It doesn’t make sense! Hearing that children don’t make us happy goes against everything we believe about parenthood! But an eight-year study of 218 couples detailed in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, found that 90 percent of couples experienced a decrease in marital satisfaction once their first child was born.
Children don’t make us happy as married partners
Couples who lived together before marriage experienced more problems after the birth of a child than those who lived separately before marriage. The same goes for those whose parents fought or divorced.
Couples whose relationships were stronger post-birth, tended to have been married longer or had higher incomes.
An unrelated study in 2006 of 13,000 Americans also found parents to be significantly less happy than non-parents.
Scientists speculate that such feelings are relatively modern and stem from parents not getting as much help at home as they did in previous generations.
What do you think? Do you feel children don’t make us happy? Or has becoming a parent made you happier than ever?
