FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
 
 CONTACT: Virginia Rutter / Framingham State University Sociology 
 
 vrutter@gmail.com / 206 375 4139 
 
 Parents’ Happiness Deficit: Must Parents Sacrifice Happiness for Meaning? 
 
 AUSTIN TX, June 16, 2016—Over the past decade, numerous studies have found that parents, especially in the United States, report lower levels of happiness than nonparents, despite the fact that they find parenthood meaningful or rewarding in the long run. Parents consistently report lower happiness, mental well-being, and marital satisfaction than do childless couples and individuals. 
 
 Is this just the price parents must pay for the long-term rewards of having children? In a remarkable study of 22 countries presented today to the Council on Contemporary Families, researchers find that the parental “happiness penalty” is not universal or unavoidable, and they identify simple strategies that wipe out or even reverse the happiness differential between parents and non-parents. 
 
 Happiness penalties vary across 22 countries. “Social Policies, Parenthood, and Happiness in 22 Countries,” a briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Jennifer Glass, University of Texas; Robin Simon, Wake Forest University; and Matthew Andersson, Baylor University, used two well-respected surveys, the International Social Surveys of 2007 and 2008 and the European Social Surveys of 2006 and 2008, and found that the “happiness penalty” varies substantially from country to country, and is not an inevitable accompaniment of contemporary family life. In some countries, such as Norway and Hungary, parents are actually happier than non-parents. 
 
 The U.S. has the largest gap. The bad news is that of the 22 countries in the study, the U.S. has the largest happiness shortfall among parents compared to nonparents, significantly larger than the gap found in Great Britain and Australia. 
 
 Policies make the difference. The researchers investigated possible explanations for the happiness gap, including variations in family size and in the extent of unplanned births. Such differences between countries were not significant in explaining variations in the happiness of parents compared to non-parents. 
 
 “What we found was astonishing,” reported Glass, Simon and Andersson. “The negative effects of parenthood on happiness were entirely explained by the presence or absence of social policies allowing parents to better combine paid work with family obligations. And this was true for both mothers and fathers. Countries with better family policy ‘packages’ had no happiness gap between parents and nonparents.” 
 
 Helping parents helps childless individuals as well. More specifically, 
 
 *The positive effects of good family support policies for parents were not achieved at the expense of non-parents. The policies most helpful to parents also improved the happiness of everyone in that country, whether they had children or not. 
 
 *Policies such as guaranteed minimum paid sick and vacation days make everyone happier, but they had an extra happiness bonus for parents of minor children. 
 
 *Countries with cheaper out-of-pocket costs for child care had happier nonparents as well as parents. 
 
 *Another striking finding was that giving money to parents in the form of child allowances or monthly payments had less effect on parental happiness than giving them the tools to combine employment with parenting. 
 
 *Gender made little difference: Fathers’ happiness was slightly more sensitive to money policies (child care costs, specifically), and mothers’ happiness was slightly more sensitive to time policies (especially paid sick and vacation days). But these differences were minor. 
 
 The new study, according to CCF’s research director Stephanie Coontz, leaves little doubt about the benefits of policies to support working families: “We have reams of research showing that investing in children’s well-being benefits all members of society down the road, in lower crime rates and more productive employees. This study highlights that, even when it comes to personal happiness, supporting working parents is not a zero-sum game.” 
 
 -further information- 
 
 A longer version of this peer-reviewed study will be published in the American Journal of Sociology in September 2016. 
 
 FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT 
 
 Jennifer Glass 
 
 Barbara Bush Regents Professor of Liberal Arts 
 
 Executive Director, Council on Contemporary Families 
 
 Department of Sociology & Population Research Center 
 
 University of Texas – Austin 
 
 319-621-6304 
 
 Robin Simon 
 
 Professor of Sociology 
 
 Wake Forest University 
 
 robinwsimon54@gmail.com 
 
 Matthew Andersson 
 
 Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course 
 
 Yale University. 
 
 *Starting this summer, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Baylor University 
 
 matthew.andersson@yale.edu 
 
 LINKS: 
 
 CCF BRIEF: Social Policies, Parenting, and Happiness-A 22 Countries 
 
 ( https://contemporaryfamilies.org/brief-parenting-happiness/) 
 
 CCF ADVISORY: Parents’ Happiness Deficit: Must Parents Sacrifice Happiness for Meaning? 
 
 ( https://contemporaryfamilies.org/advisory-parents-happiness-deficit/) 
 
 The Council on Contemporary Families, based at the University of Texas-Austin, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of family researchers and practitioners that seeks to further a national understanding of how America’s families are changing and what is known about the strengths and weaknesses of different family forms and various family interventions. 
 
 The Council helps keep journalists informed of notable work on family-related issues via the CCF Network. To join the CCF Network, or for further media assistance, please contact Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education, at coontzs@msn.com, cell 360-556-9223. 
 
