Do Kids Really Make Parents Happier?

An exclusive survey of parents and non-parents, by Yahoo Parenting and Care.com, reveals that 90 percent of people without children report being happy — compared to 81 percent of moms and dads. (Photo: Thanasis Zovoilis/Getty Images). 

Here’s a sobering discovery: People without children are happier than parents, finds an exclusive new survey conducted by Yahoo Parenting and Care.com.

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More than 90 percent of people without children report that they are happy, compared to 81 percent of parents who say the same. That’s according to the poll of nearly 1,800 people, conducted in April, asking parents and non-parents alike how their happiness is affected by kids, work, and relationships.

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But plenty of respondents are still thinking about how their lives could be better. More than half (54 percent) of childless poll takers think they would be even happier if they had a child. And parents themselves reinforce that idea: About 1 in 3 think they’re happier than people without kids, and 62 percent say that compared to life before kids, they’re happier now.

“Kids are parents’ No.1 source of happiness,” Katie Bugbee, senior managing editor at Care.com, tells Yahoo Parenting about the research. However, once a person becomes a mother or a father, what constitutes happiness changes, 81 percent of survey takers admit. “They’re looking at happiness in a different way,” explains Bugbee,

Parents experience work in a different way, too, post-kids. Working parents, for example, are less likely to say they’re “very” motivated in their career compared to employees without children — 36 percent vs. 50 percent respectively.

When it comes to comparing the happiness levels of working parents to stay-at-home (SAH) parents, though, the surprise is that both categories of respondents report similar feelings. Ninety-two percent of working parents say that they’re happy, as do 87 percent of stay-at-homers.

Mothers who work part-time are probably the happiest, say 76 percent of working moms and 65 percent of stay-at-home moms. Part-time working moms who were surveyed feel stressed out less frequently than working moms and non-working moms.

The unhappy set, however, are far more likely to be in the stay-at-home pool. SAHs are three times more likely to not like themselves than working moms (that’s 10 percent versus 3 percent). And comparing themselves to friends only makes the difference more distinct. Seventeen percent of SAHs say they’re less happy than their friends, compared to 11 percent of working moms and dads.

The upside of all this information, says Bugbee, is that “we can start to analyze what it is that might make us unhappy.” For example, she wonders, how can we find moments in our daily life to do things that will make us happier? “Talk with your employer about going part-time, perhaps, or work with your partner to lighten your load if you’re stressed,” she advises. “What’s most important is really just opening the lines of communication.”

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