Female wisdom

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To The Daily Telegraph

You report that the University of Oxford wants 40% of its philosophy reading list to consist of work by female philosophers. I see no reason in principle why sexism should not be combated by such a tactic, and it may succeed in what is presumably its main aim of bringing more women to philosophy. There is, however, an unintended consequence: the reading list will become skewed towards philosophers of the late 20th and 21st centuries. As far as philosophy is concerned, this is a worse bias than sexism: women do not philosophise very differently from men, but recent philosophers do philosophise very differently from former ones, and for the most part (if I may venture a personal opinion) not nearly so effectively.
Dr Alex Abercrombie, Fishguard, Pembrokeshire
(The Week 24 March 2018)

There is a “philosophic” manner of talking philosophically which all professionals seem to indulge in.  My experience is that as soon as most people address “modern philosophy” they dive into a mumbo-jumbo that might well impress their academic peers, but is hard work for human beings.

But let me not be too negative.  Somewhere out there there might be female philosphers who can make it all come alive and even fun.  So bring them on!  Maybe they will encourage us to abandon the Oxford English Dictionary, a must at present, and talk English.  Who knows?  The problem is that they will want to be taken seriously by the male philosophers.

And this is an Epicurus blog!  When I started this blog I wanted to write in ordinary, comprehensible English about issues of the day that everyone understood, and try as best I could to suggest what Epicurus might have said were he alive today.  This is just one minor attempt to make the subject accessible.  But the fact is that you are reading it – and it doesn’t matter if it is written by a male or a female, does it?

NAFTA – not what it’s cracked up to be

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The North American Free Trade Agreement came into existence in 1994. As a result of it  blue collar workers suffered.  High school drop-outs in areas heavily impacted by NAFTA  had 8% slower wage growth in the 1990s compared with those in less affected areas. The industries that lost the old protections saw their wages fall by 17 percentage points, relative to less NAFTA- affected industries. According to recent estimates the net economic gain to the US of NAFTA was well below 0.1% of GDP, e.g less than one tenth of one per cent of national income. Instead of putting resources into re-training, new skills, infrastructure etc that might have delivered decent jobs, the attitude was. “Well, we have to put up with losers. The country gains overall”. Well, it didn’t, and as a result we got……….Trump!

The shameful thing is that the Democrats were gung-ho about NAFTA, even though it had a painful effect on the Party’s natural base, the working class. Hillary didn’t get it at all. A lot of Democrats still don’t.  I remember years ago holding forth about the stupidity of shipping out jobs to China and South East Asia without energetically trying to replace them  at home .  There  was bound to be a huge backlash eventually.  Regrettably I was correct .  The “American Dream” died by economic projection.

It sounds as if Trump is right, too, all the more so because these trade agreements usually include provisions whereby disputes go before a small panel of lawyers who specialise in these matters. The lawyers are perceived to be “friendly” to corporate, not consumer, interests.  Of course.

(I owe the statistics above about the GNP to Dani Rodrik, professor of Political Economy at Harvard).

Why is America miserable?

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For many Americans, particularly those of a conservative disposition, theirs is the greatest country in the world. Patriotism is a far more prominent feature of American politics and culture than in Europe, with adversaries denouncing each other for insufficiently loving and caring for their country. Much of this is justified, even if European liberals find it crass; America has a successful economy, is a world leader in a vast array of industries, is home to most of the world’s best universities, and provides the backbone of Western security. Were it not for high American defence spending, Europe would either be poorer or more vulnerable.

But there is one particular statistic that makes for grim reading. According to The Economist, suicides have declined everywhere in the developed world- America being one of the few exceptions. The article points out taking your life is easier in America because of easy access to guns. It also mentions the rise in opioid addiction as a significant contributor. But America isn’t the only country where drug addiction is a growing problem. Nor can high gun ownership rates explain this: America has always had relaxed gun laws, and the number of people who own a gun is actually in decline. Suicide is also unique in being a problem that affects whites more than blacks.

