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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.<\/p>\n
A new study entitled \u201cHow a Mismatch Between Actual and Desired Fertility Relates to Well-Being Across Adulthood\u201d, just published in the Journal of Personality<\/a><\/em>, now focused on investigating how the difference between the desired and the actual number of children affects parents\u2019 psychological well-being (Buchinger and co-workers, 2026<\/a>). The research team, led by scientist Laura Buchinger from the University of Berlin, analyzed data from the so-called German Socio-Economic Panel Study.<\/p>\n Overall, data from more than 23,000 volunteers were included in the dataset. All volunteers answered the question \u201cHow many children would you ideally have?\u201d 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:<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Only one group showed a strong decline in psychological well-being compared to the other groups<\/p>\n Across all groups, the average actual number of children was 1.56, and the average ideal number of children was 2.35. <\/p>\n Overall, four of the five groups showed similar psychological well-being. These include both childfree groups and parents who had exactly as many children as they had desired, and parents who had children, but fewer than they wanted. Only one group had substantially lower psychological well-being than the other four across all age groups: Parents who had more children than they had desired to have. <\/p>\n People who were involuntarily childfree showed an age-dependent effect. While young people who are involuntarily childfree showed no impairment in psychological well-being, older unfulfilled parents showed less life satisfaction than other groups. <\/p>\n Religion, social norms, and childcare infrastructure did not have any substantial effects on the results.<\/p>\n In a study with more than 23,000 volunteers, the scientists showed that people who had more children than they had desired had lower psychological well-being than the other groups. While the scientists could not conclusively answer the question of why this is the case, they discuss that financial constraints and a loss of autonomy may be factors linked to lower well-being in parents who have more children than they had desired. Also, older people who were childless despite wanting children showed lower psychological well-being. These results show that fertility desires are a crucial factor for understanding whether having children makes a couple happy.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n
Results of the study<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Takeaway<\/strong><\/h2>\n