"Modern social science backs her up on this. 'Happiness as a byproduct of living your life is a great thing,' Barry Schwartz, a professor of social theory at Swarthmore College, told me. 'But happiness as a goal is a recipe for disaster.' It’s precisely this goal, though, that many modern parents focus on obsessively—only to see it backfire. Observing this phenomenon, my colleagues and I began to wonder: Could it be that by protecting our kids from unhappiness as children, we’re depriving them of happiness as adults?"
Jonathan Stegall is a web designer and emergent / emerging follower of Jesus currently living in Atlanta, seeking to abide in the creative tension between theology, spirituality, design, and justice.