Last updated:14/05/2008
Key to happiness? Don’t have children

A Harvard professor has explained the key to long-standing happiness in a relationship: get married and don’t have kids.

Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology at Harvard University, claims that studies across America and Europe show that happiness spikes during the early years of marriage, dropping dramatically after having children with couples only recovering former joy when their offspring have left home.

He told a Happiness and its Causes conference in Sydney that parents’ desire to get a return on the time and money they have invested in their children is part of the reason they persuade themselves that their offspring are enhancing their lives.

Prof Gilbert said: “Figures show that married people are in almost every way happier than unmarried people - whether they are single, divorced, cohabiting.”

“Married people live longer, married people earn more money per capita, married people have more sex and enjoy it more.”

But he added that happiness levels plummet after having children.
“Children do seem to increase happiness [while] you’re expecting them, but as soon as you have them, trouble sets in,” he told the conference.

“People are extremely happy before they have children and then their happiness goes down, and it takes another big hit when kids reach adolescence. When does it come back to its original baseline? Oh, about the time the children grow up and go away.”

Repeated studies have shown that the period immediately surrounding childbirth can be the most stressful that couples experience.

American psychologists have also found that couples with children are less satisfied with their marriage than those without. Research in the Netherlands in the 1990s showed that couples who had two children were less happy than those with none.