Raising a child from birth to age 17 is estimated to cost over $233,000 in the United States.That's a pretty expensive endeavor that some folks are choosing to skip. Amy Blackstone, Ph.D is child-free by choice and has been researching the topic for over 12 years. The research indicates that those without children are typically happier than those with children. Jennifer Glass, Ph.D lays out what societal structures are at play that are making it harder for American parents to be happy.
Parents often refer to their children as their "pride and joy." But research tells a different story: Having kids doesn't necessarily make people happier.
Most parents feel that their children are incredibly important sources of life satisfaction, says Jennifer Glass, professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and a demographer who studies the relationship between parenthood and well-being.
"But that's not the same thing as happiness, and it's not the same thing as financial well-being, good physical health or good emotional health," all of which having kids can bring down, Glass tells CNBC Make It.
So, why does having kids not provide the happiness that we think it will?
Having kids provides a temporary 'happiness bump'
Research shows that there is a "happiness bump" that parents experience right after a baby is born. But that tends to dissipate over the course of a year, Glass says.
After that point in time, the levels of happiness of parents and non-parents gradually diverge, with non-parents generally growing happier over time.
It's not that parents are lukewarm about bringing a baby into their lives, but child-rearing is tough.
"You find that [parents'] happiness plummets pretty quickly once they discover all of the work that's involved in a brand new baby," Amy Blackstone, professor of sociology at the University of Maine, and author of "Childfree by Choice," tells CNBC Make It.
When reflecting on their lives, parents tend to focus on the positive, loving moments that they have with their kids, Glass says. "And thank goodness for that, because those same marvelous little creatures can put us into the abyss of despondency if anything goes wrong," she says.
Happiness is a nuanced concept that's made up of life satisfaction, which is how happy you are with the way your life is going, and well-being, which is how you feel on a moment-to-moment basis.
While having kids does boost your life satisfaction, it also comes with a tremendous amount of responsibility and daily stress. This results in a rollercoaster of very high highs and lows over the course of their experience of parenthood.
A study from Princeton University and Stony Brook University found that parents and nonparents have similar levels of life satisfaction, but parents experienced both more daily joy and more daily stress than nonparents.
"Life without children is simply much more stable," Glass says.
Parents cope with 'constant low-level stressors'
From figuring out remote learning to getting up in the middle of the night to tend to a sick kid, there are "a lot of constant low-level stressors in parents' lives," Glass says. Depression and anxiety tend to be higher among actively parenting adults.
Stress doesn't automatically disappear once kids grow up and become self-reliant. A 2019 study found that older parents are happier than nonparents only if their kids have moved out.
"The question really is, are you willing to pay the price of all that worry and concern in order to get the goodies that come with those very strong emotional connections?" Glass says.
During the pandemic, the "price" of having kids is compounded by the fact that millions of women with children have been pushed out of the workforce due to increased demands at home.
A recent survey from the American Psychological Association found that 75% of parents with kids under age 18 said they could've used more emotional support during the pandemic, and 48% of parents said their stress increased since the pandemic.
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Why You Don’t Need Kids To Be Happy