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 )