Rather, the cause of increasing suicide is that Americans are under increasing stress. Americans work longer hours than in most other developed countries. In Greece and South Korea- countries which have also seen an increase in suicides- working hours are also long. Spending less time relaxing and socialising inevitably takes a toll. Somewhat paradoxically, America’s increasing prosperity has increased stress. People work long hours to maintain what is considered a respectable lifestyle. The country’s materialistic culture means that people feel the need to own the latest innovations, even if it comes at the expense of time off. Growing income inequality compounds the problem. Average-income families see that more of their friends possess luxuries. Feeling the need to match their peers, they overwork and accumulate debt. It’s also worth pointing out that although unemployment in America is low, so is the labour force participation rate, with many Americans simply choosing not to look for work. To make matters worse, being unemployed is a less pleasant experience in America because unemployment benefits are less generous, health insurance and pension schemes are often tied to specific jobs, and having high personal debt makes unemployment more costly more quickly.

We on the Epicurus Blog are of a social democratic disposition, and would therefore call for a stronger social welfare system and legal entitlements to time off work. All of that is necessary, but America also needs to change its culture. Americans could learn from the Germans: save more, spend less, borrow less, and most importantly, work less. The average German works fewer hours than anywhere else in the world, yet Germany is relatively prosperous. Fiscal conservatives often bemoan America’s large national debt, and rightfully so. But if it is bad for the nation to be in debt, it is also bad for individuals, which is why a stronger safety net is necessary.  Unsustainably lavish lifestyles should be discouraged, with higher taxes on non-necessities like big houses and expensive cars, used to fund tax breaks for savers and investors. All of this may reduce Americans’ material standard of living. But it would create a more economically secure and happier nation, helping to reduce the country’s appalling suicide rate.

The ugliness around us

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British Transport Minister John Hayes recently proked criticism after a speech to the Independent Transport Commission in which he spoke of the ugliness of Britain’s transport architecture and the importance of making our public and industrial buildings more beautiful. Why give us a “trivial and twee” homily on aesthetics, carped the critics: aren’t there more pressing issues, such as air pollution and affordable housing, to worry about?

But I’m with Hayes, says Clare Foges. The look of our public spaces isn’t a secondary issue; it has a direct impact on people’s well-being. The rich can buy their way “to sights that soothe the soul”. But “what if your constant visual diet are the wind-whistling plazas, in 50 shades of grey; the corrugated retail warehouses; the blank faces of municipal buildings; the graffiti and litter; the asphalt and concrete”? We fret about preserving the beauty of listed areas, yet let a “garish corporate free-for-all” spawn elsewhere, as if the look of such places didn’t matter. It does. As the naturalist John Muir said: “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread”. And those with less bread need life-enhancing public spaces all the more. (Clare Foges, The Times).

I entirely agree. Architects have ceded their roles to engineers, whose sole preoccupation is making sure the cheap steel and glass stand upright and won’t be blown over. Opposite our apartment there was, until recently, an elegant building, put up about 30 years ago, but which apparently didn’t make money. It has been demolished and the visuals of the replacement show a hideous monstrosity with nothing whatsoever to commend it. Henceforward we will have our view blocked by a building clearly designed by steel and glass engineers intent on making the building look cheap and tawdry. The local council planners did not even notify adjacent residents that this was going to happen. Even less did they insist on a design that fitted the immediate environment in an old part of the city with rather attractive Edwardian buildings around it. Protests elicited no response. And I won’t, in public, even mention the rumours about where the money for all this came from. I’m sure the reader’s imagination will fill in the gaps!

Some good news on Easter day

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Amidst all the angst, hand-wringing and gloomy forecasts, a rather encouraging thing is happening in the UK: young people are drinking and smoking less, taking fewer drugs and having fewer babies. In 1998 54% of young people said they had taken drugs; by 2016 this percentage was down to 36%. The use of LSD and heroin use is down, and the only drug that has maintained a steady use is cocaine at 10%.

