Parents make people unhappy? This is when it happens.

Conventional wisdom, assuming that having children, is the key to living a happy and meaningful life. However, empirical evidence suggests that those who are not parents fare better. The difference is more pronounced in countries like the United States.

Meanwhile, in countries that support pro-family policies, parents can be as happy as their childless peers. These findings suggest that we can always rely on popular traditions to make decisions on parenting, whether on individual or social level.

How does a happy, meaningful life come to be? For many, the answer is at least in part, child rearing. Looking at a child as he grows up and learns about the world is a joyful experience, and the time spent in offering unconditional love and attention offers much spiritual satisfaction.

Then, in our old age, children can be a source of unfreesome comfort. This view is so deeply embedded in our culture that many, especially women, are driven by friends and family to have children, and feel that they should justify it.

But decades of various studies have compared the happiness and well - being of parents with adults who are not parents, and the result is: many parents are less happy than their childless peers. But not all. Media headlines claiming parents are more disappointed than non-parents certainly attract our attention, but such stories are hardly news.

empirical studies have revealed this trend since 1970. A 2011 review by Thomas Hansen, a researcher at Norway's Social Study Institute, compared our popular understanding of parental relations and happiness to actual evidence.

He found that people believe that the <x0) lives of childless people are more empty, less useful and less rewarding than the lives of parents”, but the opposite proved true. Children living at home intervened in their parents ' welfare.

An analysis by the National Council for Family Relations in the United States considered a more special metric of happiness - marital satisfaction. She discovered that childless couples reported a more romantic happiness. The difference was more pronounced among mothers of young children, while fathers discover little satisfaction regardless of their child's age.

The authors noted differences, which could result from conflicts of roles and restrictions on freedom. Recently, a study published in the American Journal of Sociology examined 22 countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and compared the link between parents and happiness. Researchers Jennifer Glass (Texas University) and Robin Saymann (Wake Forest University) found that nonparents discover higher levels of well - being in more advanced industrialized societies.

The happiness gap was broader in the United States, where parents were 12 percent less happy than children without children. Fourteen other countries, including Ireland, Greece, Britain, New Zealand, Switzerland and Australia, also showed such a gap, but not as large as in the US.

Hansen's analysis shows that the most sensitive parents to discontent were divorced women, those in lower socioeconomic levels, and those who live in less pro-prime societies. Meanwhile, Glass and Saimen found 8 countries where parents reported higher levels of happiness, including Spain, Norway and Portugal.

Their analysis, showed that countries offering the most family <x0) policy, especially the paid time and child care subsidies, are accompanied by smaller inequalities in happiness between parents and non-principles”. A possible reason?

Parents in countries supporting pro-family policies face less stress. They can get more parental permission, enjoy more under-ventional social care, and are not so heavily charged with child education.

Taken together, 3 studies suggest that a major cause of parental discontent is lack. Low - class parents find it difficult to have the money and social networks needed to succeed in their lives, supporting their children as well.

While happiness from parenting depends on some other factors such as the culture of families

Big. Thus, Spaniards manage personal problems through the family, an approach that extends to raising children, where many hands make a job seem easier.

In contrast, families in the United States focus on individualism and social furniture. The American family model is made up of small family units where parents assume the sole responsibility for child rearing, while the extended family lives in separate settlements, sometimes hundreds of miles away.

Another factor, though, is who becomes a parent. Glass and Robin, they say their results can be softened by parental selection. They propose that countries like Spain and Italy, which have low fertility rates, can choose toward people who really want to have children. Children at home are another factor in importance.

An analysis by the Institute for Family Studies, found that men aged 50-70 are happier than their childless peers if their children have left home. However, males who still had children at home reported being less happy than others.

The number of children also plays a role. The same analysis showed that women with only 1 child had 7 percent less likely to report they were happy than non-parents, while women with 3 or 4 children showed no distinct differences. Other factors are parenting. How a parent approaches parents can have considerable effects on his happiness. Psychologist Alison Gopnik argues in her book “The gardener and carpenter”, in which we view our children as material that will be shaped into certain adults, is not only wrong, but also the source of stress and misery for many parents.