Many individuals and institutions in the past have attempted to find out what makes a family happy. A new study is making yet another attempt to uncover the secret to a blissful home life.
Because of the growing expense and the limiting of time, many families have come to believe that having a single child is best, and that this would make them happier. However, a new study has shown that this is not the case and that having two children is better than having just one.
A study from the London School of Economics and the Western University suggests that the number of children in a family has a direct link to the family's overall happiness.
The researchers chose to follow several couples for 18 years after the birth of their first child, and what they found out could change the trend for future families. Parents' happiness increases tremendously the year before and after the birth of their first child. After that, things quickly return to the level of happiness in the pre-child era of their lives.
The birth of a second child also increases happiness in a family, but just like the birth of the first child, the happiness quickly decreases.
"Our results show a temporary and transitory gain in parents' happiness around the birth of first and second children. The fact that parental happiness increases before these children are born suggests that we are capturing broader issues relating to childbearing, such as couples forming partnerships and making plans for the future," says Mikko Myrskylä, professor of demography at LSE and director of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research.
While having two children can increase happiness for a short time, having a third child would likely decrease happiness rather than increase it. This is because the idea of raising a third offspring is less exciting, and this third child may put pressure on the parents' limited resources.
