Ask the vast majority of American parents, and they will tell you that having kids has made them happier.
The problem with this claim, as common as it is, is that research suggests it just isn’t true. People who have kids in the United States and in many countries around the world report being less happy than people who don’t have kids. Being a parent gives people a sense of purpose and meaning, as well as lifelong social connections. But for some reason, it doesn’t appear to bring American parents more happiness.
Now, new research has shed light on why this might be. In research that will be published in the American Journal of Sociology in September, Jennifer Glass of the University of Texas, Robin Simon of Wake Forest University and Matthew Andersson of Baylor University looked at an expansive data set from 22 European and English-speaking countries to find out how and why parents and non-parents in individual countries rate their happiness.
“The cultural stories about parenthood are that it’s wonderful, children are great, it’s the best thing that happens to us. So why do we actually see these gaps? That’s what motivated the research,” says Glass.
The key to their findings is that not every country experiences a “parenting happiness gap” like the United States does. On average, an American parent reports being 13 percent unhappier than a non-parent in America – the biggest gap in the 22 countries the researchers looked at, followed distantly by Ireland. In 12 other countries, non-parents also described themselves as happier than parents. However, in eight countries – Portugal, Hungary, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Finland, France and Russia – parents actually reported being happier than non-parents.
The researchers conclude that U.S. policies – or, more accurately, the lack of them – are likely to be the fundamental cause of the happiness gap.
The United States provides minimal assistance to parents, including paid parental leave, mandatory paid sick and vacation days, subsidized child care, and work schedule flexibility. And parenthood is also unusually expensive in the United States, due to the high cost of private education and a lack of public subsidies for childcare. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated that a middle-income American family is likely to spend $234,900 to raise a child born in 2011 to age 17. If the kid goes to college, that figure may double.
In contrast, countries like Norway, Sweden, Finland and France have extensive social safety nets and supportive family policies, Glass says. Russia and Hungary continue to maintain certain Soviet-era policies that take care of families. In Portugal and Spain, extended family networks tend to help take care of kids. And all of these countries have more extensive policies to support working families than the United States, Glass said.
“What we found was astonishing,” the researchers write in a briefing that explains their findings. “The negative effects of parenthood on happiness were entirely explained by the presence or absence of social policies allowing parents to better combine paid work with family obligations.”
The two policies that explained the most variation in happiness within a country were the cost of care for the average 2-year-old as a percent of wages, and the total number of paid sick and vacation days mandated by law. Compared with these two policies, paid parental leave had a much smaller, though still observable, effect on the happiness gap.
The researchers also found that the presence of family-friendly policies didn’t appear to decrease the happiness of non-parents in those countries – for example, by increasing their tax dollars or work hours.
The researchers caution that their findings don't mean that American parents are less happy than other parents around the world, as some media outlets have reported. The United States actually ranks second overall on the list in terms of happiness, behind New Zealand and before Denmark. What their findings mean is that American parents and non-parents report the biggest relative difference in happiness among the countries they studied.
Comparing happiness around the world can be a difficult task, the researchers say, because concepts of happiness tend to differ among cultures. So the researchers stick to examining the difference in the happiness reported by parents and non-parents in the same country, saying this measure of “the relative effects of parenting” should help them identify exactly what factors contribute to parental stress.
American parents tend to feel that the challenges they face when raising kids are more of an individual burden than a social problem, Glass says – that if only they were more organized, or if they had more energy, they could do a better job at balancing family and work.
“We have rugged individualism in the U.S. that makes parents feel that others are coping better than they are. But that’s not the case,” she says. “We know that these problems have been endemic for decades now, and we’ve watched the maternal employment rate in the U.S. steadily erode relative to other countries.”
The good news, the researchers say, is that there is nothing inevitable about the parental happiness gap. And there may be some relatively achievable solutions for improving the happiness of American parents – like lowering the average cost or increasing the availability of childcare, or expanding access to paid vacation and sick leave.
Some of these changes are already happening at a city and state level. This year, California boosted family leave benefits, while cities such as Chicago and San Diego established paid sick leave.
But many Americans continue to juggle kids and a job without these safety nets.
“I think that most parents are completely happy with the fact that they had children and can’t imagine not having those children in their lives," says Glass. "But loving your children and feeling devoted to them is not the same thing as having a stress-free experience.”