In 1999 64% of youngsters were smoking; by 2014 that figure had fallen to 36%. Excessive drinking is out of fashion – in 2005 29% of 16-24 year olds said they had drunk excessively during the previous week. By 2014 that percentage was 20, with 36% saying they were teetotallers. Meanwhile, there has been a drastic drop in teen pregnancies (qQQq15-17), from 47 conceptions per 1000 in 1998 to 21 per 1000 in 2015. Young women, it seems, are using contraceptives (or abstinence), but not getting abortions.

How to interpret all this? It could be cause and effect. By this I mean that jobs are harder to get, insecurity has grown as wages have stagnated. Young people might be looking with trepidation at this scene appearing on the horizon and coming up with their own, intelligent, answers: if I am to survive in what seems a grim environment I have to work hard, be sober, be responsible. Tearaways, drunks, know-nothings and wastrels will be very much on their own; the old social props are being whittled away by hard, cold employers and uncaring politicians. To thrive I have to know something and be smart.

Light relief

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Children Are Quick
____________________________________

TEACHER: Why are you late?
STUDENT: Class started before I got here.
____________________________________
TEACHER: John, why are you doing your math multiplication on the floor?
JOHN: You told me to do it without using tables.
__________________________________________
TEACHER: Glenn, how do you spell ‘crocodile?’
GLENN: K-R-O-K-O-D-I-A-L’
TEACHER: No, that’s wrong
GLENN: Maybe it is wrong, but you asked me how I spell it.
____________________________________________
TEACHER: Donald, what is the chemical formula for water?
DONALD: H I J K L M N O.
TEACHER: What are you talking about?
DONALD: Yesterday you said it’s H to O.
__________________________________
TEACHER: Winnie, name one important thing we have today that we didn’t have ten years ago.
WINNIE: Me!
__________________________________________
TEACHER: Glen, why do you always get so dirty?
GLEN: Well, I’m a lot closer to the ground than you are.
______________________________
TEACHER: George Washington not only chopped down his father’s cherry tree, but also admitted it.
Now, Louie, do you know why his father didn’t punish him?
LOUIS: Because George still had the axe in his hand…..
______________________________________
TEACHER: Now, Simon , tell me frankly, do you say prayers before eating?
SIMON: No sir, I don’t have to, my Mum is a good cook.
______________________________
TEACHER: Clyde , your composition on ‘My Dog’ is exactly the same as your brother’s..
Did you copy his?
CLYDE : No, sir. It’s the same dog.

___________________________________
TEACHER: Harold, what do you call a person who keeps on talking when people are no longer interested?
HAROLD: A teacher
__________________________________
PASS IT AROUND AND MAKE SOMEONE LAUGH
Due to current economic conditions the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off

The opioid epidemic

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Treating people addicted to drugs as criminals, rather than people in need of medical treatment, is unlikely to stem the opiod crisis in America. “Treating it as a crime is the worst thing you can do,” says Scott Weiner at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “If we start to recognise it as the disease that it is, we can treat it and get people back on track. If you criminalise it, you take away a person’s chance of a normal life.”

But in November the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) moved to classify illicit versions of fentanyl as a schedule 1 drug – ranking it alongside heroin. The fact is that the people most likely to be arrested for possessing it are those most in need of medical treatment. Most law enforcement tends to go after the user rather than the importer or distributor. It ends up being ineffective, because it picks up people who are sick.

Some progress was made in the US under the Obama administration, with the creation of new prescribing guidelines for doctors. Since then, many states have set their own prescribing limits, and prescriptions of opioids have reduced by between 12 and 19 per cent since 2012.

Problem: as the legal supply of opioids has shrunk, people have turned to illicit alternatives like heroin and synthetic drugs like fentanyl and carfentanyl. “The number of prescribed opioids is declining, but overdose deaths have been rising,” says Scott Weiner. “It represents the shift from prescribed opioids to illicit opioids”. These drugs are more potent, so are easier to accidentally overdose on. Fentanyl is 100 times more potent than morphine, and carfentanyl is 100 times mote potent than fentanyl. They are thought to be responsible for the majority of accidental overdose deaths in the US.

In December, the Trump administration expanded access to naloxone and began funding development of new pain treatments. Aside from this barely anything new has been done since the emergency was declared.

