Children Don’t Make Us Happier

I can’t think of many things that go more against popular opinion but the research says no:

This meta-analysis finds that parents report lower marital satisfaction compared with nonparents (d=-.19, r=-.10). There is also a significant negative correlation between marital satisfaction and number of children (d=-.13, r=-.06). The difference in marital satisfaction is most pronounced among mothers of infants (38% of mothers of infants have high marital satisfaction, compared with 62% of childless women). For men, the effect remains similar across ages of children. The effect of parenthood on marital satisfaction is more negative among high socioeconomic groups, younger birth cohorts, and in more recent years. The data suggest that marital satisfaction decreases after the birth of a child due to role conflicts and restriction of freedom.

Source: “Parenthood and Marital Satisfaction: A Meta-Analytic Review” from Journal of Marriage and Family, Volume 65, Number 3, August 2003 , pp. 574-583(10)

And this is far from the only study showing those results:

Over the past few decades, social scientists like me have found consistent evidence that there is an almost zero association between having children and happiness. My analysis in the Journal of Socio-economics (Powdthavee, 2008) is a recent British example of parents and non-parents reporting the same levels of life satisfaction, on average.

But the warnings for prospective parents are even more stark than âitâs not going to make you happierâ. Using data sets from Europe and America, numerous scholars have found some evidence that, on aggregate, parents often report statistically significantly lower levels of happiness (Alesina et al., 2004), life satisfaction (Di Tella et al., 2003), marital satisfaction (Twenge et al., 2003), and mental well-being (Clark & Oswald, 2002) compared with non-parents.

There is also evidence that the strains associated with parenthood are not only limited to the period during which children are physically and economically dependent. For example, Glenn and McLanahan (1981) found those older parents whose children have left home report the same or slightly less happiness than non-parents of similar age and status. Thus, what these results are suggesting is something very controversial â that having children does not bring joy to our lives.

How is this possible? Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert, and author of the best selling Stumbling on Happiness, addresses the issue:

The reason is that humans hold fast to a number of wrong ideas about what will make them happy. Ironically, these misconceptions may be evolutionary necessities. âImagine a species that figured out that children donât make you happy,â says Gilbert. âWe have a word for that species: extinct. There is a conspiracy between genes and culture to keep us in the dark about the real sources of happiness. If a society realized that money would not make people happy, its economy would grind to a halt.â