It happened again this week. Several times, in fact.
I’m a professor at a well-known local university, and my office is located directly across from the elevators. Because I maintain a literal “open-door” policy for my students, visitors often mistake me for the department secretary, as I am the first person they see when the elevator doors open. At this time of year, the same scenario happens repeatedly:
I’m concentrating on something, but out of the corner of my eye I see the elevator doors slide open. It’s a teenage girl and a middle-aged woman, presumably her mother. The parent walks into my office, with the girl trailing sheepishly behind. The mother says, “My daughter will be starting here in the fall. We’ve got a problem with her class schedule.” I try to make eye contact and address the girl as I politely give them directions to the Office of Student Services down the hall, but it’s the mother who apologizes for interrupting me. They leave my office, Mom leading the way with the class schedule in her hand.
Do you see the problem here? The child has been accepted into a major university and is weeks away from starting a difficult area of study, but it’s her parent who is doing all of the talking to get her problem corrected, while she says nothing and appears to be dragged along against her will.
You’re probably familiar with the term “Helicopter Parents,” where parents hover over their children and swoop in to rescue them at the first sign of trouble. At the college level, the physical presence required to hover may be limited, so we are now observing a different parenting style: “Lawnmower Parents.” These are the parents who rush ahead to intervene, saving the child from any potential inconvenience, problem or discomfort.
Lawnmower parenting: rushing ahead to remove perceived obstacles so your child doesn’t have to deal with them herself.
Other variations of this style of parenting include “Snowplow Parents,” “Bulldozer Parents,” and my personal favorite: “Curling Parents,” given the similarity to the Olympic athletes who scurry ahead of the gently thrown stone, frantically brushing a smooth path and guiding the stone towards an exact pre-determined location.
Olympic hopefuls or over-involved parents? Image from Vancouver Sun (available at http://ift.tt/GXOC1w)
All humor aside, this kind of parental behavior can have long-lasting, detrimental effects on your child. Some of these include:
She becomes poorly equipped to deal with routine growing and learning experiences. This includes everything from asking for directions and dealing with an annoying roommate to much broader skills like communicating with superiors, negotiating for something she wants and coping with disappointment.
She doesn’t develop a sense of personal motivation or drive, since she only know how to follow the path that the Lawnmower Parent has already prepared.
She can’t make a decision, big or small, without the guidance of others.
She constantly receives the message that she isn’t good enough to do this herself. In essence, the Lawnmower Parent is repeatedly demonstrating to the child that she cannot be trusted to accomplish things on her own.
Please consider these additional thoughts from a college faculty perspective:
As a result of blatantly abusive behavior of some parents, many universities maintain a policy that all contact from a parent is referred to the administration office. A parent’s request to “just keep this conversation between us” or “don’t tell my daughter that I called you” isn’t likely to be honored, and may actually single your child out to administration for an unflattering reason.
There is some information that we legally cannot reveal to you if your child is over 18 and hasn’t granted us permission. Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), there are scenarios in which the university cannot release the student’s academic record to the parents, regardless of who is paying the tuition. And guess how I find out what I am permitted to reveal to a parent? I need to contact the school administration (see the previous bullet point).
Faculty members are professionals, but if your behavior is threatening, outlandish, repetitive or otherwise inappropriate, there’s a good chance that we’re going to discuss it among ourselves. Your child may quickly gain a reputation within the faculty that is the exact opposite of how you are hoping that she will be received.
Faculty are heavily involved in job searches, writing recommendations, making referrals, and so forth. If a parent has been contacting me to “help” her child through my class, how can I honestly rate that student highly on communication, motivation and maturity to a future employer when I haven’t ever seen the student demonstrate those skills?
How can you avoid becoming a Lawnmower Parent?
School age kids: start practicing now! Let your kid do the talking as often as possible: ordering at restaurants, asking for directions, or calling a friend on the phone to ask for a playdate instead of arranging it yourself via text message.
High school kids: while there is still room for parental involvement at this age, insist that your child attempt all communication on her own first. If she needs to miss a quiz and do a make-up, have her make the arrangements with the teacher, and only intervene AFTER she has made the first attempt on her own. If she has a conflict between track practice and music lessons, have her discuss the possibilities with the involved groups, then have her make the decision and deal with the potential consequences.