More success has been accomplished at state and local levels. In New York City, 100,000 naloxone kits, are being distributed, mainly to people living with others at risk of overdosing, and a new program is targetting people who are in emergency care after a non-fatal overdose. These people are offered support and counselling for three months, along with a supply of naloxone. This idea should be adopted throughout the country.

Researchers are working on new treatments for overdose and addiction, and also on ways to develop opioid drugs without the risk of addiction or overdose. One approach is to make drug formulations that are harder to abuse. In the past, some opioids have been crushed and snorted as a powder for a more powerful hit. Newer formulations turn to gel when crushed.
All of this shows that there are ways of tackling the US opioid crisis. But they require money and evidence-based treatments, not sound bites and law enforcement. “As Americans, we cannot allow this to continue,” said Trump as he announced the emergency in October. More than three months later, he is still allowing just that.(New Scientist, Jessica Hamzelou,
3 February 2017)

In 2016, the annual overdose death count reached nearly 64,000, more than three times as many as in 1999. It surpassed the number of fatalities from automobile crashes and homicides, becoming the No.1 cause of death among Americans 50 and younger.

In 2017 14 states saw declines in the number of desths, but aside from that there are few signs of relief ahead.

Lying

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Little white lies have a tendency to snowball. The more we lie, the more our brains seem to become desensitised to deception.

Tali Sharot at University College London and her team ran an experiment that encouraged volunteers to lie. They were shown jars of pennies, full to varying degrees, and asked to send estimates of how many there were to partners in another room. The partners were shown blurrier images of the jars, so relied on the volunteers’ estimates to guess the number of pennies, in order to win a reward for each of them.

When the volunteers were told they would get a higher personal reward if their partner’s answer were wrong – and that the more inaccurate the answer, the greater the reward would be – they started telling small lies, which escalated. A person who might have started with a lie that earned them £1 may have ended up telling fibs worth £8, for example. Brain scans showed that the first lie was associated with a burst of activity in the amygdalae, areas involved in emotional responses. But this activity lessened as the lies progressed (Nature Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1038/nn.4426). “This highlights the danger of engaging in small acts of dishonesty,” says Sharot. (reported by New Scientist).

Evidence that not all scientific endeavour necesarily expands our useful knowledge! We don’t need a researcher to tell us this stuff. I bet much the same information can be found in Babylonic cuneiform. The results of paying people to lie were evident several thousand years ago, which is why countless generations have tried to stop children lying. Instilling the inclination toward truth and integrity starts in the cradle, and should be strengthened by school. It’s a long and tedious business training children, but an inescapable duty of love. Do we, as a society, have the time and energy to do it properly? A glance at the news suggests that some people simply cannot distinguish truth from fiction, or don’t want to. We are all the losers thereby.

One reason American healthcare is so expensive

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Five months after Hurricane Maria barrelled through Puerto Rico, much of the island remains “largely unliveable”, says emergency medicine physician Jeremy Samuel Faust. One knock-on effect of this is that America is drastically short of a staple item of hospital equipment: intravenous fluids for use in drips. The shutdown of several Puerto Rican factories that together produce upwards of 40% of the IV fluid that American patients rely on, means that the supply of these bags is drying up in hospitals such as mine.

However, far from being a disaster, it has actually had the welcome effect of forcing some sensible economising. We’ve long known that, for patients who can keep liquid down, IV drips are not essential. You can just as easily hydrate these patients using a glass of water with a bit of salt and sugar dissolved in it – that’s all IV fluid really is. Yet US doctors have a terrible habit of always reaching for the more expensive, intrusive option. The shortage of IV bags has forced hospitals to save them for people who really need them, and to give everyone else oral solutions. It has worked fine and saved a fortune. “If we could just do this in other areas of treatment before a crisis hit, then we’d truly be getting ahead.”
(Jeremy Samuel Faust, Slate)

Part of the reason for the cost of medicine in the US is the litigiousness of the public and the high cost of medical insurance for doctors. There are 1.34 million lawyers in the US, and law schools are graduating 44,000 more every year. There are about 93,000 American personal injury lawyers, all seeking an income, plus an unknown number of patients all too ready to sue, justifiably or not. The situation is not helped by the fact that there are 210,000 preventable deaths in American hospitals (the American Hospitals Association claim the figure to be 98,000, still a hugely troublesome statistic). Doctors are so afraid of litigation that they submit patients to three expensive procedures where one might be deemed sufficient in Europe. Maybe the more procedures the more likelihood of mistakes? Now American lawyers can see fresh opportunities as the British NHS is gradually privatised under the rubric “profits to the companies, costs to the taxpayer”. But more about the NHS and its death by a hundred cuts on another occasion.

