Do Children Bring Happiness and Purpose in Life?

Conventional wisdom arguably suggests that parenting is satisfying for parents: individuals in early to mid adulthood often claim to look forward to entering parenthood and having children, and even in contexts of highly developed societies where childbearing has become financially expensive and are associated often with considerable trade-offs in terms of professional careers and pursuing other goals in life, childbearing has remained an important aspect of most adults. An overwhelming majority of high-school seniors in the U.S. for example believe that motherhood and fatherhood will be fulfilling, and this fraction has been increasing during the 1970s–1990s (Thornton and Young-DeMarco 2001). Mothers also report about intense emotions evoked by their children (Preston and Hartnett 2008), and parents of feel “madly in love” with their children and report high levels of agreement with statements such as “I have an overwhelming love for my children unlike anything I feel for anyone else” (Erickson 2005). fMRI studies have documented that picture of own—but not other—children activate regions of the brain rich in oxytocin and vasopressin receptors, i.e., receptors neurohormones associated with pair-bonding and happiness (Bartels and Zeki 2004). Moreover, despite declines of the fertility rates to below-replacement levels in virtually all developed countries, and to “lowest-low fertility levels” in many southern and central/eastern European countries during the 1990s, childlessness remains relatively low and often below 20% (Kohler et al. 2002; Sobotka 2004). Parenthood remains a widespread experience, even when contraceptive control is easily accessible and life-style options other than parenthood are widely accepted in highly developed countries. It does not appear as if this pattern is fundamentally changing in advanced societies. For example, Myrskylä et al. (2009) document a fundamental change in the well-established negative relationship between fertility and development as the global population entered the 21st century. While development continues to promote fertility decline at low and medium levels of the human development index (HDI), Myrskylä et al’s analyses show that at advanced HDI levels, further development can reverse the declining trend in fertility. The previously negative development–fertility relationship has therefore become J-shaped, with HDI being positively associated with fertility among highly developed countries (for related ∗Professor of Sociology, 3718 Locust Walk, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6299, USA; Email: [email protected], Homepage: http://www.ssc.upenn.edu/∼hpkohler. Acknowledgment: This paper is importantly based on work that the author conducted with Jere Behrman, Francesco Billari and Axel Skytthe and has been published/presented as Kohler et al. (2005) and Billari and Kohler (2009).