Kids of all ages: TRUST your kid to do well, and tell her repeatedly that you believe that she can make good decisions on her own. Give her room to make mistakes, even major ones sometimes, and learn from them together.
As parents, we will inevitably watch our kids struggle, feel uncomfortable and even fail. As painful as that can be, you aren’t doing your child any favors by trying to shield her from this part of life or solve her problems for her. Instead, give her opportunities to learn strength and self-confidence, so she can handle future challenges with grace.
About Karen Fancher
Karen Fancher is a “relapsed Pittsburgher.” Raised near Latrobe, PA, she studied pharmacy at Duquesne University but was lured away by the sunny skies of Florida shortly after graduation. She spent 10 years in Tampa, and during that time acquired an insightful daughter, a kindhearted son, a Midwestern husband and a spoiled cat (but not in that order). In 2010, the entire crowd relocated home to Pittsburgh. She is currently a professor in Duquesne University’s School of Pharmacy, where she teaches oncology. When she’s not on an adventure with her family, you can find her cooking, reading or daydreaming about musical legend Sting.
Can we talk for a minute about parents who ignore their kids when they are being disruptive?
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: A foreign language school in our area offered a story time for kids ages 4 to 6 at our local library. Each week, the stories and songs were conducted in a different language. I thought that sounded neat, so I took my 5-year-old one week. There were six or seven other families there with their preschool and kindergarten-aged children. The kids sat on the floor in front of the storyteller, and the parents all watched from benches on the perimeter a few feet back.
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The storytime started off with some fun greetings, all in Italian. Ciao, bella! Then the storyteller pulled out some puppets and props and started telling a story.
A few minutes into it, a little girl walked up to the storyteller and started pulling on his puppet. He just smiled, held his hand up out of her reach, and continued telling the story. So she started jumping up to try to get the puppet. Then a little boy started trying to grab the other props sitting in front of the storyteller. The storyteller barely broke stride, moving the props behind him as he continued the story of the piccolo bambino. Undeterred, the little girl and boy both tried to reach behind him to get to the other props. The storyteller did his best to ask them to sit down, which they did for about three seconds before trying to grab his props again.
All of this was terribly disruptive, but not altogether surprising behavior for preschoolers. What was surprising was the fact that the parents were right there, watching the whole thing, without saying a word to their children. I kept looking over at them, waiting for them to intervene, but nope — nothing but adoring smiles.
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This was not the first time I’ve witnessed parents watch their children ruin experiences for other people. I’ve seen parents let their toddler try to climb onstage during someone’s musical performance. I’ve been in movie theaters where parents brought a fussy baby and didn’t take them out when they started to cry. Did you see the news story of the two women filming two little boys breaking a glass sculpture behind a rope barrier at an art museum in China? Just lovely.
I am a huge fan of not judging parents, but I cannot for the life of me imagine a legitimate reason to watch your kids ruin something — either an actual thing or an experience — without attempting to stop them.
Is this hands-off parenting gone awry? Is it deluded parents thinking their kids are simply adorable, so everyone else must too? Is it parents thinking their children have a right to do whatever they want, regardless of how it affects others? Is it just general cluelessness? I seriously want to understand the mentality that it takes to watch your kid disrupt a performance or destroy someone’s creation and not raise a finger or say a word.
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I’m not one who believes that kids are all too entitled these days. I’m not a “kids these days” kind of person at all. I think, for the most part, the kids are all right. But I’m growing more and more weary of parents who think bad behavior is cute. It’s really not.
I’m not a confrontational person by nature, so I didn’t feel comfortable at that story time stepping in and telling the kids to stop trying to grab the freaking props. And I shouldn’t have to when their parents are sitting right there watching this unfold. I felt really sorry for the storyteller, who was clearly irritated but trying desperately not to show it. (He was, after all, basically trying to get parents to sign up for foreign language classes at his school.) I did finally hit my wit’s end and was just about to say something, but then the story was finished and the storyteller quickly moved on.