Is anti-Semitism a significant problem in Britain and America?

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The first post I’ve done in a long time. I’m at the busiest time of my degree, so yet again I don’t know when I’ll be able to post next. Apologies. But this is a huge issue at the moment, so I felt the need to address it. 

Anti-Semitism is on the increase in both Britain and America. But the phenomenon has very different causes in each country.

In America, anti-Semitism is primarily a product of the extreme right. Jews are often associated with the ‘Deep State’, a conspiracy theory that liberal globalists are always in power, even when patriots like Trump are elected. Jews are seen as plotting to make America more socially liberal and ethnically diverse. Anti-Semites on the American Right point to the fact that most American Jews vote Democrat, and are more likely to sympathise with the plight of non-white minorities than other white Americans. In the US, there has been a notable increase in neo-Nazi and neo-Confederable demonstrations, both of which direct their ire against Jews for subverting their vision of an America dominated by white Protestants. Moreover, the American far right diverges from neoconservatism insofar as they view America’s relationship with Israel to be detrimental to American security; a close relationship with Israel contravenes the notion of ‘America first.’ America is similar to European countries like France, Poland and Hungary in its prevalence of right wing anti-Semitism. However, American anti-Semitism has virtually no clout in today’s Republican Party, which remains pro-Israel and somewhat neoconservative, despite an increase in paleoconservative nationalism and isolationism under Trump.

But in Britain, anti-Semitism is far more common on the far left. The British far right directs its anger at Muslims and EU migrants, but rarely exhibits anti-Semitic views nowadays. Neo-Nazism is less common in Britain than America or continental Europe. Left-wing anti-Semitism partly derives from the fact that unlike American Jews, most British Jews vote for the centre-right Conservative Party. Class hatred plays a role, with the stereotype of the Jewish banker exploiting the ordinary British worker. The British left is far more anti-Israel than the American left, whereas the British right is generally pro-Israel.

Recently, the leader of Britain’s Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, has been accused of anti-Semitism. He failed to denounce an overtly anti-Semitic mural in Tower Hamlets, instead praising it for critiquing capitalism. He has repeatedly met with Islamists, even describing Hezbollah and Hamas as his friends. He was a member of several Facebook groups where anti-Semitic views were publicised. Corbyn is also a long-standing ally of the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who was suspended from Labour for his view that Hitler was a Zionist.

Now I personally have no doubt Corbyn isn’t an anti-Semite. But that doesn’t been he’s innocent. He has repeatedly failed to denounce specific insensitive remarks made by other Labour Party members, instead offering general remarks on the evils of anti-Semitism. He hasn’t explained the ideological origins of left-wing anti-Semitism: class hatred, militant Palestinian nationalism, conspiratorial anti-elitism. In the past, he’s played down the extent to which it is a problem in the British left. He’s also shared platforms with known anti-Semites when he’s approved of their views vis-a-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Western foreign policy. He used to be a regular guest on Iranian state TV, despite anti-Semitic views being pretty prominent there.

Worse is the behaviour of Corbyn’s supporters. Many of whom have expressed the view that anti-Semitism has been exaggerated by the conservative press in order to discredit Corbyn. They remain relentlessly partisan, refusing to accept that there’s a problem. Jewish Labour MPs like Luciana Berger, who say they’ve received racist abuse online, are ignored or dismissed out of hand. They constantly try to divert attention away from issue, preferring to attack the Conservatives than address the issue head-on.

