Parents are happier than non-parents, new research suggests
“We are not saying that parenting makes people happy, but that parenthood is associated with happiness and meaning,” Lyubomirsky says. “Contrary to repeated scholarly and media pronouncements, people may find solace that parenthood and child care may actually be linked to feelings of happiness and meaning in life.”
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In addition to Dunn, Lyubomirsky and Nelson, paper co-authors include lead author S. Katherine Nelson, a doctoral candidate at UC Riverside, UBC doctoral candidate Kostadin Kushlev and Stanford University postdoctoral scholar Tammy English.
To read the study, In Defense of Parenthood: Children Are Associated With More Joy Than Misery.
Sociologists find that as a group, parents in the United States experience depression and emotional distress more often than their childless adult counterparts. Parents of young children report far more depression, emotional distress, and other negative emotions than non-parents, and parents of grown children have no better well-being than adults who never had children. That last finding contradicts the conventional wisdom that empty-nest parents derive all the emotional rewards of parenthood because they’re done with the financially and psychologically taxing aspects of raising young kids. These research findings, of course, fly in the face of our cultural dogma that proclaims it impossible for people to achieve an emotionally fulfilling and healthy life unless they become parents. And that’s a problem, because the vast majority of American men and women eventually have children, yet conditions in our society make it nearly impossible for them to reap all the emotional benefits of doing so.
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by Robin W. Simon
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Basil Waugh
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University of British Columbia