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For anyone considering procreation, recent research on the psychological effects of that decision is not particularly encouraging. In her 2010 New York Magazine article on the difficulties of parenting (her book on the subject, “All Joy and No Fun,” came out earlier this year), Jennifer Senior mentions a study by the economist Daniel Kahneman, which found that child care was less pleasurable for moms than housework.

And, she writes, “The idea that parents are less happy than nonparents has become so commonplace in academia that it was big news last year when the Journal of Happiness Studies published a Scottish paper declaring the opposite was true.” Even that finding turned out to be the result of an error. Adding to this sobering picture is the online literature of contemporary parenting, which Ruth Graham of Slate has called “ utterly terrifying.”

But new research by Mikko Myrskylä and Rachel Margolis finds that having kids can actually be a happiness booster — at least for some parents, and at least for a while. By analyzing longitudinal surveys of satisfaction conducted in Germany and Britain, they found that expectant parents generally start getting a little happier before their children are born, then stay happier for a while before returning back to normal. The trajectory varies with age, though — parents between the ages of 18 and 22 didn’t get the boost and in fact saw their happiness drop. Parents 35 to 49 got the most durable happiness bump — they got happier before the arrival of a child, then settled in at or above where they were before. The effect shrank with each child; by the third kid, parents no longer get a boost.

“We were surprised by how well our results map onto the fertility behavior that has become so common these days — low, late fertility,” Dr. Margolis told Op-Talk in an email. “Our results show that happiness trajectories are most positive for people who become parents later in life — at 35 and above, and also for people’s first and second children.”

Older parents may have more money and education than younger ones — Dr. Myrskylä and Dr. Margolis write that lower income and educational attainment have been associated with higher rates of post-birth depression. And, they note, some previous research has found that older women are less stressed by parenthood than younger ones, “possibly because older mothers have more social capital and higher status at work, thus allowing greater financial flexibility and options for child care, which can help ease the transition to parenthood.”

The news that having a kid can actually make you happier — and that for some parents, some of that boost could persist — seems to contradict the idea that parenting is a fun-less endeavor. But, said Dr. Margolis, Ms. Senior does note that the experience of parenthood “varies across societies, which support childbearing in different ways.” Her research bears this out: In Britain, married parents get a bigger and longer-lasting happiness bump than unmarried parents, while in Germany, the differences are smaller.

“The fact that Germany has much stronger supports for new parents in tax and family policies may explain this difference,” Dr. Margolis said — and she and Dr. Myrskylä note in their paper that unmarried British moms are much more likely to live in poverty than are those in Germany. They didn’t look at parents in the United States — and they might not have gotten the same results if they had. At New York Magazine, Ms. Senior writes:

“If you are no longer fretting about spending too little time with your children after they’re born (because you have a year of paid maternity leave), if you’re no longer anxious about finding affordable child care once you go back to work (because the state subsidizes it), if you’re no longer wondering how to pay for your children’s education and health care (because they’re free) — well, it stands to reason that your own mental health would improve. When Kahneman and his colleagues did another version of his survey of working women, this time comparing those in Columbus, Ohio, to those in Rennes, France, the French sample enjoyed child care a good deal more than its American counterpart.”

While it’s unclear if American parents can get the boost Dr. Myrskylä and Dr. Margolis saw, other recent research has also challenged the notion that parenting will make you sad. At The Atlantic, Tanya Basu reports on a study published earlier this year finding that “while parents appear to remain just as happy as they did back in the 1980s, the happiness of non-parents has fallen. This means that, today, parents are happier relative to non-parents — a shift from previous evidence.” One possible explanation:

“The financial hardship brought on by children has lessened over time. The U.S. now has a more generous earned income tax credit and childcare tax credits, which means parents have more of a financial cushion than they used to.”

Another possible explanation for the shift: “Parents are probably becoming parents because they want to be parents, and less because of societal pressure. These adults are more likely to be a self-selected group, desire their children, and therefore derive more happiness from having the children they wanted.”

And at LiveScience, Tia Ghose writes that a study released this January found that after controlling for variables like income and health, people with children at home were about as satisfied with their lives as everybody else. She quotes Angus Deaton, a Princeton economist and co-author of the study: “ People who have children, by and large, want children,” he says, and “people who don’t want children are people who, by and large, don’t want to have children. And why would you expect one set to be happier than another?”

Andrew Oswald, another economist, tells Ms. Ghose that many who do have kids today do so by choice: “Choosing either can lead to happiness, and different people choose different routes in life.”

Of course, not everyone who has kids planned to do so — and not everyone who wants kids can. Dr. Margolis told Op-Talk that she and Dr. Myrskylä only studied those who actually had children, not those who tried to but found they could not: “We don’t study those who waited so long that they could not have children. Waiting confers benefits, but also has risks that people should take seriously.”

Still, their work may reassure some prospective parents: Having kids, their findings suggest, is by no means a guarantee of a bad mood.