 Follow us! @CCF_Families and https://www.facebook.com/contemporaryfamilies 
 
 Read our blog Families as They Really Are – https://thesocietypages.org/families/ 
 
 June 16, 2016 
 
 -end- ||||| Social Policies, Parenthood, and Happiness in 22 Countries 
 
 A briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families by Jennifer Glass, University of Texas; Robin Simon, Wake Forest University; and Matthew Andersson, Baylor University. This brief includes findings from an article in American Journal of Sociology. 
 
 June 16, 2016 
 
 Many people now know that parents in the United States report being less happy than nonparents, but there is considerable disagreement about why parents pay a “happiness penalty,” along with conflicting reports about whether this is true in most contemporary cultures. To explore these questions, our team, with support from the National Science Foundation, examined comparative data from 22 European and English-speaking countries. We utilized two well-respected surveys (the International Social Surveys of 2007 and 2008 and the European Social Surveys of 2006 and 2008), confining ourselves to data prior to the global recession in order to avoid confusing reports of happiness in a period of relative prosperity with reports taken in a period of economic stress. 
 
 The good news is that parents are not doomed to be unhappier than nonparents. Our results indicate that the parental “happiness penalty” varies substantially from country to country, and is not an inevitable accompaniment of contemporary family life. In fact, in some countries, such as Norway and Hungary, parents are actually happier than nonparents! 
 
 The bad news is that of the 22 countries we studied, the U.S. has the largest happiness shortfall among parents compared to nonparents, significantly larger than the gap found in Great Britain and Australia. 
 
 But why are parents so much less happy than the childfree in the U.S., when other countries show different patterns? This is a somewhat complicated question to answer because of cultural differences in people’s definitions, standards, and self-reports of happiness. People in the U.S. tend to say they are pretty happy overall: On a scale from 1-10, Americans hover in the 8-10 range. People in France tend to rate their levels significantly lower – in the middle of the scale from 5-7. We aren’t sure if this means the French are truly less happy than Americans, or just don’t think it is appropriate to use the extremes of any scale. 
 
 Accordingly, we focused on the differences between parents and non-parents in the same country, or the relative effects of parenting. What factors are associated with parents being less happy than nonparents, given their country’s overall average level of happiness? Is it levels of unplanned parenthood or perhaps larger overall family sizes that depress parental happiness? Perhaps countries with more unexpected births and larger families end up with more parents who are unhappy and stressed-out. We checked out this hypothesis, but our data revealed that these factors were relatively unimportant in understanding why parents are less happy than childfree individuals in many countries. 
 
 So maybe parental happiness gaps are related to the differing costs — in time, money, and energy — of raising children in the countries we studied. We looked at several specific government policies that we thought would make a difference in the lives of employed parents – the duration and generosity of paid parenting leave, the number of annual paid sick and vacation days guaranteed by law, the cost of child care for the average two-year old as a percent of median wages, and the extent of work schedule flexibility offered to parents of dependent children. We also constructed a summary policy measure, combining all these, to differentiate countries with good parental policy “packages” from countries with weak parental policy “packages.” We gathered this policy information for all 22 of our countries, along with their Gross Domestic Product and their fertility rate, to make sure that our findings were not simply reflecting the effects of living in a richer country versus a poorer one. 
 
 What we found was astonishing. The negative effects of parenthood on happiness were entirely explained by the presence or absence of social policies allowing parents to better combine paid work with family obligations. And this was true for both mothers and fathers. Countries with better family policy “packages” had no happiness gap between parents and non-parents. 
 
 Furthermore, the positive effects of good family support policies for parents were not achieved at the expense of non-parents, as some commentators have claimed might be the case. The policies that helped parents the most were policies that also improved the happiness of everyone in that country, whether they had children or not. Policies such as guaranteed minimum paid sick and vacation days make everyone happier, but they had an extra happiness bonus for parents of minor children. 
 
 The same pattern held even for policies such as subsidized child care, which one might assume would only benefit parents. Countries with cheaper out-of-pocket costs for child care had happier nonparents as well as parents. 
 
 Another striking finding was that giving money to parents in the form of child allowances or monthly payments had less effect on parental happiness than giving them the tools to combine employment with parenting. Many European countries have child allowances in varying amounts, but few of these policies had a significant impact on the relative happiness of mothers or fathers compared to non-parents. 
 
 There were a few differences in what increased the happiness of fathers compared to mothers. Fathers’ happiness was slightly more sensitive to money policies (child care costs, specifically), and mothers’ happiness was slightly more sensitive to time policies (especially paid sick and vacation days). But these differences were minor. The most important predictor of higher relative levels of happiness for parents was the presence of family policies making it less stressful and less costly combine childrearing with paid work. And such policies seemed to increase the happiness level of childless individuals as well. 
 
 FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT 
 
 Jennifer Glass 
 
 Barbara Bush Regents Professor of Liberal Arts 
 
 Executive Director, Council on Contemporary Families 
 
 Department of Sociology & Population Research Center 
 
 University of Texas – Austin 
 
 319-621-6304 
 
 Robin Simon 
 
 Professor of Sociology 
 
 Wake Forest University 
 
 robinwsimon54@gmail.com 
 
 Matthew Andersson 
 
 Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course 
 
 Yale University 
 
 *Starting this summer, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Baylor University 
 
 matthew.andersson@yale.edu ||||| It’s an almost immutable fact: Regardless of what country you live in, and what stage of life you might be at, having kids makes you significantly less happy compared to people who don’t have kids. It’s called the parenting happiness gap. 
 
 New research to be published in the American Journal of Sociology shows that American parents are especially miserable on this front, posting the largest gap (13%) in a group of 22 developed countries. 
 
 But the research also shows that it doesn’t have to be this way. Every other country had smaller gaps, and some, including Russia, France, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Hungary, and Portugal, actually showed happiness gains for parents. 
 
 The researchers, led by Jennifer Glass at the University of Texas, looked at what impact policies such as paid sick and vacation leave and subsidized child care have on closing that gap. It was 100%. 
 
 “As social scientists we rarely completely explain anything, but in this case we completely explain the parental happiness gap,” said Glass. In countries with the strongest family-friendly policy packages, “the parental deficit in happiness was completely eliminated, accomplished by raising parent’s happiness rather than lowering nonparents’ happiness,” the authors wrote. 
 
 It’s not just one policy, like paid parental leave, that makes the difference. It’s the magic of a package of policies spanning over a lifetime, that allow people to care for children, support them financially, and even enjoy them every once in awhile on a holiday. 
 
 The study looked at 22 European and English-speaking countries using surveys from prior to the recession, including the International Social Surveys of 2007 and 2008 and the European Social Surveys of 2006 and 2008. The group created a a three-item policy index including combined paid leave available to mothers, paid vacation and sick leave, and work flexibility, and then looked at the effect of the basket of policies, as well as the impact of each individual one, on closing the happiness gap. 
 
 They found that in countries high on the comprehensive policy index, there was no gap, or, parents were even happier than non-parents. Countries low on that index were less happy. 
 
 All policies are not created equal. Paid sick and vacation leave and subsidized child care showed the largest impact on improving the happiness of non-parents as well as parents, Glass said. This is important, because policies that spend tax money to help parents at the expense of non-parents tend to be less popular. 
 
 Studies like this present some obvious challenges. For one, people in the US are actually a weirdly happy lot overall. On a scale from 1-10, they log in around the 8-10 range. People in France rate their happiness in the middle of the scale, from 5-7. “We aren’t sure if this means the French are truly less happy than Americans, or just don’t think it is appropriate to use the extremes of any scale,” Glass wrote. 
 
 To allow for these cultural differences, the research focused on the differences between parents and non-parents in the same country. They asked: “What factors are associated with parents being less happy than nonparents, given their country’s overall average level of happiness?” The key is association (or correlation), and not causation, which is impossible to prove in studies like this. 
 
 It’s no big surprise that parents in Sweden, with its dreamy parental leave policies, are happier (compared to their non-parent peers) than parents in the US, where there is no paid leave for anything—having a baby, much less raising it. But the research helps point to which policies could help most. 
 
 Glass says it’s not that parents are unhappy. They often find parenting fulfilling, and wouldn’t have it any other way. But their stress levels tend to be high, which can overshadow any happiness to be gained from shepherding another human being through life. 
 
 And why should we even care about whether parents are happy? “Parental happiness does in fact determine our fertility rates, it does determine the types of bills we get for stress-related diseases,” Glass said. “When you have a system that is not very efficient in supporting parents, you can expect to have problems motivating people to have children and care for them.” 
 
 Conversely, she said, “People want to have more children when you make it possible for them to be effective parents and effective workers.”
– The "happiness penalty" between parents and nonparents in the US—that is, in which nonparents report being happier than their counterparts—is wider than in any of the other 21 countries researchers have analyzed. Now those researchers say they've managed to pinpoint exactly why, and it all boils down to family support policies. "As social scientists we rarely completely explain anything, but in this case we completely" do, lead researcher Jennifer Glass tells Quartz. The researchers write that what they found "was astonishing": When there are good family support policies such as parental leave and paid vacation in place, "the parental deficit in happiness was completely eliminated, accomplished by raising parent’s happiness rather than lowering nonparents' happiness." The Chicago Tribune reports a slew of factors were considered: unplanned parenthood, guaranteed paid sick days, the flexibility of work schedules, and a country's GDP, things that allowed researchers to confirm that more unexpected pregnancies, bigger families, or living in a richer country weren't the drivers. "The negative effects of parenthood on happiness were entirely explained by the presence or absence of social policies allowing parents to better combine paid work with family obligations." Further, those countries with the best policy "packages” had no happiness gap between parents and non-parents. Quips the Tribune, "It's almost like trying to raise children and earn a living in a country with zero weeks of guaranteed paid leave and child care that costs as much as college is draining. Who knew?" The peer-reviewed findings will appear in the American Journal of Sociology in September.