I know there are hundreds of ways to raise children, and I respect that different parenting styles work for different people. But there is such a thing as basic, common courtesy. If my child were trying to grab a storyteller’s props, I would gently pull him back and tell him to stop. If he continued, I would make him sit with me. If he still continued, we’d leave. This seems like basic parenting 101, no?
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Kids with special needs get a little extra leeway, I think. I know there are certain developmental delays and challenges that can cause outbursts or noises, and I don’t think that special needs kids should be prevented from enjoying a performance. But even then, there have to be some limits to how disruptive a kid is allowed to be without intervention. Basic social etiquette can be learned by almost anyone, but it does have to be taught. (None of the kids in my stories above fit any special needs descriptions, by the way. I just want to acknowledge that there are instances where a little noise or errant behavior might be expected and tolerated.)
The bottom line is that parents need to stop watching their kids be jerks. If your child is being disruptive, interrupting someone’s performance or affecting others’ enjoyment of it, please make them stop. If you see your kid breaking clearly laid out rules, please make them stop. If you see your kid being flat-out rude, please make them stop — at least make a freaking attempt, for crying out loud.
No kid is an exception to common sense manners, no matter how special or adorable their parents think they are. Isn’t that something we can all agree on?
"The game concept was proposed by a former employee while working at the studio," said an Activision spokesperson in a statement to IGN, "but was not seriously considered nor requested to move to prototype.”
Apparently proposed by Skylanders studio Vicarious Visions, the concept centred around both first- and third-person gameplay, and would have had players taking on various military roles throughout the Roman Empire. Only a single level was created, however.
Andreas Halvorsen's hedge fund firm Viking Global has filed a 13G regarding its position in Calpine (CPN). Per the filing, Viking now owns 5.7% of Calpine with over 20.5 million shares.
This marks an increase of over 10 million shares since the end of the first quarter when Viking owned 10.49 million shares. The latest filing was made due to activity on June 23rd.
Per Google Finance, Calpine is "a power generation company. The Company is engaged in the ownership and operation of primarily natural gas-fired and geothermal power plants in North America. The Company's segments include West (including geothermal), Texas and East (including Canada). In the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, the Company has generating units capable of burning either natural gas or fuel oil. The Company operates its business through various divisions and subsidiaries. The Company's portfolio consists of various types of power generation technologies, including natural gas-fired combustion turbines, which include combined-cycle plants and renewable geothermal conventional steam turbines. Its Geysers Assets located in northern California represent the geothermal power generation portfolio in the United States, as well as the producing power generation asset of all renewable energy in the state of California."
No one says, "I'm going to be unfair to this person today, brutal in fact, even though they don't deserve it or it's not helpful."
Few people say, "I know that this person signed the contract and did what they promised, but I'm going to rip them off, just because I can."
And it's quite rare to have someone say, "I'm a selfish narcissist, and everyone should revolve around me merely because I said so."
In fact, all of us have a narrative. It's the story we tell ourselves about how we got here, what we're building, what our urgencies are.
And within that narrative, we act in a way that seems reasonable.
To be clear, the narrative isn't true. It's merely our version, our self-talk about what's going on. It's the excuses, perceptions and history we've woven together to get through the world. It's our grievances and our perception of privilege, our grudges and our loves.
No one is unreasonable. Or to be more accurate, no one thinks that they are being unreasonable.
That's why we almost never respond well when someone points out how unreasonable we're being. We don't see it, because our narrative of the world around us won't allow us to. Our worldview makes it really difficult to be empathetic, because seeing the world through the eyes of someone else takes so much effort.
It's certainly possible to change someone's narrative, but it takes time and patience and leverage. Teaching a new narrative is hard work, essential work, but something that is difficult to do at scale.
In the short run, our ability to treat different people differently means that we can seek out people who have a narrative that causes them to engage with us in reasonable ways. When we open the door for these folks, we're far more likely to create the impact that we seek. No one thinks they're unreasonable, but you certainly don't have to work with the people who are.
And, if you're someone who finds that your narrative isn't helping you make the impact you seek, best to look hard at your narrative, the way you justify your unreasonableness, not the world outside.
Around 2003 I came across Charlie Munger’s 1995 speech, The Psychology of Human Misjudgment, which introduced me to how behavioral economics can be applied in business and investing. More profoundly, though, it opened my mind to the power of seeking out and applying mental models across a wide array of disciplines.
