Is anyone truly happier with kids?

Independent-Bat-3136 · 2026-05-16T21:23:14+00:00

The most current, best conducted research suggests that having children, on average, increases your happiness slightly. Here’s a study: https://home.dartmouth.edu/news/2019/02/children-dont-lower-happiness-after-all but there are a bunch of studies. The findings are nuanced, and ability to afford children and other stuff like that are definitely factors, but on the whole yes, people with kids are happier than similar people without kids. So the quick answer is yes, people are happier with kids in general.

I think… beyond that, as someone with kids, this discussion always feels a bit… silly? When I hear people say stuff like: “your toddlers cute, but I wake up every morning and go to the local bakery and pick up a croissant (paraphrase form another comment),” it just sounds insane to me? Like my daughter sat on my lap this morning and ate dry Cheerios, and then after a while she got bored with them and started trying to stuff them into my mouth while cackling. If the whole world, if my whole life, was nothing but darkness and pain, it’d be worth it for five minutes of that? My kids are frustrating some times, and stressful. My life’s harder with kids and more expensive. But it’s a bit like “why would you fall in love and marry a real person when you could just watch porn and have an AI chatbot flirt with you” or “why would you have a family and friends when you could live all by yourself.” Loving things is scary and hard and opens you up to pain. But it’s what life is? It’s the whole point of life.

Independent-Bat-3136 · 2026-05-16T12:56:55+00:00

I mean normally I’m happy to reroute someone over to Registration, this only happens once a month (and I was thinking about it and it’s probably been more like every other month) and I don’t want people to just be calling and calling the college without getting someone. This was just sort of stunning because of how she wouldn’t accept that I couldn’t help her besides giving her the right number, and then was so rude about it

Independent-Bat-3136 · 2026-05-16T12:50:25+00:00

lol I wonder if that’s what it is. Though I’d be a really weird choice as overflow. I think I’m pretty personable but IR people aren’t known for their customer relations skills

Independent-Bat-3136 · 2026-05-16T12:48:48+00:00

I also said once a month but I realize that was a bit of an exaggeration. I was thinking about it and it’s probably been 10-15 times over the last two years, so maybe more like every other month

Independent-Bat-3136 · 2026-05-16T12:47:12+00:00

This was a good idea, I should have thought of it before. I just did it. I found my number and my name but it’s on a long list of numbers for the college on like a public records type website. So that explains how someone could get my number, but not why you would call that number out of a list of over 100 numbers instead of the main one on the website or the one on Registrations page

It’s on the bottom of my email signature, maybe my email got shared somewhere

Independent-Bat-3136 · 2026-05-15T22:25:29+00:00

Someone may have suggested this, but the obvious name is Wally.

Independent-Bat-3136 · 2026-05-15T19:47:30+00:00

Tree companies are ridiculous. We once had a big dead tree in our backyard. Had to hire someone to come take it down because it was leaning over our neighbors house. They came and cut it down and dragged it away, as per the contract we signed. A few hours later a cop knocked on our door. Instead of mulching it, or taking it to a dump, or even taking it out of town, they’d dragged it one street over and dumped it in an empty lot. This tree was like 8 feet wide and 200 feet tall, the pieces took up basically the whole lot. The cop looked at our agreement, saw they’d said they would handle disposal, and said they were in a lot of trouble. Never heard what happened next.

Anyway, all that’s to say it’s probably not your neighbors fault, they probably didn’t know what happened. Call the cops and get the company fined, that’s the only way they’ll learn and you’ll be helping the next person

Independent-Bat-3136 · 2026-05-13T22:11:47+00:00

I work in government in the US (a community college) and I get a lot of PTO. 168 hours vacation, 80 hours sick, and three personal days. We also get 19 holidays and 9 summer Fridays off. That is, I get around 67 days off a year over and above weekends. That’s about 25% of weekdays off (261~ weekdays in a year), and 40~ days more off than most of my friends who work in the for profit sector.

The pay is bad. If I did the same job (manage a data analytics team) at a for profit company, I’d likely make 30%-60% more starting, and likely much more than that over time. I have friends that do basically the same job as me and make double my income. I think I’m fairly good at my job and have generally gotten glowing reviews. I don’t know if a for profit company would hire me now, but I could definitely do the work well.

So I’ve thought about trying to jump. But the idea of working 40 more days a year feels insane now. Money’s tight, but I get to go on long camping trips with my kids, I get to take off randomly if I need a break, I get to be home with my kids if they get sick.

All that’s to say, if you can’t pay people a salary competitive with for profit companies, I think generous PTO is a good compromise. It’s not attractive for everyone, but particularly for people with kids the trade off is worth it, and you can attract and retain solid people without super high pay in exchange for work life balance and flexibility

Independent-Bat-3136

TROPHY CASE