Children are supposed to be one of life's greatest gifts. But ask any parent in a supermarket with a toddler screaming at their feet, and they'll be likely to tell you that life on the front line isn't always all it's cracked up to be.



But couples who choose not to have children are often viewed as selfish, enviable or sad. So is a child-free life devoid of meaning or is it all lovemaking on the kitchen table and flying off to Paris on a whim?



Sunday Life spoke to both camps and looked at international research to find out who the winners and losers are in 21st-century life - parents or the child-free.



MONEY



It seems like a no-brainer that children are money vacuums. From the first purchase of the pregnancy bible What to Expect When You're Expecting on, the bills just keep coming. According to 2007 figures from the National Centre for Social and Economic Funding, it costs the typical Australian family $537,000 to raise a child from birth to the age of 21. If parents choose private education, the cost skyrockets. The Australian Scholarships Group estimates that 12 years of schooling for a child born in 2010 will cost between $110,000 and $424,000, depending on the school.



But not everyone agrees. Research released in March 2008 from Curtin University of Technology compared the net wealth of parents and the child-free (including housing, shares, superannuation and savings), and found that parents were only marginally worse off.



Associate professor Mike Dockery, who produced the research, says it might be wrong to think of children as costs at all when in fact they are a net benefit. "If you choose to have children and it works out, then you are better off than if you didn't have them."



One reason the child-free don't have significantly more money than parents may be that they don't feel the same pressure to earn. For voluntarily child-free 43-year-old Mark Thompson, who works in the public service, it is not about the amount of money he has but the freedom to spend it as he chooses. He says:

"I appreciate we can do the things we want, like going out for meals and holidays. We have a flat in the city and a beach house and with children that wouldn't have been possible."



Winners Child-free.



RELATIONSHIPS AND SEX



The old saying that three's a crowd has a ring of truth. In 1992 research, the University of California Berkeley found women and men change the way they view themselves once they become parents and the part of them that was the "lover" or "partner" shrinks. A quarter of all parents recorded serious marital conflict after the arrival of their bundles of joy. Meanwhile, a 2000 Queensland study reported a significant drop in marital satisfaction when couples became parents. A major issue was fathers feeling anxious, and in turn resentful, about the time the mother spent with the baby.



But while relationships may survive the baby years, sex often drops off. It is something that childless-by-choice Jan Rogerson, a 46-year-old teacher, couldn't imagine. "I couldn't contemplate not having a good sex life. If you have chosen to be with someone then it is important to have as good a sex life as possible."



However, parents don't seem to have much of a choice. Melanie Roberts-Fraser, co-author of No Sex Please, We're Parents, interviewed 150 people and found the news was all bad. She says: "There wasn't a single person who said that their sex life had not been affected by parenthood."



Exhaustion was cited as one of the major reasons, but Roberts-Fraser also found that couples struggled with their new parenting roles.



But despite the tiredness, Jeannine Burt, a 41-year-old mother of two, says sex is still on the agenda even if the art of seduction is no longer about candles and champagne: "If I hear that he has folded the washing, made the kids dinner and put on a DVD that the kids are really interested in, then it is a possibility."



Winners Child-free, but some parents are still trying.



HEALTH



One area where parents seem to thrive is in physical health. A 2006 study from London suggested that childless women run the risk of earlier death and poorer health in later life compared to their childbearing sisters.



However, closer examination of the findings shows that motherhood is healthy, but only if you do it at the right time or have the optimum number of children.



Teenage pram-pushers, women with five or more children or someone who has two children with less than a 19-month gap between births all face poorer health and a higher risk of death.



Meanwhile, breastfeeding has been found to decrease the risk of breast cancer in a number of studies.



But parenthood is not such great news when it comes to mental health, with 2006 US research showing parents, both male and female, have significantly higher levels of depression than the childless. Post-natal depression (PND) is also a serious risk, with a 2006 Danish study finding women are at particular risk during the first three months after giving birth. It is also emerging that even men or parents who adopt may not escape the pain of PND. But before mothers give up on their mental health, they should be encouraged to learn that raising children may actually make women smarter.



In her 2006 book The Mommy Brain, American writer Katherine Ellison draws on neuroscience research to show that pregnancy and early motherhood improve memory and prepare women for multi-tasking; and that the hormone oxytocin, which is plentiful in mothers, combats stress and helps with learning.



Ellison found that caring for a newborn remaps parts of a woman's brain and improves her ability to learn new skills, and that the powerful biological urge to defend children helps women become more creative and competitive.



Winners Parents.



APPEARANCE



For many parents, the first years of parenthood are more grungy mummy than yummy mummy. Fashion and beauty take a back seat, and sleep is a rare pleasure. For Christy Capili, 34, mother of a four-year-old and a one-year-old, the weight she gained in pregnancy was very hard to shift. The executive assistant says: "I put weight on everywhere and everything began to travel south. When you have extra weight, you can't be bothered to wear anything special."



Women's dissatisfaction with their post-baby appearance is so rife that plastic surgeons have developed the "mummy makeover", which can include breast implants or lifts, liposuction and a tummy tuck.



The chairman of the NSW Division of the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons, Dr Steve Merten, says varicose veins and spider veins on the lower leg are a common consequence of pregnancy, while the skin pigmentation of the face can change due to pregnancy hormones. Unfortunately, this blotching doesn't always disappear after the birth. Breasts often change shape, with many women losing their breast volume and tone after the birth and breastfeeding.



There is also bad news for the abdomen, which can lose skin and muscle tone which, according to Merten, may not return even with exercise, leaving some women with loose, floppy skin. Merten says having children doesn't give you wrinkles but "chronic tiredness and stress can contribute to the early signs of facial ageing".



But are parents out there working off the effects of having children? The answer seems to be no, according to 2007 Canadian research.



The data found parents with dependent children were "clearly more inactive than non-parents". And to add insult to injury, they found that mothers were generally less active than fathers.



Winners Child-free.



SENSE OF PURPOSE



Everyone needs meaning in their life and, in 2006, Florida State University found parents had a greater sense of purpose compared to adults with no children.



But the US National Marriage Project 2006 State of Our Unions report found that parents were less satisfied with their marriage than non-parents.



It concluded that as people live longer and have more single and child-free years, raising children has begun to be seen as a "disruption". This is very different to the experience of the past, when the idea of child-rearing was seen as one of life's defining purposes.



But for 41-year-old father of two Oivind Bakken, his childless friends seem stuck in one stage of life with little real meaning. "I feel as though they have stayed exactly where they were when they were students.

Our life has changed but theirs hasn't."



When it comes to self-esteem and life satisfaction, career women with children beat their childless sisters, according to a 1992 study from Montreal.



But 45-year-old Cindy Tonkin, an executive coach who was unable to have children, doesn't feel lacking in self-esteem or sense of purpose. "Not having children was a decision made for me, but it turned out for the absolute best. I coach senior women with families who are exhausted all the time. I have so much in my life. I paint and sing and recently went to the US to do an improvisation course."



Winners A draw - both think they are the winners in this area.



Overall winners Child-free, by a (non-snotty) nose.

Purpose driven life ... parents report a greater sense of purpose than their child-free counterparts.

Courtesy of Sunday Life

For more on parenting and pregnancy: essentialbaby.com.au