One kid = happier, more kids = less happier?
May 10th, 2007 |Kohler found that mothers with one child are about 20 percent happier than their childless counterparts; and while fathers’ happiness gains are smaller, men enjoy an almost 75 percent larger happiness boost from a firstborn son than from a firstborn daughter. The first child’s sex doesn’t matter to mothers, perhaps because women are better than men at enjoying the company of both girls and boys, Kohler speculates.
Interestingly, second and third children don’t add to parents’ happiness at all. In fact, these additional children seem to make mothers less happy than mothers with only one child—though still happier than women with no children.
“If you want to maximize your subjective well-being, you should stop at one child,” concludes Kohler, adding that people probably have additional children either for the benefit of the firstborn or because they reason that if the first child made them happy, the second one will, too.
So, according to this important research, Mrs. Smithers is now 20% happier than she was before Baby Smithers was born.
I am 75% happier that Baby Smithers is a boy rather than a girl. So instead of being only 8.55% happier I am really 15% happier.
Both of us are going to drop in happierness once the next Baby Smithers is born. So Mrs. Smithers will probably come down to about 11.5% happier and I will probably drop down to the 8.55% happier level.
I will keep you updated as to the happierness level as we move along here but in the mean time I have created this handy happierness chart for you to follow along with the progress so far:
HAPPIERNESS SCALE
