The Role of Money, Children and Marriage in Happiness

I hope I’m not giving you too much here about happiness. I’ve been fascinated by the topic, the fact there are entire scholarly journals on happiness studies. This TED talk presents a Harvard Professor presenting the impact of Money, Children and Marriage on happiness…The results are interesting.

1. Money does produce happiness, but the happiness per dollar gets less and less the more money you get.

2. Good marriages produce more happiness than being single after the honeymoon period happiness falls to a level that is higher than being single.

3. Divorce increases happiness if the marriage is bad.

4. Children do not produce happiness. There is a joy spike, particularly for women after birth, but happiness falls to a level that is below their happiness as single people.

…I found it interesting to run typical Mormon philosophy through these filters to see what they say about certain Mormon attitudes toward marriage, tithing, divorce, and having boatloads of children.

To be honest, I’m not sure happiness was ever a primary specific goal that Church leaders were really aiming for with some of their most heavily emphasized teachings and policies. Instead it seems like much of this is more about doing your perceived duty and conforming to established LDS expectations. Sure Church leaders will give some lip service to happiness but as far as I can tell that is largely based on magical thinking (I.E. God will supposedly bless you if you do what you are supposed to) and assumptions such as that God supposedly designed us to fulfill these expected roles (so in theory they should lead to more happiness than going against our supposed purpose in life). So it’s no surprise that Church leaders are apparently happy to let many Church members believe they should pay a full 10% of their income as tithing even if they have to go increasingly into debt and can’t afford to pay their bills, they should go ahead and get married and have many children as soon as possible and not wait to finish college or have a decent career first, and that women should be stay-at-home moms as much as possible.

But do Church leaders even want to know about any cases where these expectations don’t work out so well for Church members much less acknowledge the possible role of these expectations in actual real life results? Not as far as I can tell. And for all their talk about the importance of families and “traditional” marriage between one man and one woman my guess is that the Church itself is already more of a threat to “traditional” marriage than some of their favorite boogeymen/scapegoats of choice like same-sex marriage and porn/nudity due to A) the threat of divorce when one marriage partner loses faith in the Church and some members never getting married in the first place because they think they can only date and seriously consider marrying a “worthy” Church member in the temple. Church leaders could easily come out and make a strong statement that loss of belief in the Church by itself is not a good reason to seriously consider divorce (1 Corinthians 7:12-14) but instead we typically hear about how bad, wrong, unacceptable, and scary the outside world supposedly is which tends to have the opposite effect.

Money doesn’t make you happy, it just makes you comfortable.

I think church leaders almost all believe what they teach – and, in particular, that marriage is better than being single for doctrinal AND practical reasons.

I am happier being married than being single – and it isn’t close. I am happier having kids than not having them – and it isn’t close. I think leaders are the same way. They genuinely love their spouses and children and wouldn’t return to being single if they were paid.

I also think that, in general, moderation is better than extremes – and that applies to pretty much all of your questions / issues. It is interesting to look at the family sizes of the Q12. The rule in the top half is lots of kids; the rule in the bottom half is not lots of kids.

I skimmed a news feed that said that Elder Cook recently gave a talk at a BYU devotional where he talked about the subject of abortion, people having fewer kids, and the threat of birthrates lowering to the point where the population won’t be replaced. Sounds fun. I haven’t listened to the talk myself, I don’t care to, it was called A Banquet of Consequences for Pete’s sake. Which one of these emoticons represents a leer? :problem: I take it ♩ Jesus Loves Me, This I Know. ♫ isn’t going to be added to the hymnal any time soon. :angel:

One thing that stood out to people that did listen to the talk:

He asked everyone that was born 3rd or later in the birth order to stand up. He said that if people continued the trend of having fewer children all the people you see standing wouldn’t have been born. Anyone interested can watch the linked video to verify. If true I find that lol worthy. Isn’t it doctrine that all spirits will eventually be born? If one couple doesn’t provide a body for a spirit doesn’t that mean some other couple in the future will… and due to the later birth they’d be born into an even more choice generation to boot!

My guess is that Elder Cook is concerned with membership growth. Children of record are a large contributor to the overall growth of the church. When compared to converts, children of record baptisms may be roughly half in number each year but I bet the retention rate among them is much higher than it is among converts.

