USA Today updates us on the research addressing parental happiness. The new studies points toward parents today being happier than married couples without children.
Sharon Jayson writes of the two studies (excerpt):
“We find no evidence that parental well-being decreases after a child is born to levels preceding the children, but we find strong evidence that well-being is elevated when people are planning and waiting for the child, and in the year when the child is born,” notes the study presented by co-author Mikko Myrskylä of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany.
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[Co-author Chris Herbst of Arizona State University] says what’s “undeniable, however, is that parents have become relatively happier than non-parents over the past few decades.”