Can having children really increase ones utility?

This topic came to mind after a particularly difficult customer visited the store in which I work last weekend. This was a little boy who proceeded to throw jewellery and shoes around the store, pull clothes from hangers and somehow find and press our silent alarm. The mother, it seemed, had just given up on trying to control the situation.

After this distressed woman finally left the store, having left us a nice comment complimenting our patience, I began to think of a topic I studied in my first year of undergraduate economics. This was behavioural economics, more specifically the economics of happiness. The basic premise of this is that a rational person will try to maximise their utility. However, when looking at the utility children generate, results show that over a parents lifetime their child generates more stress than happiness. I certainly would never want to be in the position of the lady who it seemed had just accepted the actions of her child no matter how much stress it caused.

As Stevenson discusses the economics of happiness, she addresses the topic of the utility of becoming a parent. She discusses how the data does suggest that people without children are happier than those with them. However, she puts forward an explanation as to why this might be the case. As people experience events that increase their utility, their utility level is increased. Therefore the reason that parents seem less happy, is because their utility level is higher overall and therefore more difficult to achieve.

If we look at the world from the perspective of 'economic man', then we would be perfectly rational and so having children would be the irrational choice. According to studies, for example Blanchflowers(2008), children generate more stress than utility as well as holding a significant financial cost. Therefore it seems irrational to have a child. However, economic man or 'homo economicus' is not a realistic perception of human beings. We are irrational beings that often put the well-being of others before ourselves and are not always aiming to maximise our own utility.

There are many opinions on this topic and I'm still not sure which opinion I agree with, even though I'm currently leaning a bit more towards the 'rational' choice, after witnessing just how much stress, that which supposedly shifts utility outwards, can cause.