I’ll take your challenge to run each of these through a church teachings filter. Challenge accepted!

I think I’m going to take my own challenge too. I’m going to react to the research findings using the concepts I hear at church, in lessons, over the pulpit, and from other members. My comments represent what I would expect to hear from traditional believers if I presented this research to them.

1. Money does produce happiness, but the happiness per dollar gets less and less the more money you get.

Traditional response: Money is just a distraction from the important spiritual things in this life. Happiness comes from living the gospel and obeying commandments. In fact, having money doesn’t produce happiness because the wealthy become proud and stiffnecked. This leads to sin, adversity, and often, being poor again. And this adversity and sometimes, resulting poverty is actually good because it keeps you humble, and turns your heart back to to God.

2. Good marriages produce more happiness than being single after the honeymoon period happiness falls to a level that is higher than being single.

Traditional believers would accept this finding because it’s consistent with the cultural norm to get married young, and stay married.

3. Divorce increases happiness if the marriage is bad.

Traditional response — what Hawkgrrl said “We try not to think about that . . .” When I mentioned this in a HPG lesson a couple weeks ago, the teacher let out a disclaimer after my statement that “no one should read anything into SD’ statement about divorce”. [I’ve made his statement a bit harder to make it clear what he was saying]

Non -Traditional perspective (mine) – Here is where we make a mistake. If our object and design of existence is happiness, then we should embrace divorce as a viable path to happiness when marriages are chronically bad and misery-producing.. Sure, we don’t encourage it as a first solution, but we have people even on this forum who are way happier after divorce.

4. Children do not produce happiness. There is a joy spike, particularly for women after birth, but happiness falls to a level that is below their happiness as single people.

Traditional Believer — say WHAAAAAAAAT???? Children don’t bring happiness??? What about all those spirits needing bodies to fulfil the plan of salvation? We are commanded to multiply and replenish the earth! Happiness comes from keeping the commandments — Sacriledge to say children do not bring happiness!!

Remember Proverbs — Children are like arrows and happy is the person’s whose quiver is full of them. There is nothing more joyful than having posterity as many as the sands of the sea. Etcetera. If you decide not to have children when you are capable of it, then you are selfish. And everyone and their dog is going to be asking you why you don’t have children.

So, the traditional Mormon filter would actually reject three of the four findings from the study.

This to me,underscores the importance of NOT believing that following church teachings will never lead you astray. One needs to look at their own lives through the church filter, the research filter, their own personal knowledge of circumsances filter, and do what seems best given the results of the analysis.

Looking back over my own life, I am glad I did not give into the constant pressure from others to have more children. I suspect I’m much happier with only two of them. I believe that the money my wife and I have earned has contributed much to our happiness and that has strengthened our marriage — or at least, not put additional stress on it. I see divorce as a viable option for people who are in chronically bad marriages, when they have tried their very best — particularly if the marriage is affecting their physical and mental health. I agree that being married generates higher levels of happiness than being single due to the incredible ache of loneliness I experienced when I was single in my 20’s (married at 28).

I’m going with the Harvard Research for my own situation, and as a general rule of thumb, allowing for lots of exceptions, for others. I also believe that children in the right doses can bring happiness to some people. I have heard many people who lived their life without children (by choice) bemoaning that fact when they got older. I don’t regret having children, because it fits my own interest in parenting, relationships, training, development, etcetera. And so far, it’s worked out with our children being good kids who make us proud of them. Would I feel this way if my children joined the Church of Satan and became famous axe murderers? I question if I would be as happy.

But I wouldn’t say children are necessarily a source of constant or regular joy. At times, they made me miserable (see my posts on my sort of rejecting attitude of my daughter when she hit late teenage years and adulthood). And the disability my son has is a constant source of anxiety, worrisome expense when we lose our benefits, and sorrow in our family. But we love him and want him, and wouldn’t trade him for anyone else though.

Yeah, I often note that children used to be an asset (more “free” household labor for the farm) and are now a liability (clothes, child care, tuition, cars, insurance, bail outs). Oh, for the child labor laws of the 1800s!