Seen this? Young married couples without children are the happiest of all, apparently. Oh and not living with both biological parents makes children miserable.

[HecateQueenOfWitches]

here

It's bloody criminal the money they're wasting on this.

What would make people happiest of all would be, I imagine, spending the fifty million pounds on things that actually matter instead of a study into what makes us happy.

Isn't it impossible to measure happiness anyway?

Yes, it is.

Unless you want to convince people in the middle of recession and with cuts to essential services looming and standard of living falling, that you don't need money to be happy...

I just think the whole survey, the whole idea of spending fifty million pounds on it - at this time of all times! - and the messages it appears to be pushing are all too convenient. And more than a little manipulative.

Or perhaps I am too cynical

Will read it when I get chance, so is an only child in a single parent household happier than with dual parents and 3 siblings. I think I know the answer to this as I have terrible trouble getting mine to go out at night aged 17 .

What do the conservative government suggest we do with our children?!!

Telling people they'd be happier without children isn't much use to anyone is it

V. good point, Badger.

Measuring happiness is, I think, an attempt to move beyond mere GDP as a measure of national wellbeing. Which is probably worth doing.

actually this survey started in 2009, so presumably was commissioned under the last government.

Though probably if they decided to can it, someone on here would be complaining that the conservatives didnt care about whether the nation was happy or not.

Well, then they were bloody prats who need a good slap.

It is a criminal waste of fifty million pounds. Which party started it doesn't matter. They should be ashamed of themselves.

I don't hate it because it's the tories.

It makes more sense for it to have been a labour idea actually.

But it is wrong to waste that amount of money on something so stupid. imo anyway.

Such surveys only point to what is generally true of a whole population. They're never predictive at the individual level.

And as Bagder pointed out, arrangements change with circumstances, including as a response to perceived unhappiness

But you're only happier without children for those first 5 years of loved-up newlywed bliss, so not having children doesn't really help in the long run.

I like these happiness surveys, last year's one showed that I am right in the dip of early 40s misery, the most unhappy phase of life. It's all going to be uphill in happiness stakes for the next 20 years.

I also like the survey that showed childless people are happier til they hit their 60s and then the child-burdened overtake them in happiness. so it's best not to have children, then to have one, then to not have them, then to have adult children, and so on.

It's a continuation of the British Household Panel survey which has been running since 1991. The real point of it is that it's longitudinal (although only running a short time so far). How the results are interpreted will effect the message given (and mostly due to the media in my opinion), but there is a huge benefit to having this large and ongoing data reserve. The data will eventually be there for all to analyse in years to come.

makes perfect sense to me.

There was research recently showing only children are happier than those with siblings. Not surprising really.

And as far as children preferring to live with both their parents - divorced parents love to argue against it but countless research speaks for itself.

The thing is though - if it's a blanket "the parents are seperated they are more likely to be unhappy" - then how are they measuring it

Did the parents only split up 6 months before the question was asked of the child? Or was it 6yrs ago

Is the father still involved in their lives? I'd hazard a pretty good guess that those children who have an active NRP will be happier, in general, than those who don't.

Going back to Edam's point about the relationships between the parents that caused the unhappyness - was it an abusive relationship, and/or an ugly divorce - or was it a general break down with an amicable split?

How old is the child you are talking to - I reckon 10-15yrs old are probably the worst age to ask them - especially if it was a very bad relationship/split and the NRP isn't around much/at all - it's the age they start to see the wood for the trees and that combined with the homrones...........

i understand all the variables but i think it applies pretty much across the board at any age that children would prefer their parents together. the ill effects carry through into adulthood, with adult children of divorce professing to be less happy and more likely to have various problems. (i'm simplifying it but there's loads of research.)

Ok people - what the finding about people being happiest in the first 5 years with no kids etc says to me is that our relationships are not great at coping with change.

So about 70% of couples say their r'ship satisfaction declines after the birth of first child, and a high proportion of divorces take place in first three years of child's life. I do think relationships often fail to adapt to changes, either in one of the partners, or in life circs (children, job changes, loss of parents, money) etc. It's a shame and perhaps it would help if people were more aware (so antenatal education could include awareness of likely chanfes for couple relationships - forewarned = forearmed!)

It's the Anna Karenina principle, really: all happy families are alike, all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way. I don't actually know that it's the fact that they are being raised by one parent that makes single parent family children tend to be unhappy: it's the stuff that often goes with that: lack of money, stressed RP with all the day to day stresses on their sole shoulders etc etc.

Although I have to say I was brought up in a single parent family from age 11 in 1990 and I don't recall any stigma at all. Actually about half my class's parents' marriages crumbled over the period of about eighteen months. It was like an invisible domino set tumbling literally around the classroom.

And my marriage is definitely happier than it was before we had children. Much as we love each other I don't think our marriage would have survived long term if we hadn't been able to have children.

yes - well if you're talking about adults of today where "issues" that children had were swept under the carpet by adults (re my earlier post) then yes of course there will be more issues. 20yrs ago parents were much more likely just to have packed up and seperated without much explanation to the children at all.

And as Edam says - the issues don't come from the split (though they can do if it's particularly nasty) - but from the relationship itself that the parents had. There are plenty of adults around today who have ill effects from their parents staying together "for the children" - and having to continue to live in an often hostile environment.

Likewise 20yrs (and less) there was much more stigma attached to being a single parent and for being the child in a single parent family. I know from the LP threads sadly this does still happen today - but nothing like on the scale it once did. Certainly I know my boys have never had a single negative comment directed towards them because exH and I no longer together - whereas when I was at school it was (sadly) very normal to hear such comments.

It will be interesting to see the same research in another 20yrs time - now that actually talking to children about divorce and separation is normal - rather than taboo, and see whether the unhappyness in adults is because their parents split up - or because of what they witnessed in the relationship before the split.

Would have been distraught and miserable if I hadnt been able to have children. BUT looking at when DH and I were newly married and both working in the City we really did have the life of riley. Tons of holidays,larky weekends abroad on a whim . We laughed about this the other day as we spent a rainy sunday morning in a play centre in a warehouse on the outskirts of Bristol, rather than living it up with the papers and posh brunch in Hampstead as in the old days. Still wouldnt have it any other >

Have to admit, I haven't looked at the link, but surely a finding that children living with both parents are happier than those who are not doesn't imply that those children whose parents split up would have been happier with their parents still together in an unhappy relationship. They could be less happy on average than other children because their lives are more complicated, but still happier than they would have been had their parents stayed together.

Personally, as a couple, I think we are less happy in many ways now with our son than we were before and miss what we now see as a pre-child carefree idyll. Our relationship is probably stronger than it was though, having weathered some storms. I'm hoping once we get through the early years it may be easier... perhaps...