On New Year’s Day I
became a parent, sparking my curiosity in the research on parenting and
well-being and inspiring a four-part series on parenthood and happiness. This
is the second post. Check out the first post here.
Are parents happier
than non-parents? Researchers have generally set about trying to answer
this deceptively simple question in three ways:
Are people with children happier than those without children?
This is the most common approach to research on parenthood
and well-being. In these studies, researchers typically tackle large datasets
with thousands of adults, comparing the well-being of people with children to
people without children. Although the approach is straightforward, the results
are mixed with some studies finding parents are happier than non-parents and other
studies find the reverse.
How can these studies with such a basic design find opposite
results? One large problem with this approach is that little work is
done to find out who exactly is making up these groups of parents and
non-parents. Focusing on the non-parents, only 15% of adults do not have
children, making them a small comparison group. More importantly, their reasons
for doing so may differ greatly. Young adults may not have children when they
take part in the research, but plan to have children later. Older adults may
not have children because they were not able to do so, or they may have
consciously made the choice to not have children. Imagine comparing a married 48-year
old with three children to a married 48 year-old with no children who spent
years and hard earned dollars fighting infertility and wishing to be a parent?
Who do you think is happier? Now imagine that the non-parent comparison is a 48
year-old who loves to travel, lives all over the globe and chose not to have
children because they wouldn’t fit a globetrotting lifestyle. Who do you think
is happier? In one study, mothers were no happier than women who chose not to
have children, but were significantly happier than infertile women (Callan,
1987). Choice plays an important role on the other side of the table as well—some
people become parents by choice while others find themselves in the unexpected
position of being a parent when they hadn’t intended it. How might choice
affect happiness among these different groups?
Are people happier after they have children than they were before they
were parents?
A second way to test whether parenthood brings with it more
joy or misery is to compare the happiness levels of people before and after
they have children. People typically experience boosts in happiness after
becoming parents, but this extra happiness tends to dissipates within a couple
of years (Luhmann, Hofmann, Eid, & Lucas, 2012).
This research design gets around some of the issues of
comparison groups because the researchers are comparing people to themselves
(pre- and post-parenthood). However, there are other issues with this approach.
One problem is that these studies only follow people during the transition to
parenthood, so there is little research on whether people are happier being
parents 10 or 20 years down the road than they were pre-parenthood. Perhaps
happiness rises following childbirth and dissipates during the trying days of toddlerhood,
but what about when children are teenagers or adults? A second issue is the
timing of measuring “pre-parenthood.” On average, couples have been together
for about three years when they have their first child, which may mean they are
still in the honeymoon phase of their relationship (people tend to experience
boosts in happiness one year prior to marriage and two years post-marriage;
Lucas, Clark, Georgellis, & Diener, 2003). If this is the case, than their “pre-parenthood”
happiness levels may be higher due to the headiness of new love. So is the
dissipation of happiness a few years down the road due to having tiresome children
or is it just the result of settling into a relationship that is no longer as
new and exciting?
Are parents happier when they spend time with their children than when
they spend time without their children?
The third approach that researchers have taken when trying
to discover whether parents are happier than non-parents is to compare
happiness levels when parents engage in activities with their children versus
when they engage in non-parenting activities. Some research suggests that
taking care of children is about as enjoyable as housework or surfing the
internet, but less enjoyable than shopping or watching TV (e.g., Kahneman, Krueger,
Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone, 2004). However, taking care of children tends to
elicit more happiness in a day when compared to all other non-child related
activities (Nelson, Kushlev, English, Dunn, & Lyubomirsky, 2013).
So can we conclude that having children is about as good as
doing housework? Probably not. These studies tend to lump all aspects of caring
for children together, and disciplining your child is likely to bring much less
happiness in the moment than playing with your child. Also, these studies only
focus on levels of happiness while with your child. What happiness does
parenting bring during the other times of your day? Maybe tending to your child
is exasperating in the moment, but thinking about the cute thing your child did
the other day could bring a moment of joy and gratitude while at work. To me,
this approach is the least well-equipped to answer the question of whether
parents are happier than non-parents since even when people are away from their
children shopping or surfing the internet, their parent-status is still a
defining part of who they are.
So can we conclude
anything about whether parenting helps or hinders well-being? The answer is, it’s complicated. Parenting
seems to bring with it moments of great positive emotion and a temporary boost
in happiness after the birth of a child, but parents may be no less happy than
people who chose not to have children, and the day-to-day realities of child
care may be no more pleasant than cleaning one’s house.
But these answers don’t seem to jive with the anecdotes most
parents tell me, that although parenting is difficult, it is the most rewarding
and important part of their lives. Every parent I know emphatically states that
their children bring them more joy than they could have known.
It seems, then, that
parenting cannot be simply summed up as “pleasurable” or “painful” instead it
is a bittersweet mix of both. So when, as I look forward to a lifetime of
parenting, can I expect to feel more pleasure, and when should I be bracing
myself for pain? These are the questions I will tackle in my next post.
Although not related to parenting exactly, I want to take a
moment to make a little PSA in regards to consuming research: these studies are
great examples of the difficulty of designing good research and the importance
of examining the literature as a whole. If we drew conclusions from just one
study that we read, we might decide that parenthood is (or is not) related to
greater well-being, when clearly the answer is more complicated. This is why it
is crucial for us to use different methods to tackle the same question and rely
on replication to highlight the truth.
Callan, V. (1987). The Personal and Marital Adjustment of Mothers and of Voluntarily and Involuntarily Childless Wives Journal of Marriage and the Family, 49 (4) DOI: 10.2307/351978
Kahneman, D. (2004). A Survey Method for Characterizing Daily Life Experience: The Day Reconstruction Method Science, 306 (5702), 1776-1780 DOI: 10.1126/science.1103572
Lucas, R., Clark, A., Georgellis, Y., & Diener, E. (2003). Reexamining adaptation and the set point model of happiness: Reactions to changes in marital status. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84 (3), 527-539 DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.84.3.527
Luhmann, M., Hofmann, W., Eid, M., & Lucas, R. (2012). Subjective well-being and adaptation to life events: A meta-analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102 (3), 592-615 DOI: 10.1037/a0025948
Nelson, S., Kushlev, K., English, T., Dunn, E., & Lyubomirsky, S. (2012). In Defense of Parenthood: Children Are Associated With More Joy Than Misery Psychological Science, 24 (1), 3-10 DOI: 10.1177/0956797612447798
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