After I was deciding whether or not to have kids, within the early 2000s, most of what I learn concerning the prospect was destructive. Articles detailed the sleep deprivation, the bodily challenges of being pregnant, the sheer overwhelmingness of motherhood. If you wish to be glad, these writers warned, don’t have kids. You may not need to get married, both—in spite of everything, marriage, analysis urged, principally advantages males.
Family and friends had few constructive issues to say, particularly about parenting. After I requested dad and mom I knew concerning the disadvantages of getting kids, I bought an earful about tantrums, child-care difficulties, and the shortage of time to your self. “You don’t sleep for 18 years,” one cousin confided. After I would ask about benefits, there was often an extended, awkward pause. “It makes you much less egocentric,” one aunt supplied—not a convincing argument for a fiercely unbiased, career-minded girl akin to myself.
These similar sentiments are prevalent in right this moment’s on-line conversations and information stories. “Girls Are Happier With out Kids or a Partner, Says Happiness Professional,” one headline reads. One other reveals “Why So Many Single Girls With out Kids Are Blissful.” Folks submit in dialogue boards, asking, “Why do you suppose that single single girls with out kids are happier than married girls with kids?”
However are married moms really much less glad than single girls with out kids? That’s one of many questions that, together with my colleagues Jenet Erickson, Wendy Wang, and Brad Wilcox, I got down to reply by conducting a nationally consultant survey of three,000 American girls ages 25 to 55, fielded by YouGov in March 2025.
What we discovered contradicts the destructive messages that I had come throughout: Married moms are literally happier than single girls and married girls with out kids. Within the survey, 19 p.c of married moms described themselves as “very glad,” in contrast with 11 p.c of married girls with out kids, 13 p.c of single moms, and 10 p.c of single girls with out kids. Married moms had been additionally extra more likely to say that life is pleasant most or all the time than the opposite three teams. These numbers are managed for age, household earnings, and training, so we all know that these components aren’t the reason for the variations.
These findings are usually not a one-off. Properly-respected sources, such because the Common Social Survey, present the identical end result; married moms and dads in that survey had been extra more likely to report being “very glad” than single individuals and people with out kids. One other current research discovered that married or partnered moms are much less more likely to incessantly really feel depressed or anxious than individuals within the different three teams.
May it’s not that marriage produces happiness, however that the causation goes the opposite manner—that happier individuals are extra more likely to marry? One research managed for premarital happiness ranges and nonetheless discovered that marriage leads to happier individuals and a much less intense dip in life satisfaction at center age.
That’s to not say the roles of spouse and mom don’t have their challenges. Roughly two-thirds of moms in our survey, for instance, stated that they felt overwhelmed every day (although so did greater than half of nonmothers). About six in 10 moms stated that they wished that they had extra time to themselves, in contrast with about 4 out of 10 childless girls.
Why, then, are moms happier? The explanations communicate to the profound expertise of parenthood. Married moms had been the almost certainly to agree that their life “has a transparent sense of function” (28 p.c), adopted carefully by single moms (25 p.c). Solely roughly 15 p.c of ladies with out kids agreed. Moms had been additionally extra probably than nonmothers to agree that their life “feels significant” all or more often than not.
I now have three kids, and I’m considerably incredulous that in my premotherhood inquiries, nobody talked about the sense of function parenthood offers you. Sure, you’re going to be drained and overwhelmed, however there’s a deep data that you just’re doing one thing necessary together with your life: You’re nurturing a human being. These emotions of function and which means are typically tough to place into phrases—maybe why they aren’t repeatedly mentioned—however they’re central to being a mother or father. I’m lucky to have a profession I like and discover significant; even so, the sense of function I’ve discovered via motherhood dwarfs each profession milestone I’ve ever achieved.
The survey outcomes additionally confirmed that marriage comes with a number of benefits. Married girls are about half as more likely to report being lonely as single girls. One issue could also be that married girls are extra probably, they report, to repeatedly obtain bodily affection and contact. Contact is, in flip, strongly linked to happiness: 22 p.c of ladies within the survey who skilled a excessive stage of bodily contact had been very glad, in contrast with solely 7 p.c of those that obtained a low stage of contact. Contact, particularly from a partner, is related to decreased stress, elevated belief, and higher emotions of security.
The false narrative that marriage and motherhood are a recipe for ladies’s unhappiness is doing a variety of harm. In a nationally consultant survey that I analyzed for my ebook Generations, the variety of 18-year-old girls who anticipated to have kids plummeted by 11 proportion factors from the late 2000s to the early 2020s. Unfavorable messaging about marriage and motherhood is probably going on the root of those Gen Z shifts, together with a pervasive pessimism about every thing, egged on by social media, that borders on doomerism. Younger individuals are additionally profoundly lonely and spend much less time with their friends in individual; the results for his or her grownup relationships are unknown. Latest tendencies are much more regarding: AI girlfriends and boyfriends now supply the prospect of “relationships” with an always-available entity that has no wants of its personal. In the meantime, the fertility fee within the U.S. is at an all-time low.
There are numerous causes individuals select to not have kids or to not get married, however false messages about happiness shouldn’t be one in every of them. The articles I learn way back had been proper that parenting (and marriage) can usually be exhausting. However they ignored the sense of which means that comes from parenthood and the connection of bodily contact on the core of household life. In any case, an AI boyfriend can’t hug you again—to say nothing of an AI baby.
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