Happiness Drops in New Mothers & Fathers: Study

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Before you go about feeling FOMO (fear of missing out) on your friends who have gotten married and had children in the course of the last 12 months (as evident in their social media posts), hit pause, because a new study finds that having a baby actually makes a couple less happy.

The NZ Herald reports that according to a study published in the journal Demography, a man and a woman who have their first baby has a negative effect on the parents' lives, "worse than divorce, worse than unemployment and worse even than the death of a partner."

The research was done by Rachel Margolis and Mikko Myrskylä on 2,016 Germans who did not have children when the study began, and until two or more years after the birth of their first baby. Respondents were asked to answer the question "How satisfied are you with your life, all things considered?" through a rating of 1 to 10, with 10 being equal to "completely satisfied."

Study authors wrote: "Although this measure does not capture respondents' overall experience of having a child, it is preferable to direct questions about childbearing because it is considered taboo for new parents to say negative things about a new child."

Results showed that 30% of respondents claimed that their happiness was the same, while the rest said that their happiness had decreased, with 37% of them saying their happiness dipped by one unit, 19% with a two-unit drop, and 17% with a three-unit drop. Previous studies showed that divorce has an equivalent of 0.6-unit drop, while unemployment and death of a partner each have a 1-unit drop.

Myrskala also told TIME: "We don’t ask parents about happiness with relationship to parenthood, because there is a strong implicit pressure to be happy. If I go and ask a new parent these kinds of questions, they feel a pressure to put a positive picture of what a new parent is ‘supposed’ to feel."

Additionally, study authors said that the experience of having a first child also helps parents determine if they want to have more children. At times, becoming a parent also takes a toll not only physically and mentally, but socially as well.

Biological anthropologist Helen Fisher told CBS News: "You get some presents from various friends, and then they just leave you alone because they figure you're too tired and too busy."

She added that this is in contrast to when a person is going through a tough time over a divorce, loss, or unemployment. She explained, "People simply assume that when you are getting a divorce—they're piling in to help you, they pile in to help you when you've lost your job, they really pile in to help you when you've lost your partner. But they don't pile in when you've had a child. They figure you're happy."

This study can break through that misconception and open up discussion on the challenges of being a new parent, and make society more accepting of the fact that the experience of becoming a parent isn't a 100% smooth road to take.