A mental model is just a concept you can use to help try to explain things (e.g. Ockham’s Razor — “the simplest solution is usually the correct one”). There are tens of thousands of mental models, and every discipline has their own set that you can learn through coursework, mentorship, or first-hand experience.
There is a much smaller set of concepts, however, that come up repeatedly in day-to-day decision making, problem solving, and truth seeking. As Munger says, “80 or 90 important models will carry about 90% of the freight in making you a worldly‑wise person.”
This post is my attempt to enumerate the mental models that are repeatedly useful to me. This set is clearly biased from my own experience and surely incomplete. I hope to continue to revise it as I remember and learn more.
How-to Use This List
I find mental models are useful to try to make sense of things and to help generate ideas. To actually be useful, however, you have to apply them in the right context at the right time. And for that to happen naturally, you have to know them well and practice using them.
Therefore, here are two suggestions for using this list:
For mental models you don’t know or don’t know well, you can use this list as a jumping off point to study them. I’ve provided links (mainly to Wikipedia) to start that process.
When you have a particular problem in front of you, you can go down the relevant sections of the list, and see if any of the models could possibly apply.
Notes
The numbers next to each mental model reflect the frequency with which they come up: (1) — Frequently (61 models) (2) — Occasionally (41 models) (3) — Rarely, though still repeatedly (84 models)
If studying new models, I’d start with the lower numbers first.
I am not endorsing any of these concepts as normatively good; I’m just saying they have repeatedly helped me explain and navigate the world.
In a scandalous announcement, FBI director James Comey moments ago said that "although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information" and he gave extensive evidence of just that, "our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case." He added that "prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past."
Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer— Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
What is even more shocking is that according to Comey, "we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts."
U.S. Magistrate Judge Kendall J. Newman immediately sentenced Nishimura to two years of probation, a $7,500 fine, and forfeiture of personal media containing classified materials. Nishimura was further ordered to surrender any currently held security clearance and to never again seek such a clearance.
According to court documents, Nishimura was a Naval reservist deployed in Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008. In his role as a Regional Engineer for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, Nishimura had access to classified briefings and digital records that could only be retained and viewed on authorized government computers. Nishimura, however, caused the materials to be downloaded and stored on his personal, unclassified electronic devices and storage media. He carried such classified materials on his unauthorized media when he traveled off-base in Afghanistan and, ultimately, carried those materials back to the United States at the end of his deployment. In the United States, Nishimura continued to maintain the information on unclassified systems in unauthorized locations, and copied the materials onto at least one additional unauthorized and unclassified system.
Nishimura’s actions came to light in early 2012, when he admitted to Naval personnel that he had handled classified materials inappropriately. Nishimura later admitted that, following his statement to Naval personnel, he destroyed a large quantity of classified materials he had maintained in his home. Despite that, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation searched Nishimura’s home in May 2012, agents recovered numerous classified materials in digital and hard copy forms. The investigation did not reveal evidence that Nishimura intended to distribute classified information to unauthorized personnel.
This case was the product of an investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant United States Attorney Jean M. Hobler prosecuted the case
It doesn't end there.
Here is former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker who told CNBC moments ago, that in his view Comey should have brought charges as "he seemed to be building a case for that and he laid out what I thought were the elements under the gross negligence aspect of it, so I was very surprised at the end when he said that there was a recommendation of no prosecution and also given the fact-based nature of this and the statement that no reasonable prosecutor would entertain prosecution, I don't think that's the standard."
His conclusion: "The facts are the facts, and in this case I think there are a lot of things that are very unusual about this."
And then there is Ian Bremmer who said that "it's very clear that in trying to make it go away actually lied, repeatedly, about whether or not these materials were classified at the time. And it's the cover up frequently that gets people in trouble, it's not the actual misdeed. This was very badly mishandled by Hillary all the way through."
But then she got some much needed help from the FBI to complete the cover up.
In retrospect, perhaps former Attorney General Eric Holder said it best when he justified with the US DOJ simply refuses to bring up criminal cases against those it deems "too big to prosecute":
if you do bring a criminal charge it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps world economy
And just like that, Hillary is "systemically important", if mostly for her countless Wall Street donors.