What Corbyn needs to do is reassure Jewish Labour members that anti-Semitism is a significant problem that will be taken very seriously from now on. He needs to make it plain that anti-Semites cannot ever share a platform with any Labour members, even if they hold left-wing views on all other issues. He needs to demonstrate that he understands the specific reasons why there is anti-Semitism on the left. He should also apologise for his past track record.

If he does all that, the current scandal need not be an impediment for Labour. The party has a good record of supporting equality and anti-discrimination legislation. It is perceived to be notably more socially liberal and welcoming of ethnic diversity than the Conservatives. Their liberalism, combined with the shortfall in local government funding, should result in a successful sweep for Labour in May’s local elections, where they could win Conservative London boroughs like Barnet, Wandsworth and Westminster. The electorate have notoriously short memories, and most of them aren’t following the scandal closely anyway. More importantly, 99.6% of Britain’s population isn’t Jewish. Non-Jews may care about anti-Semitism. But they also care about public services, and I predict they will vote accordingly.

Wars we barely know about, funded lavishly

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America’s wars spread continually — there are now seven of them, and they never end; and yet, if you happen to live in the United States, most of the time it would be easy enough to believe that, except for the struggle against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, there were no conflicts underway. The Afghan War is now 15 years old and heating up again as the Taliban takes more territory and U.S. operations there grow, but it was missing in action in the 2016 election campaign. Neither presidential candidate debated or discussed it. And yet, there are 10,000 U.S. troopsand numerous private contractors) still based there, along with the U.S. air force power. The Pentagon refers to it as a conflict that will continue well into the 2020s. It is simply a war that time forgot. Similar things might be said about American operations in Somalia and in Libya. Nor is the intensity of the air war in Syria or Iraq much emphasized or grasped by the American public.

Then there’s the grim, devastating and gruesome war that couldn’t be forgotten because, in essence, just about no one here noticed it in the first place. I’m speaking of the U.S-backed Saudi war aimed at impoverished Yemen. It’s a conflict in which the actual American stake couldn’t be foggier and yet the Obama administration supported it every way imaginable, and it has been inherited by Trump. Most of the time, from an American point of view, it might as well not be happening. There is evidently no good moment to bring up the subject of where American bombs are falling on our planet, so why not now? (Tom Despatch).

And now the Trump Administration has pushed through another huge hike in the money spent on the military in his new budget. It has just passed because it is now regarded as unpatriotic to query whether the money is being spent well. Epicurus abhorred wars, which were unusually unpleasant during his lifetime. I wonder what he would think of all the un-won wars being conducted by the United States, paid for on borrowed money in aid of – what exactly? To keep those employed by the military-industrial complex profitable? When the history of the former American empire is written, it will be the useless drain on money and resources devoted to military adventures that will be the focus of historians.

Wine glasses get ever bigger

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We’re not just drinking more wine than our forebears: we’re drinking it from ever-bigger glasses. A team from the University of Cambridge analysed 411 wine glasses and found that the ones we use today are, on average, almost seven times larger than those used in the Georgian era, having grown from 66ml in the early 1700s to 449ml today. Various factors explain the increase, including the end of a tax on glassware in 1845; the rise of automated glass production in the late Victorian era; and a growing fashion in the late 20th century for very large glasses that would allow the wine to “breathe”.

If you go out to dinner and your place setting has a huge wine glass, a “normal” serving of wine looks pathetic in it. If I am serving wine I want to look hospitable and reasonably generous and fill the glasses at least a third, if not half, full. You can thereby demolish a bottle before guests even start to eat.

Yes, you have guessed it! The current fashion for huge glasses has been engineered to sell more wine. Surprise! Surprise! Actually, it is neither potentially good for the guest nor good for the pocket to serve so much alcohol. Unlike most things in life, however, one can do something about it. I have made an executive decision: when we are in the market for new wine glasses they are going to be of modest size.

Exam cheating in the UK

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Mobile phones have been blamed for a sharp rise in exam cheating. Almost 2,600 pupils were penalised for cheating in their GCSE or A-level exams last summer, up 25% on the previous year. Half of those students had been found with “unauthorised materials” in exam halls; in most cases, this was a phone.

