UTAH TECH UNIVERSITY'S STUDENT NEWS SOURCE | March 29, 2024

Couples prove to be happier with kids

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Most people would say their most precious memories are made with family and there are more of those memories to be made when you have kids.

I come from a family of six and there is a special feeling when you are around your family. It never really mattered what we were doing. Whether we were playing games, eating or sitting around talking, we enjoyed that time together, and it is one of the things in life that really made me happy. It was always nice to have a sibling to play with, and when one annoyed me, I could always go hang out with another. It helped having someone there the whole time I was growing up.

I don’t have any children of my own yet, but I have a niece and some nephews. It is such a great moment when they take their first steps or say their first words.

Also, being around the ones you love is what makes the holidays so special. Thanksgiving would not mean nearly as much if you and one other person sat around eating turkey. Religious views aside, Christmas would just be another day off of work without the joy of seeing kids wake up to see if Santa Claus came. 

As someone who is recently married, I can’t imagine not having a family like the one I grew up with of my own some day. I am definitely planning on having children. I might wait a while, until I’m not a full-time student, but when I’m going to have children isn’t necessarily as important as the decision to have them or not. My wife and I have always known we wanted to raise a family.  

If you never have children, then you deny yourself so many happy, special moments. Without children, you have a lot more freedom to travel and do things that others can’t when they are raising children, but you are forsaking a lot as well. 

A study done by Princeton University and Stony Brook University stated that there was very little difference in the level of life satisfaction between married couples with children and those without. Married couples that didn’t have children were more satisfied with their marriage whereas married couples with children were more satisfied with their children than their marriage. In the end, I think that it is a bad decision to forgo having children but that it won’t automatically make you have an unhappy life. You just won’t have the types of happiness that families bring.

When you are 70 years old and all you have is your spouse, you will have no one to take care of you, no one to spend your holidays with, and no one who gives you more meaning to your life. Most elderly people live for their grandchildren. Sure, you might have some other old people you can go play bingo with, which is fun every once in a while, but it doesn’t compare to going to a grandchild’s dance recital or football game.

Sure, kids are expensive, loud, dirty, stinky, etc. It’s selfish to say you don’t think you should have to deal with any of those things because it would inconvenience you. Kids aren’t about convenience. Kids are about love and happiness and that, by far, outweigh the piles of dirty diapers.

Don’t sacrifice the love and happiness that you could have with your children and grandchildren for the rest of your life so you can have fun and be adventurous now.  Better yet, you should find ways to have the best of both worlds and bring your kids along with you on all the adventures you want to have.