Chronicles of Chaos

April 11, 2011 | Print

Older Parents Are Happier

In the Sunday paper I notice the article, “Older Parents Find More Joy in Their Bundles” and immediately think, Aha! My suspicions are correct–mothers 40 and up are happier compared to the unhappy women in their 20s and 30s slogging it out with career and kids.

My theory has been that women who have kids in their 40s have achieved certain milestones in career and life, except and perhaps notably for some, having children. They’ve seen the world and advanced their piece. Older moms also have reached an age where pregnancy becomes more challenging, giving the joy of bearing or adopting or surrogating a child greater resonance.

I read through the article and discover the new research has more to do with parents in general in their 40s and older who have children than my older first time parent definition. In other words I might be happier in my 40s with my 10, 7 and 5 year olds just like my happier 40 something neighbor with her newborn. My happiness may come from the liberation of the 8 to 3 school day, while hers originates with a six month old’s smile. For 50 year olds and up, the more children they have, the happier they feel. Again, in opposition to the under 40s who get less and less happy with each additional child.

Eventually I take myself back to the research study itself, “A Global Perspective on Happiness and Fertility”. I have no time to read the study in detail, as despite reaching my 40s levels of glee do not yet runneth over to allow forays into written items longer than four paragraphs. There’s one line from the abstract that strikes me:

[I]n addition, analyses by welfare regime show that the negative fertility/ happiness association for younger adults is weakest in countries with high public support for families, and the positive association above age 40 is strongest in countries where old-age support depends mostly on the family.

When young parents have public support, the weight of child rearing lightens. And consistently, older parents who have less public support place greater value on the emotional and financial support of their children. Family as support system is a reality I associate mostly with old European novels. I take responsibility for my children’s care and will help my parents in their old age, but I see these realities as things that I do and will do rather than a greater cultural continuum.

At the library, I recently stumbled across Vendela Vida’s The Lovers (a lovely small and short novel). She writes about a mother in her 50s awakening to a new stage in her life, one in which she needs her adult children differently and more than she ever expected. I don’t think there’s a perspective shift great enough to erase the sleepless nights with young children or the stress of whether and how to work or stay home. I do, however, like layering a larger vision of family, an intergenerational theme, on the day to day toils. Because that gravitas is what I admired in my theoretical first time 40 year old moms–that they had been free to sort themselves out so by the time children arrive, they take the fatigue and uncertainties in stride and focus on the joy. But maybe it’s as simple as older is wiser as I find myself focused on the joy more and more.

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