Children bring much joy to your life. Are you sure? Think again! According to Daniel Gilbert, Harvard university psychology professor, having children has a negative effect on marital satisfaction. It’s an illusion that children increase people’s happiness.

Gilbert , author of the book ‘Stumbling on happiness’ based his statement during a happiness conference in May in Sydney, Australia on several studies that are quoted in most developmental psychology textbooks: Many couples experience a dip in their marital satisfaction after the birth of their first child. Particularly at risk are those couples who married after a relatively short courtship, are not settled in their partnership yet and get a baby soon after marriage. If couples postpone having children until their careers are under way, work on their financial stability and further concentrate on building up a sense of “we-ness” , their marital satisfaction will be more resilient against the challenges of raising children.

The deepest point in marital satisfaction often comes when the kids enter adolescence. Having a grumpy and moody teenager at home puts a strain on parents’ happiness. Marital satisfaction returns when the kids leave for college.

What Gilbert didn’t say, or it was not reported by the media, is that later in life grown children and their kids, so the grandkids, become a main source for the mental well-being of the elderly. A study by Karen Fingerman showed that the majority of “relationships between parents and their adult children improve as parents transition to old age”….”Generally, there was a feeling on both sides that this was as good as the relationship had been, and both sides felt appreciated and nurtured.” (Karen Fingerman on Purdue University, http://www.purdue.edu/uns/x/2007b/071126FingermanAge.html )

According to my teenage sons ‘it’s not cool to be old’- and of course, to them anyone over thirty looks suspiciously old.

What little do they know! They don’t know for example that according to a recently published study (Yang Yang, University of Chicago, 2008) older people are happier than younger people. This is because older people have learned to lower their expectations. They are more likely to be content with whatever they have achieved in life. The well-known psychologist Erik Erikson described already more than 50 years ago the main task of late adulthood as “coming to terms with one’s life”, and those who succeed will gain the feeling of integrity, which he described as feeling whole and complete.

Life satisfaction seems to be a factor of one’s perception: as lower the expectation, as higher the happiness. People over 65 don’t expect life to be perfect. They have learned to accept certain aches and pains as part of life, and in general, they develop a more positive attitude.

In another study, published about ten years ago, people over 65 reported more positive emotions and less negative emotions than their younger counterparts. Also this study came to the conclusion that the older you are the happier and more satisfied you should feel. (D. Mroczek & Ch. Kolarz, Fordham University, 1998).

It seems that we all should look forward to our golden years - and there is another good reason for it: Researchers at Yale University found out that people with a positive attitude toward aging live in average 7.5 years longer than those with negative stereotypes (Levy et. al., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 83, No.2)