Long-term psychological study on parenthood and well-being

Kids or no kids – men and women are equally satisfied across almost the entire lifespan

Having children makes people happy, especially women – this is a common societal belief. But how do mental health, well-being and feelings of loneliness change in parents compared to women and men without children over the life course? And does it play a role whether they internalised parenthood as their life goal in young adulthood?

A group of researchers led by Dr Laura Buchinger at the Department of Psychology of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU) investigated these questions using survey data collected as part of the Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP). Between 1990 and 2020, 562 individuals took part in the study for an average period of 25 years. Half of them became parents during the study period, the other half did not.

The results show: from young adulthood up to retirement age, parents and people without children were equally satisfied with their lives. Nevertheless, both groups differed in terms of mental health and emotional well-being, i.e. the experience of positive and negative feelings, and in terms of loneliness: childless individuals reported better mental health and fewer negative emotions overall. Parents experienced both negative and positive emotions more often, and they felt lonely somewhat less frequently. However, only men felt less lonely when they had children, whereas women with and without children experienced loneliness to the same extent.

Differences in mental health during the ‘rush hour’ of life

These differences between parents and childless individuals were most pronounced in their thirties and early 40's. The emotional lives of childless people appear to be steadier, they experience fewer highs but also fewer lows. From their mid-40s on, these differences largely diminish. “One possible explanation is that young parents are struggling to adjust to their new role during this time,” says Buchinger. “The thirties and forties are also a sort of ‘rush hour’ of life in our society. This period of life is characterized by tremendous professional and personal demands. It is the time when people are paving the way for their careers, while, at the same, time their young children and perhaps also their ageing parents demand a lot of care.”

On average, participants were part of the study for nearly 25 years. This allowed for an in-depth analysis of how life satisfaction, affective well-being, mental health and loneliness develop over the course of life in both parents and non-parents. To obtain meaningful results, the researchers only compared childless individuals and parents who were very similar in social, financial, occupational, and health-related aspects before the birth of their first child. This ensured that any observed differences were genuinely attributable to parenthood and not to pre-existing differences between those who became parents and those who did not.

Motherhood as a central goal in life: negative effects on the mental health of childless women

One focus of the study was the question how important having own children was to the participants in young adulthood. The results show that this primarily affected the mental health of childless women. Whether childlessness was associated with poorer mental health in these women depended on how important it was to them in young adulthood to have children of their own. Women who did not consider this goal important reported better mental health throughout most of the life span compared to women who viewed having children as a central life goal. A comparable effect was not observed in men.

“These results suggest that it is not childlessness per se that is associated with poorer mental health. Rather, what matters is how strongly the normative goal of parenthood has been internalized - especially for women. How easily one can let go of a goal depends in part on how strongly it is embedded in societal norms and on the availability of similarly attractive and socially accepted alternatives. This is where interventions could come in, by making diverse life concepts visible and treating them as equal,” says Laura Buchinger.

Publication

Kids or no kids? Life goals in one’s 20s predict midlife trajectories of well-being
Buchinger, L., Wahring, I. V., Ram, N., Hoppmann, C. A., Heckhausen, J., & Gerstorf, D. (2024).
Psychology and Aging, 39(8), 897–914.

Contact

Dr. Laura Buchinger
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Department of Psychology
+49 30 2093-9334
laura.buchinger(at)hu-berlin.de

Press release HU Berlin, 18 December 2024