I’ve been reading a lot about cognitive science lately, and the question of what makes us happy has come up a lot. One of the things that is often mentioned is that marriage tends to make people happier, then having kids tends to reduce happiness.
I’m wondering though if this is true of only certain countries. For example, if Robert Putnam is right about American social capital diminishing, then having kids might be much more difficult than it once was because you don’t have the community to help share some of the the burdens of raising kids.
Are there any cross-cultural studies about, say, how happy Japanese couples are when they have kids?
My informal observations do seem to show some obvious trends:
Happiness seems to go up in societies that value large, extended families. Probably part of this is simply having more people around to help raise the kid.
Happiness seems to go up in societies where people are comfortable in their roles as parents and can transition into them easily. Career minded women find they give up a lot when they have kids. People who never thought they’d be anything but a “mom” are not surprisingly more comfortable with the role.
That said, being an overly bored housewife without much other sense of purpose in life is not conducive to happiness. A full-time mom of a bouncing household of six kids at home is often happier than a bored housewife with one kid who spend days at school and nights at cram school, leaving her with nothing to do but craft artfully decorated rice balls.
Happiness takes a nose-dive when people have kids due to strong family pressure, and do not feel like they have much control over their reproductive choices.