Children make married couples happier, new research shows

Having children makes married couples happier, and each successive child makes parents successively happier, according to new research.

However, the research reveals that those who become parents outside wedlock are less enthusiastic.

The finding, based on the experiences of tens of thousands of British parents, contradicts a host of other studies which have concluded that having children can ruin even the most blissful of relationships.

The research also suggests that having children strengthens a relationship – but only if the parents are married.

Almost 90,000 mothers and fathers were questioned about their circumstances and how happy they were with their lot in life.

The answers revealed that marriages become happier with the arrival of a baby, with three children bringing the most joy, the Journal of Happiness Studies reports.

Women, the research shows, derive more satisfaction from parenthood than men.

However, children bring happiness only to couples who are married. If a couple are cohabiting, the birth of a child tends to bring discontent, the Glasgow University study found.

Researcher Dr Luis Angeles said: ‘The fact that people who live as a couple but are not married experience lower levels of life satisfaction with children is worthy of notice.

‘It dispels the idea that the positive effect on married individuals is due uniquely to the fact that they can pool resources, such as money and time, to raise children.

‘What separates married and unmarried couples is arguably not the possibility of pooling resources for the aim of raising children but the willingness to do so in the first place.

‘As a rule, the arrival of a child tends to be seen as a blessing to a married couple and as a problem to an unmarried one or to a single mother.’

Dr Angeles concluded that while bringing up children can be hard work, the benefits outweigh the negatives.

‘When considering their life as a whole, married individuals with children report themselves as better off than married individuals without children,’ he said.

 

 

The Iona Institute
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