added by Daniel Wentsch and · updated 6d ago
What Becoming a Parent Really Does to Your Happiness
- Having worked so hard to have children, parents may feel it's only natural to expect happiness from the experience. And they'll find happiness of course, but not necessarily continuously, and not always in the forms they might expect.
from All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood by Jennifer Senior
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“Having parented successfully in the past may rank as a satisfying accomplishment retrospectively; but the bulk of research finds that being a parent, while it is happening, does not increase life satisfaction and may reduce it.”
from The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50 by Jonathan Rauch
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Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert cites several other studies showing that the happiness of couples declines after the birth of children and does not rise again until their offspring leave home.38
from The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Learn from the New Research on Well-Being by Derek Bok
“Those who look to parenthood as a solution to their discontent will typically find that the rewards, though real, are some years in the future.”
from The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50 by Jonathan Rauch
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