Ever since there have been human beings, we have, like other animals, reproduced without pause. In most cultures, raising children functions almost like an auto-program installed in the brain. Genuine reflection on parenting itself may be largely a modern development, and a scientific understanding of it has only really emerged over the past half-century.
Does being a parent make people happy? Scholars still disagree: some say yes, some say no. A recent study suggests the relationship between parenting and happiness is complex. Parenting doesn’t directly produce happiness or unhappiness; rather, other factors tip the balance. Researchers found that when parents face more negative emotions, financial strain, sleep problems, and marital conflict, they tend to be unhappy. By contrast, when parents experience a stronger sense of meaning, have basic needs met, feel more positive emotions, and see their social roles reinforced, they tend to feel happy and content.
Let’s pick up from that conclusion. Meeting basic needs happens primarily through work. Positive emotions are partly temperamental but also shaped by learned cognitive regulation. A larger sense of life’s meaning is, of course, largely achieved through cognitive reframing. And social roles require not only mental reframing but also practice. All told, whether one draws happiness from parenting seems to depend mainly on lived practice and cognitive regulation.
But if raising children may not bring joy, why do people still choose to become parents? Regardless of whether parenting makes us happy, most people of sound mind would agree that becoming a mother or father lends profound meaning to life. I believe many parents would agree, and many young adults who haven’t had children—when they think about the long, hard work their own parents put into raising them—would likely agree as well. Some do not, perhaps because they grew up in toxic parenting environments. In reality, intimate relationships and raising children are the two things most likely to saturate a life with meaning—and they’re accessible to most people. You don’t need to do anything grand—becoming a president, discovering a vaccine for cancer or AIDS, or founding a successful company—to make your life meaningful.
Why does parenting bring such a powerful sense of meaning? Because once people become parents, they shoulder a responsibility—a responsibility that can be regarded as selfless. And since self-responsibility is a crucial source of life’s meaning, this major responsibility naturally makes life feel significant.
We’ve all heard moving stories of parenting in which parents seem willing to give everything for their children. These stories resist explanation from a utilitarian point of view.
I’ve heard some fairly extreme stories of the same kind. Some Chinese parents originally felt their days in China were adequate, even comfortable; they held respectable jobs and lived well. Yet once they had children, they resolved—often for a mix of reasons—either to emigrate with their kids or to do everything possible to send them abroad.
On a trip through the American West, I met a mother from Northeast China who now lived in Chicago. She said their family came to the U.S. for one reason: they had been living in Shanghai, but children of non-locals couldn’t attend high school there, so they “left their home behind” and came to America. We couldn’t help but laugh when she used the phrase “leave one’s native soil” (背井离乡)—because in their case, misfortune had turned into a blessing.
Another father I met from Shanghai had far less money. His daughter completed her undergraduate degree in China, but he had long planned to send her to the U.S. for a master’s and told her well in advance to work hard to stay. After graduation she found a job in Seattle—reportedly easygoing and well-paid—and soon bought a three-story house in the suburbs. When the father visited and looked up at the house, he couldn’t help asking, “Did a gust of wind blow all this money in?”—his way of saying, “Money doesn’t just blow in on the wind.” If she had returned to Shanghai, such a life would have been impossible. At one point she considered going back to work in China; he immediately dissuaded her.
Of course, many others, after having children, are compelled to confront various problems in China’s education system and decide to emigrate as a family or send their kids abroad. This motivation isn’t necessarily about blocked educational access at home or the lure of a better material life; it’s primarily ideological—about values and beliefs.
In these more extreme cases, what I see is the parents’ selflessness toward their children. While watching the BBC documentary Planet Earth, one thing struck me deeply: after a polar bear mother raises her cubs, she sends them off to live on their own; in many cases, that parting means goodbye forever. The mother’s mission is to teach her cubs how to face the world—and then give them to the world.
Among humans, cultures differ in their parenting styles, but the cultures most conducive to individual development are those closest to the polar bear model. Why? If parents recognize that their responsibility is to teach their children how to face the world and then send them into it, that means their parenting—at the level of existence itself—does not seek a return. One major advantage of a non-instrumental, individuality-respecting parenting culture is that it allows parents to cultivate an atmosphere of unconditional love and unconditional positive regard. One of Carl Rogers’s great contributions was to show just how essential unconditional positive regard is to a person’s self-actualization.
Of course, I’m not saying parenting is, in itself, a purely selfless act. Reality is more complicated. Clearly parenting isn’t wholly selfless: children can help their parents in many ways and offer emotional support. It’s unrealistic to say parents expect nothing at all. Moreover, just after a child is born, parents often regard the child as an extension of themselves; as the child’s agency strengthens, parents gradually see their own self fading from the child—until it disappears entirely. Only after that point can we truly say that a parent’s love is selfless rather than merely a form of self-love.
Although parenting itself is very likely not purely selfless, we can still choose to regard it as a selfless act. This isn’t to ignore reality, but to acknowledge all of it and then choose to amplify a part of reality and interact with it. Once we view parenting as a selfless endeavor, we ourselves are more likely to become better parents (or at least to gain the capacity to be better), and we can also take a broader, more positive view of the marks our parents have left on us. When we choose to have children, we should not be guided by calculation, because that will certainly distort our parenting. We don’t raise children so they can repay us; we raise them simply to help them grow up well.
At the same time, we must reject two sets of ideas. The first comes from traditional Chinese culture: the big-clan mindset, “raising sons for old-age security,” and son preference. The entire traditional outlook on parenting is, in many respects, distorted and toxic, breeding a host of grotesque notions: parents craving their children’s success to feed vanity; parenting undertaken as a pension plan; parents unwilling to let their children live far away; parents demanding obedience; parents “selling” their daughters through bride price. It’s hard to imagine how a child could become a psychologically healthy adult in such an environment.
We must also reject a second set of ideas: contemporary feminism (as practiced by many). Many feminists, in my view, are selfish misers who only know how to claim rights—this, I think, is why Ueno Chizuko can’t understand why humans have children and derive meaning from it. A feminist once argued with me that giving birth causes a frightening, irreversible change to a certain part of a woman’s body, so she would never have children. But she overlooked this: if that’s the case, why do so many women—knowing full well about such bodily changes—still decide to give birth? And why do men and women, knowing that childbearing brings enormous challenges, still choose to have children? Those are the questions we should attend to. There are many reasons, and the most important are undoubtedly physiological and evolutionary drives. But I prefer to focus on a part of reality I want to see: that human beings are moved—indeed called—by a selfless sense of responsibility to have children and are willing to overcome all kinds of difficulties in the process. This vantage point not only makes it easier to find happiness in raising children—as noted at the outset, happiness is shaped by practice and cognitive regulation—but also greatly enriches our understanding of human nature.
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