Yes children make you happy ...but it wears off after a year
HAVING children does not make us happier in the long term, a study shows.
That is because the positive glow of parenthood lasts only 12 months, researchers found.
After that, there was no improvement in ‘subjective well-being’ in those with young children.
However, having a partner does provide lasting happiness, according to data from the UK, US, Germany and Australia that also showed how quickly we bounce back from the end of a long-term relationship.
Andrew Clark of the Paris School of Economics, co-author of the study presented at a conference in London yesterday, said: ‘We could not find systematically large effects [on well-being] from children.
‘Is having a family good for you in the long run? Having a partnership is. We found a positive effect from having a partner that doesn’t go away over time.’ The research found that we also adapt rapidly to losing a partner, either from separation or death, he said.
‘Following people from the four years from before separation and four years after separation, we found some kind of bouncing back.’ When it comes to having children, we quickly adapt to parenthood and it does not increase our subjective well-being, Professor Clark said.
‘Children are a great idea, thinking about having children is a good idea. Having them is a good idea. Having them is a good idea for up to 12 months.’
He said that the study only looked at the first four years, so further research might find bene- fits later down the line. ‘What we don’t have here is evidence over 20 to 30 or 40 years, for when we get old and we need taking care of. We hope this will become positive at some point.’
In their paper The Origin Of Happiness, Professor Clark and his co-authors say that unlike having a spouse or partner, which ‘brings joy’, the benefit of having a child is difficult to measure.
They write: ‘To a degree people who want children more get more children, just as people who like classical music are more likely to listen to it. So if we compare people with and without children we may be just comparing people with different tastes, without discover- ing what difference the children made to those who had them.’
So to find out, they compared people’s happiness, both mothers and fathers, before and after when they had children. Overall, having a child raised life satisfaction by 0.25 points on a scale of 1 to 10 among British parents, with 10 being the highest satisfaction.
But the joy fades to nothing within two years, the authors write, and a similar effect was found in Australia and Germany.
‘In all three countries there is excitement as the child approaches, joy when the child arrives and complete adaptation within two years. This is of course an average finding, but it applies to both fathers and to mothers.
‘A sensible conclusion is that having young children brings some satisfaction but on average not a lot (with huge upsides being matched by significant downsides).’
‘Applies to fathers and mothers’