Parenthood Happiness Penalty

In the mid-20th century, several studies indicated that couples with children tended to be less happy, on average, than couples without children. This general finding held up through numerous replication studies, and it was considered to be surprising because having children was the social default in the areas where the studies were conducted (primarily the wealthy West), and thus most of the people who didn’t have children wanted to, but couldn’t for whatever reason.

Nonetheless, those without children continued to rank higher in happiness metrics than their children-having peers, and notably, adults who were married tended to rank higher in happiness than their unmarried peers, whether or not children were involved.

That long period of consistent findings is why the results of a recent study looking at the same thing are so surprising.

A big caveat up front is that the group that flagged this change (the Institute of Family Studies) has a distinct pro-family bias. The data comes from the less-biased US General Social Survey, so it’s government data, not numbers the Institute collected. But that bias is still worth noting, and it’s thus worth taking this seeming upending of happiness trends with a grain of salt.

That said, for women, married mothers ranked highest for happiness in this new survey (40% saying they’re “very happy”), with childless wives (women who are married but don’t have children) ranking second (25%). Childless and single women came in third, and single mothers ranked last in terms of happiness. Unhappiness rankings mirrored the happiness numbers, with relatively few (13%) married mothers saying they’re “not too happy,” while childless, single women came in first (25%).

The same was generally true for men, with married fathers ranking as the happiest (35% very happy, 16% not too happy) and single fathers as the least happy (12% very happy, 37% not too happy).

There’s no clear reason for this seeming reversal of happiness rankings for married, child-having couples. One popular theory is that because fertility levels have dropped so precipitously (including in the US, where this survey was conducted), the pressure to have children, even as a married couple, is a lot lower than it used to be. Consequently, if you don’t want kids, you probably won’t have them, and the people who are having kids probably wanted to. That means those who have kids will be more likely to be happy, because they’re in the situation they wanted, rather than being in a situation they were pressured into (by society or healthcare realities).

The findings from a recent German study seem to support this assertion, but we really don’t know for certain what’s leading to this seeming change in overall life satisfaction in these groups. And again, we also can’t be 100% certain this is an actual trend, as it could be a blip in the data, and it could be that the entity using the data is tweaking the findings somehow to match their worldview.