As every parent knows, being a parent is not easy. Children are a mixed blessing, and not the complete "bundle of joy" we say they are. One study, conducted in the 1950s, found that all the happily married couples interviewed experienced the birth of their first child as a crisis in their marriage.

The birth of the first child brings many stresses the couple had not experienced beforehand. Suddenly, they have this tiny, helpless infant to care for, and this can seem like an overwhelming burden.

I can remember when my daughter, Alexis, was first born. I pulled up to a gas station with her in the car. The attendant looked at her and exclaimed how I had a huge, 18-year responsibility.

Actually he was wrong. The responsibility and the worry are for a lifetime. The children don't always leave home at 18 and you never stop worrying about them or even caring for them.

On a plane from Helena to Salt Lake City, I sat next to a psychologist who was a consultant here in Helena. He told me about his dissertation, which I found to be fascinating. He and his wife had decided not to have children and he wanted to find out if childless couples were happier than couples with children.

He had three groups in his study: those who were voluntarily childless, those who were parents, and those who were involuntarily childless, who wanted to have children but to date were unable to do so.

He found that the voluntarily childless couples described themselves as the happiest of all three groups. The couples who were parents were second in overall ratings of happiness. And the unhappiest couples were those who were involuntarily childless, who tried to have children year after year, only to have their hopes scattered once every 28 days.

Not to be able to conceive children when you want to can be an extreme stress for couples. They get their hopes up every month, only to have them dashed when the woman has her period. I have seen this kind of roller-coaster ride destroy some marriages.

An interesting finding in this study had to do with the motivation for people to have children. When asked why couples should have children, the voluntarily childless group talked about sharing their love with another human being. By contrast, the couples with children, and the involuntarily childless couples, talked about having someone to take care of them in their old age.

In other words, those who chose voluntarily not to have children expressed the healthiest, most positive, most altruistic reasons to have children, while the parents or involuntarily childless spouses expressed more negative, selfish reasons to have children.

My psychologist companion for an hour on an interesting trip to Salt Lake City explained to me how ironic he thought it was that those who choose not to have children might just make the best parents, while those who do have children or are trying to have children, do not have children for the healthiest, most positive reasons.

J. Bailey Molineux, is a psychologist with Adult and Child Counseling, and can be reached at 406-443-1990.