In pursuit of dads’ happiness
Sharon Holbrook wants to know why fathers are merrier than mothers.
In the company of three kids who were home from school, I tried to read about a new study finding that fathers are happier than mothers. Throughout the day, the children came in and out of my office, arguing, yelling — and even crying about pancakes for a full 15 minutes. Meanwhile, my statistically-likelier-to-be-happy husband was at his office not being interrupted by bickering children.
At last, I was able to get some quiet time to digest the study, recently published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. University of California-Riverside psychologists analyzed three studies — which together covered 18,000 people — and determined that fathers experience more well-being from parenting than mothers do. One possible explanation for this, said the study’s authors, was that fathers reported playing more with their children, and they suggested that all parents might benefit from more play.
I have to admit: My first reaction to the news that I should make myself happier by adding more play to the long, long list of things I already do for and with my children was not a good one. There had to be more to this, I decided. So I called Katherine Nelson-Coffey, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of psychology at Sewanee: The University of the South, to get the full story. I wanted to know why her team thought moms should play more with their kids, and whether there might be other reasons dads are happier.
First, she explained that her paper reported on three studies for which she and her team collected and/or analyzed data: The first two studies found that parents generally report greater well-being than non-parents, with fathers reporting greater well-being than moms based on measures including experiences of positive emotions, depressive symptoms and daily hassles. The third study was designed to dig a little deeper: How do moms and dads feel when they are doing various things for or with their kids? Participants downloaded an app on their phones, and three times a day they entered what they were doing right then (from a menu of options), whether they were talking or interacting with anyone, and how they felt.
Moms and dads both reported being happier when they were talking or interacting with their child (versus other interactions or activities), but the effect was greater for fathers. The dad happiness advantage was most dramatic for child care. “Fathers reported greater happiness during child care than for anything else they did that day, whereas mothers reported lower happiness during child care than for other activities during the day,” says Nelson-Coffey. What could explain the difference? Maybe, thought the team, the answer was play. In the study, dads were more likely to report playing with their children at the same time they were interacting with or taking care of them. “It’s certainly plausible that fathers who are feeling happy are more likely to initiate play with their children,” Nelson-Coffey says. “I would expect it would become a kind of feedback loop where fathers are feeling happy, so they might initiate more play, and that might make them feel happy, and it becomes kind of an upward spiral.”
And couldn’t there be other reasons for the happiness difference, like the fact that moms do far more labour at home and in child care? (You could call this the grandparent effect: It’s more fun to be a grandparent than a parent. You enjoy the kids, and then they go away.) Once again, Nelson-Coffey agreed that time and labour could be factors, and that other research “tends to find that mothers are more responsible for child care in general, and they also have more emotional and invisible labour such as keeping the household running, managing schedules, worrying about their children’s emotions. All of these things are possibilities that could explain why mothers are less happy.” Meanwhile, can play help? Maybe. Nelson-Coffey says that other studies have found that play “could offer opportunities for positive emotions, to build connections with the child and to generally feel good.” So, even if we don’t feel like playing, it’s possible that trying to be playful might actually help us to feel happier.
So instead of just focusing on changing my child’s diaper, I might try to bring some play into that moment to make it a little bit more joyful for everyone involved. That play might be as simple as singing a nursery rhyme or tickling the baby’s toes. “I don’t think it hurts for parents to try to incorporate play into mundane tasks,” says Nelson-Coffey. “We can’t stop taking care of our children. We have to do those things. But if we can introduce play into those moments, hopefully it will make those moments feel a little bit better.”