grocery store, push trike, eat dinner take bath, read story, hit sack. Repeat."  I commented: "That's what I now refer to as Parent Prison. You're in the hard labor part--on the chain gang." I knew my friend would recall our recent coffee date (sans toddler) when I had pointed out that a young woman, juggling coffee and a squirming child at a nearby table, was in Parent Prison.

But after my clever post, other of her Facebook friends weighed in with positive comments on motherhood and toddlers. I felt, once again, that I am the only one who thinks putting Cheerios in a Ziploc bag and scheduling my life around naptime is akin to hard time on the rock pile. OK, maybe not that bad, but go with the hyperbole.

I considered posting a follow-up explanation on Facebook, explaining that I do think having a kid is thrilling and worth it all and something I would not trade for anything.

Thank you, New Yorker. I am vindicated. I was in the mainstream all along when I was a lot happier taking a nap than playing Candyland.