For happiness: when you should have children and how many.
First and second children provide parents a boost in happiness up to a year before they are born but the third does not, new research finds.
The increase in happiness lasts around one year from birth, after which some parents’ happiness returns to its usual pre-baby levels.
The research, published in the journal Demography, found that it’s the first child that provides the greatest boost in happiness, while the increase from the second is about half the size (Myrskylä & Margolis, 2014).
The happiness boost from the first child was equivalent in size, on average, to getting divorced or losing your job — except obviously it made people happy rather than sad.
Men and women, on average, saw similar increases in happiness, although women gained more just before the birth and their happiness dropped more quickly in the year after birth.