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Around the world, parents are paying a “happiness penalty”, research suggests.
Using data collected from more than 100 countries, the 2016 World Happiness Report has made the finding – described as “puzzling” by the author of the report – that life satisfaction is generally higher among people without children.
A negative relationship between parenthood and life satisfaction was found in 66% of the 105 countries assessed.
This flies in the face of previous studies, which have found that having children – and especially the birth of the first child – makes people happy.
“On a scale of between one and 100, life satisfaction is 0.62 lower for those who have children than for those who do not,” the report’s author, Luca Stanca, says, while warning that the evidence is “not conclusive”.
Interestingly, Stanca notes, the negative responses to parenthood are more pronounced in countries with a high per-capita gross domestic product – and, perhaps less surprisingly, those with a high unemployment rate.
In other words, richer nations are not necessarily happier.
Stanca writes: “These findings indicate that, on the one hand, having children is valued less – in terms of life satisfaction – in countries where the opportunity cost of time [losing income owing to parental commitments] is higher. On the other hand, worse labour-market conditions enhance the adverse effects of parenthood’s financial and time costs.”
This suggests that parenthood, while bringing joy to so many households, can have an overall negative impact on wellbeing because of the financial strain it places on the family unit.
Time is also a factor, as busy parents struggle to maintain an optimal work-life balance – and some have to make financial sacrifices to care for their children. Time, as they say, is money.
South Africa is ranked 89th out of 105 on the list of countries with happy parents, just lower than Luxembourg and Malaysia.
Montenegro, China, Kyrgyzstan, Taiwan and Vietnam take the top five spots when it comes to life satisfaction and parenthood, with more Asian parents saying they are content.
Zimbabwe, Jordan, Libya, Tunisia and Macedonia bring up the rear in having the unhappiest parents in the world, according to the stud.
In the survey, significantly more women (and younger parents) said having children had caused their contentment levels to drop.
Married couples, and separated or single parents, were particularly negative in this regard.
But over-65s and widows/widowers swung in the opposite direction to report an overwhelmingly positive response to being parents – perhaps because their children were out of the house and no longer a financial burden.
