Children won't make you happy

[Hazumu]

Filed by: Alex Blaze
April 4, 2009 1:00 PM

"Childless people are unhappy" is one of the myths out there that I'd like to see eradicated, along with "Marriage solves your relationship problems" and "Children have to be born and raised in a marriage to be mentally healthy adults." But, like those other ones, I don't see this going the way of the dinosaurs any time soon.

Over the past few decades, social scientists like me have found consistent evidence that there is an almost zero association between having children and happiness. My analysis in the Journal of Socio-economics (Powdthavee, 2008) is a recent British example of parents and non-parents reporting the same levels of life satisfaction, on average.