All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood

by Jennifer Senior

Meaning, joy, and purpose come from a great variety of sources, not just children. But what’s important here is Marilyn’s more basic observation: a single word, “happiness,” often cannot fully capture these feelings—or countless other emotions that make us feel transcendently human. The awed, otherworldly feeling you get when your infant looks directly into your eyes for the first time is different from the sense of pride you experience when that same kid, years later, lands a perfect double axel, which in turn is different from the sensation of warmth and belonging that consumes you when your widely dispersed family gathers for Thanksgiving. You can try to quantify each of these feelings with a number, certainly, and I don’t underestimate the value of such attempts, for the sake of figuring out ways to get more of them. But in the end, a number is just that—a digit, plotted on a graph. It may reflect the degree to which we feel something, but it entirely lacks dimensionality. These feelings do not strike me as the same in kind. Some, like joy, can hurt almost as much as they elate; others, like duty, run silently in the background, perhaps making our day-to-day lives more difficult, but making our overall lives more worthwhile and more consonant with our values.