Having kids may not make us miserable after all.
The conventional wisdom that's developed over the past few decades — based on early research — has said parents are less happy, more depressed and have less-satisfying marriages than their childless counterparts.
But now, two new studies presented as part of the Population Association of America's annual meeting suggest that earlier findings in several studies weren't so clear-cut and may, in fact, be flawed. The newer analyses presented this week use analytical methods based on data from almost 130,000 adults around the globe — including more than 52,000 parents — and the conclusions aren't so grim. They say that parents today may indeed be happier than non-parents and that parental happiness levels — while they do drop — don't dip below the levels they were before having children.
