Having kids is worse for happiness than divorce, death of a partner

Cody Griffin Contributed byon August 14, 2015 at 12:17 am

Perhaps those immigrants who continued to have children adhere to more community-oriented customs and thus don’t experience the depression, domestic isolation or breakdown in relationships as reported by other parents.

Based on the findings, only around 30 percent of participants retained the same happiness even after having a child. “Although this measure does not capture respondents’ overall experience of having a child, it is preferable to direct questions about childbearing because it is considered taboo for new parents to say negative things about a new child”.

“Fertility is a choice for most people in the developed world”, the researchers wrote.

The study offers insight into why, among Germans, there’s such rampant incongruity between most couples’ purported desire for two children, and the country’s actual birthrate, since 1983, of just 1.5 children per couple.

The average percentage among parents was then set at a 1.4 unit drop in their happiness after having a child.

That reaction is a stark contrast to the swarm of support from friends and family in situations usually perceived to be more distressing.

The findings of the study were meant to demythicize the blissful, entirely happy image of parenthood and to point out that it might affect people in a very different manner, as the differences in happiness levels reported by the study participants varied from 0 to 3 or more points.

According to the study, the birth of a first child has a “devastating effect” on a couple’s well-being, causing a significant drop in the level of self-reported happiness, which is particularly strong among parents who are older or have higher educations.

Parents’ experience and feelings after the birth of their first child are important and understudied factors in defining family size, which should be taken into account when formulating demography policy, claims the research led by Rachel Margolis, a sociology researcher at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, and Mikko Myrskylä, director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany. “They figure you’re happy”, Fisher said.

Not only do parents tend to get more work done, they also make better leaders: Knowing how to multitask, negotiate, and cope with stress are all part of the gig.

“To put things in perspective, previous studies have quantified the impact of other major life events on the same happiness scale in this way: divorce, the equivalent of a 0.6 “happiness unit” drop; unemployment, a one-unit drop; and the death of a partner a one-unit drop”. The rest said their happiness decreased during the first and second year after the birth. First considered were health problems of pregnancy (as it was felt by both genders), and secondly complications during birth.

Results showed new mothers and fathers whose happiness went down, 37 % (742) reported a one-unit drop, 19 % (383) a two-unit drop and 17 % (341) a three-unit drop.

In the study, the challenges of parenthood were divided into three categories that affected the urge to reproduce again.

Now what pollster would ever ask the public: “Which is worse?”

Dreamstime

According to the study having children has a larger impact on someone’s happiness than divorce unemployment and the death of a partner