Friday, April 17, 2009

According to This, Jocelyn and I Shouldn't Be Very Happy

Especially as we continue to await the birth of our — gasp! — fifth child in the last 6+ years.

By "this", I mean the results of A New Study conducted by People Who Allegedly Know What They're Talking About who have declared:

Kids Curb Marital Satisfaction



Funny. We're actually pretty "satisfied" with our marriage right now.

Imagine that.

Mark Shea comments thusly:

For our culture terminal narcissism, this is a big deal, since it conceives of marriage, like everything else, as a tool for self-fulfillment and instant gratification. That's why it bothers to undertake studies like this.

Of course, there is another way of seeing it: kids force adolescent narcissists to grow up and realize it's not all about Me. Those who submit to this process of "growing up" discover newer and deeper forms of satisfaction than the pleasure of being a newlywed. Part of that whole "lose your life and you will find it" paradox that is soooooo out of step with our consumer culture.


I'm going out on a limb and guessing that maybe, just maybe, decades of increasingly ubiquitous contraception — and the anti-child ethos from whence contraception cometh — might just have some impact on couples' attitudes toward having children.

You know, the same anti-child ethos that gives us condom ads like these, which apparently won an award at Cannes in 2006:



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