True story: my wife is at a party with a new mom. “How’s it going?” she asks, knowing full well that the first six months with a newborn are rough.

“It’s great, great, really great,” the new mom responds, with a smile that’s a little too brittle.

“It’s okay if you want to throw the baby out the window sometimes,” my wife says.

The new mom breaks down in tears and says, “Oh thank you, you’re the only person who’s said that!”

There’s a simple truth embedded in this conversation: Kids are great; kids are terrible; kids are the best thing in your life; and kids are a never-ending drain on your energy, wallet, and emotional well-being.

All of these things are true simultaneously. It’s what folks call a paradox.

How else can you explain the latest social and psychological research? A new study, using data from the Gallup-Healthways Well-being Index (which collects info from 1.77 million Americans), finds that “No matter what the controls, children are always associated with both more positive and more negative emotions." You get more joy and happiness, but also more stress and worry. But their findings fall apart when the study includes data from outside first world nations. “[I]n poorer countries with higher fertility rates, being a parent is associated with lower life-satisfaction.”

And it just gets worse. In a study last year by the UK’s Open University, they learned that “childless married and unmarried participants are happier with their relationship and their partner than parents.” If you get actual joy from being a parent and you want more than one kid, your levels of bliss may actually decrease with each new child. So the happiness of parenting is, at best, fleeting.

In other words, research that uses the words “well-being” and “personal fulfillment” a lot have universally concluded that children either make your highs higher and your lows lower, or they just ruin your marriage. Or both. Or neither. Who knows?

Based on my eleven years of parenting with three children, I’d put it more simply: Having kids is like an acid trip—you take out what you bring in.

Are you easily stressed and a controlling jerk? Kids are going to make you more stressed, and more obnoxious. Are you laid-back and full of joy? Kids are going to increase your chillaxe and your happiness. Everything’s going to be heightened, expanded, and super-sized. Anything you fake is going to be revealed, your pretensions will be stripped away, and the real you will come shining through.

If that sounds terrifying, then good. Parenthood is only un-scary if you don’t think very hard. (Kind of like being an officer or manager in that sense: taking responsibility for other human beings should be pants-wettingly fearful—if you’re neither an idiot nor a sociopath.)

But there’s another side to the parenting paradox, beyond the exhaustion and the elation, another, deeper reality.

When something’s in you, it just is. Why do some people sing, even if they’re terrible at it? Why do other folks practice basketball for ten thousand hours, even though they’ll never go pro? Why do hypermilers do whatever voodoo masochism they call “running”? Because it’s in them to do it.

(Is running really masochism? It might be. Find out if you’re in danger of Running Yourself to Death.)

Parenting is no different. If you want kids, then on some level you know you want kids. I’m guessing you’ve always known. And if you don’t want kids, there’s probably clarity about that in your heart. You really just need to listen to yourself, and listen hard.

Kids are a crazy commitment. Nobody in their right mind would have them.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, raising a child from infancy to 18 years will cost you approximately a quarter of a million dollars. First come the baby expenses, then the toddler expenses, then dental and healthcare and baggy shorts and pushbikes. And it just keeps going on. There’s no end-date to parenting; you can’t get off the baby train with anything like a clean conscience.

So why do it? Because it’s in you.

Everything interesting in life is difficult. Writing a novel is hard, calculating hull stresses for reusable rocket boosters is hard, and playing a game of water polo is hard. “Hard” is no reason to back off of something.

Your common sense and your humor will carry you through a decision which is, on the face of it, indefensible. As a dad, I can’t emphasize humor enough. Laughing through the hard times will make the irrational choice of parenthood much easier to rationalize.

That’s why the wife and I joke about the “scumbag baby” (he's the kid covered in birthday cake pictured above)—as in, “What did the scumbag baby do now?” Or, “Man, scumbag baby had me up half the night with his projectile vomiting,” or, “For a scumbag baby he’s pretty damn cute."

It helps.

My sincere wish is that if you want kids, you’ll have kids. And if you don’t, I hope you’ll have the wisdom and self-knowledge to go child-free. A “scumbag baby” is only funny and adorable if you love the hell out of the little jerk.

(A good dad doesn’t always tell the truth. Find out more about the 10 Lies That Every Parent Should Tell.)

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