Why does anyone have children anyways?

I'm going to attempt a serious blog post here.  Because I have serious things on my mind and I sort of like it when other people post serious things.

I'm taking this writing class with the very general topic of happiness.  We have to choose one topic for the next ten weeks to write about and do presentations on, as long as we can tie it to happiness somehow.  I'm writing about the Disney brand, but that's besides the point.
My teacher wanted to get the creative juices flowing, so she made us read a billion different articles to try and inspire us.  We somehow came to the topic of families, and specifically having children.  We discussed how study after study shows that having children does not increase happiness at all.  My professor went on a rant about how people know that having children will make them more tired, less financially stable, more stressed, more emotionally tired, more pressed for time and yet they stupidly continue to have children.  How in the old days having children served an economic function, because you could get your kids to help you with the work on the farm.  But now, the roles have reversed and parents are, in essence, slaves to their children.

I bit my tongue.  It was the second day of class, and I didn't want my teacher to hate me just yet, so I just let all the words pass by me.

Let me explain:  My Freshman year of college, after my very first term, my oldest sister was really pregnant, and my mom couldn't be there to help my sister out during the first few days of Preston's life because he kept playing tricks on all of us even from the womb.  My other sister was out of the country, and Adri didn't want to be without feminine help while in labor.  So I went.  Me.  18-year-old, knowing nothing about the miracle of birth (I was 5 when my youngest brother was born) and all, I went.  And I try not to be too weird about this, but that day changed my life.  I didn't really realize it then, but thinking back on that day I remember the rush of emotions that ranged from worry and almost panic (He was almost born without a doctor in the room) to discomfort to the most instant and complete sense of love that I have ever felt.  I'm not just talking about the love that I had for the baby, even though Preston means a whole lot to me.  I'm also talking about watching my sister and brother-in-law and the love they had for their new baby and for each other.  It was something I will never be able to adequately describe and something that I hope everyone gets the opportunity to someday experience.

The point of that story is not that I think the miracle of children is awesome.  It's not even that I think the studies are wrong.  The point of the story is that I decided, after that point in my life, that I wanted to fill my life with as much love as possible.  That my new life's goal is to love as many people as I can get this heart of mine to love, and to be surrounded by people who love me.

So maybe children do make you unhappy.  I know they do sometimes.  I also know that they make you happy sometimes.  I can't really say for sure which there is more of because I have never had children of my own.  (Though I love my nephews so much that I feel like they belong to me a little bit).  But I do know, that nothing ever, in my entire life of 20 years and half of a Stanford education and various jobs and relationships and friends, none of it, has ever brought me as much love as the love I remember in that room almost a year and a half ago.  Love like that has nothing to do with someone being forced to work for someone else.  And every time I think back to that day, or to those two little boys, I can't even believe how much I love my family.

Love lasts much longer than happiness anyways.