Having children and psychological well-being
The question of whether having children makes their parents happy is not easy to answer. There is no single number of children that makes a parent maximally happy. One essential factor that has often been neglected in psychological research on having children and psychological well-being in parents is fertility desires. For someone with absolutely no desire to have any children, not having children may not lead to any negative feelings. In contrast, someone who has a strong wish to have children may be emotionally devastated if they are not able to conceive. Thus, to truly understand the relationship between having children and psychological well-being in parents, psychological studies should assess fertility desire.
A new study on how a mismatch between the desired and the actual number of children
A new study entitled “How a Mismatch Between Actual and Desired Fertility Relates to Well-Being Across Adulthood”, just published in the Journal of Personality, now focused on investigating how the difference between the desired and the actual number of children affects parents’ psychological well-being (Buchinger and co-workers, 2026). The research team, led by scientist Laura Buchinger from the University of Berlin, analyzed data from the so-called German Socio-Economic Panel Study.
Overall, data from more than 23,000 volunteers were included in the dataset. All volunteers answered the question “How many children would you ideally have?” and indicated how many children they had. Based on the results of these two questions, the scientists divided the overall data set into five distinct groups:
- People who had chosen to be childfree
- People who were involuntarily childfree
- Parents who had exactly the number of children they wanted
- Parents who had children, but fewer than they had desired
- Parents who had children, but more than they had desired
All volunteers indicated how satisfied they were with their lives overall and how satisfied they were with several domains of their lives, such as work life and family life. Moreover, several additional pieces of information about the volunteers were gathered, such as the region they came from, the quality of childcare in their region, and their religion.
