Being Parents and Being Happy (What's Your Secret?).

Apparently, the secret to being a happy adult is to not have kids. 

Seriously, according to a New York Magazine article titled "Why Parents Hate Parenting", (about which I've been meaning to blog for a while) having children is proven to NOT make you happier, and having more than one child is pretty much guaranteed to make you less happy.

If you don't have time to read it, let me summarize:

Parenting used to be rewarding because it was productive (we put our kids to work on the farm).

Now, parenting is a chore because instead of having the kids milk the cows, we have to feed them and pay for them to go to university. 

Oh, and because we're all having kids later in life, we've all grown used to our independence and so feel somehow trapped by the ties of our children. Previous generations mostly had kids as soon as they left home and so never knew this freedom.

Finally, though we spend more time with our children than parents did in 1975, we all still feel stressed at the feeling that we don't spend enough time with them, especially men.

So, all of this compelled me to write something about the secrets of successful parenting.

And then I got writer's block. Or more specifically, I got "who-the-hell-am-I-to-preach-about-this-subject" block.

So I talked to Emma about it.

After initially alarming her by bringing up the subject of happiness at all, we came to a swift conclusion that we were generally pretty happy, and so I asked the question: "What would be the one thing that would make you a happier parent?"

She thought about it, then asked me the same question without offering an answer.

Then we both thought about it. For ages.

Then (we were driving to Yosemite at the time) we simultaneously blurted out the same answer: "I'd be happier if I could get more sleep!"

So there you have it: our answer to overcoming the challenges of parenting. And this weekend we are practicing exactly that. Or at least, one of us is.

Emma and a bunch of girlfriends have gone to Tahoe to imbibe copiously and sleep extensively. This - based on the booze-fueled text message I received last night - appears to indeed be making Emma happier! 

For my part, I'm doing my best to distract myself from the sleep deprivation (which I'm sure is doubled for single parents) by cycling, sailing and baseball-ing my way through the weekend. 

My final advice on the subject is that you do the same sometime soon!