the times, catering to its demographic, published the summary of a recent research on parenting. according to the times the “gist” of the article is “older parents are happier than younger parents”! according to the mentioned studies, folks who have offspring over the age of 40 are happier than parents in their 20s. or teenage parents. such revelation! i am soo glad someone finally spent tens of thousands on research and finally figured this correlation out.

how obvious can a study get? why do you spend money to research something like this to begin with? of course older parents are happier because they have offspring. of course teenage parents or parents in their 20s are miserable. of course parenting will be a bigger pleasure when you lived longer and fulfilled many of your dreams. if you’re in your 20s and are slapped with offspring, of course it will make you miserable, at least at some level, and make you long for how you would have lived your 20s, even your 30s, without an offspring tagging along. all those travels, adventures, possible career moves and changes, personal development, education you may have to forgo because you are now responsible for a kid? come on, how obvious can you get?

saw a couple in their early 40s the other day. typical white park slope professional couple: with a pair of in vitro twins, spitting image of them, an asian daughter, apparently a purchase and a back up in case the in vitro twins did not pan out as worthy offspring, and an ethnic nanny, obviously for the offspring’s second language, tagging along. they were happy as clams. another couple, this time black and in their early 20s, not so much…

well, it is obvious for our modern western society, isn’t it? offspring later in life will bring more personal satisfaction than offspring earlier in life. this may not be true for developing countries where there is no joy in the entire shebang, it is just a natural occurrence of life, but it is true for our modern society.

needless to say it was one of the most emailed articles on the times style section this sunday. or teenage parents. an expensive and needless study but a perfect self-affirmation for the times’ demographic.