Jennifer Senior (pictured) is a New York Times Op-Ed columnist and the author of a book called All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood. I haven't read it, but the title, which I guess is just the flip reply of a new father she knew to her inevitable question, indicates that the book doesn't altogether accept the notion that new babies are a source of joy in the lives of their parents. Indeed a conclusion of social science, consistent through the years, is that adults self-report being, if anything, a little less happy after becoming parents. It isn't that hard to understand. You had gotten used to living for yourself and suddenly 8 pounds of puling neediness that does not for years let up, and the rewards for your sustained efforts uncertain. But I'm not sure the "paradox" is "modern." Here is the internal monologue of a character in a 19th-century Russian novel (Anna Karenina) as she travels to a relative's house:
Dolly shuddered at the mere thought of the pain she had endured from sore nipples, from which she had suffered with almost every baby. 'Then the children's illnesses, that continued anxiety; then their education, nasty tendencies. . . . It is all so incomprehensible and difficult. . . . And what is it all for? What will come of it all? I myself, without having a moment's peace, now pregnant, now nursing, always cross and grumbling, tormenting myself and others, repulsive to my husband—I shall live my life, and produce unfortunate, badly brought-up and beggared children. . . . Well, supposing the best: that none of the other children die, and that I somehow succeed in bringing them up; at the very best they will only escape being ne'er do wells. That is all I can hope for. And for this, so much suffering and trouble. . . . My whole life ruined!'
It seems the author understood what Mrs Tolstoy was experiencing in the other rooms while he was holed up in the study with his manuscripts, self-actualizing. Toward the end of his life, Tolstoy became a religious fanatic, intent upon giving away his wealth and renouncing his copyrights. You can imagine what Mrs Tolstoy thought of that. Finally, time for some ease and comfort only to find that now she's married to John the Baptist. Fine for him to apostrophize on happiness and the meaning of it all!
Though she's a political columnist with her guns often pointed at the Narcissist-in-Chief, Senior seems to have carved out for herself a secondary beat that might be described as happiness-and-the-meaning-of-it-all, with a particular interest in the insights of social science. Here, for example, is her long and I think engrossing article about Philip Brickman, a psychologist and co-author of a paper that introduced the terms "hedonic treadmill" and "hedonic paradox." The social science data point that gave rise to these terms concerns how transformative life events, both good and bad, appear to have surprisingly little effect upon satisfaction, happiness, and contentedness. Lottery winners and people paralyzed in car crashes in time return to the vicinity of a "set point" for happiness, as if there were some kind of internal thermostat with a preset temperature: the needle wobbles with the weather but always settles near the degree mark God or DNA determined. It seems that our adaptive capacities deserve either the credit or blame. Regarding the striving high achievers whom we may eye enviously: they become almost immediately acclimated to the more rarefied air and, instead of enjoying the view, keep their sights fixed upward upon elevations not yet attained. Their successes therefore only fleetingly boost their life satisfaction. This is the "treadmill" and "paradox" described by Brickman.
But, again, while Brickman and his colleague may have introduced new vocabulary, the idea itself doesn't seem new. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who died in 1860, compared the desire for riches to guzzling seawater: "the more we drink, the thirstier we become," he wrote, before adding that the same could be said of fame. It isn't hard to see that a treadmill and an unslaked thirst are representations of the same idea. Schopenhauer had a keen interest in the texts of eastern religions, where he would have found the same diagnosis in, for example, Buddhism's "four noble truths." The Buddha lived around 2500 years ago. That the social sciences are investigating and describing problems about as old as written records of human thought suggests that the diagnosis is more obvious than the cure—a conclusion that might tend to be confirmed by the fact that Brickman, a pioneer of human happiness studies, committed suicide at age 38. Senior's exploration of his successful professional life, centered on of all things happiness research, and his own distressed private life is more absorbing than most things one finds in a daily newspaper.
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