What on Earth is the point of cheating? It is in the personal interest of all children to learn, to learn to learn and to go on doing so throughout life. Do the cheaters take any pleasure in the fact that they “passed” an exam by cheating? Are they proud of it or secretly ashamed, and will it turn out to be a lifetime pattern? In my school two boys were caught with crib sheets on their laps during a public exam. They were immediately expelled from the school. One was in later life jailed for some crime whose details I don’t know, so maybe he was simply a born crook, if there is such a thing. I personally think that it gives one a feeling of self-confidence to actually know the material and be able to put it down on paper lucidly and correctly. It does, however, presume a certain amount of work and concentration in class.

What I would like to know is the meaning of “penalised” in the first sentence above. Your knuckles rapped? A dressing down? Or does it also mean being ignominiously booted out of school? And are teachers constrained when they discipline a child who is an immigrant or a member of a minority or someone with particularly vocal and difficult parents? Because all children should be treated equally. It is during childhood that you learn discipline, self-discipline and how to live in this world with others with self-respect and dignity.

Does having children make you happy?

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Parenthood and happiness are hard to study. One researcher commented, “If you want to understand the causal effect of sleeping pills on somebody’s sleep, you can run placebo trials, but kids can’t be handed out at random to see what effect they have on people”.

What is certain is that across the developed world people are choosing not to have children, thus rejecting what was once considered an inevitable and essential part of the human experience – procreation. Perhaps that’s not so surprising. Having children can have a significant impact on finances, careers and the planet.

Children in the wealthy West are a huge financial commitment. The average middle-class US family has spent more than $245,340 on each child by the time they’re 18. In the UK, the cost of raising a child has swelled 63 per cent since 2003, with childcare alone eating up 27 per cent of the average salary (Centre for Economics and Business Research in London).

Finances aside, there’s an environmental issue. Children can come with a large environmental footprint. In the US you can recycle and bike to work all you want to reduce your carbon emissions, but those gains will be 20 times less than the CO2 impact of having a child, according to a 2009 study from Oregon State University.

Then there is the planet’s “carrying capacity”. United Nations projects that “if current population and consumption trends continue, humanity will need the equivalent of two Earths to support itself. Some have taken this message to heart.

There is now almost half a century of evidence on the relationship between having children and personal happiness. On the negative side, having children makes couples less happy with their sex lives, is associated with depression, sleep-deprivation, and, as one study puts it, “hastens marital decline”. One oft-cited 2006 study co-authored by Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman found that a group of working US mothers ranked childcare 16th out of 19 everyday tasks in terms of positive feeling, just ahead of commuting to and from work, and work itself.

A study of more than 14,000 Australian and German couples, found that mothers reported a sharp rise in stress after the birth of a child – three times that of the father – and that it increased year-on-year until four years after the birth, when the study stopped. Further research that followed more than 2000 first-time German parents, found that the average hit to happiness exacted by the arrival of an infant is greater than a divorce, unemployment or the death of a spouse.

Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychologist at the University of California, Riverside, published a paper in the journal Psychological Science, showing that having children made men (but not women) happier. Others have pointed out it is marriage itself that makes people, especially men, happier. Child rearing is another matter.

The situation seems to be that people who have kids have all sorts of differences from the people who don’t have kids. There are so many variables: income, the helpfulness of relatives, the way the parents have been brought up (happy or unhappy homes), the age of the parents, (for people younger than 30, children are associated, on average, with a decrease in happiness. From 30 to 39, the average effect on happiness is neutral, and at age 40 and above, it’s positive). Studies show that parents’ happiness increases a year or so before the birth of the first child, and then returns to pre-birth levels by the time the baby is about one.

So the true picture is clearly nuanced. Parenthood can boost people’s satisfaction with their lives, apart from their financial circumstances – but for many the money woes associated with children are so great that any additional happiness they felt was swallowed up. (Adapted from an article in the New Scientist).

I think the truth is incredibly complex, as complex as the character and feelings that we all have as humsn beings – up, down, content, confused, frustrated, elated.