Scientists love to study how happy parents are (or aren’t). Year after year, news outlets report on the topic, touting studies that they say either find how unhappy parents are, or how much satisfaction and “positive emotion” children bring to their parents’ lives.
Here are some samples of the findings on this topic – as you’ll see, there’s a wide array of results.
A 2007 Pew report found children are still vital to adult happiness.
Fox News describe how “parents report significantly higher levels of depression than non-parents”
Research in the journal Psychological Science found that overall, “parents (and especially fathers) report relatively higher levels of happiness, positive emotion, and meaning in life than do non-parents.”
The Wall Street Journal reports “every additional child makes parents 1.3 percentage points less likely to be ‘very happy’”
Andrew Hess is one of our staff researchers, and he recently attempted to make sense of these findings.