Abstract
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of having minor children on parents' life satisfaction. Given the demands on working parents in terms of their time and financial resources, the authors suspect a complex interaction between employment and parenthood and explore the effect of parenthood on life satisfaction of mothers and fathers, working parents and those with children of various ages.Design/methodology/approachData from three rounds of the European Social Survey (R3 2006/07, R5 2010/11 and R8 2016/17) are used to account for Ireland's changing economic landscape. Three ordered probit models are estimated examining parents, and mothers and fathers separately.FindingsThe findings indicate that any life satisfaction benefits derived from having children appear to be eroded for working parents. There is a negative association between life satisfaction for working mothers with child(ren) aged between 5 and 12 years. Furthermore, when both parents are working, mothers' life satisfaction is also significantly reduced.Practical implicationsFamily policies and supports can shape the effects of parenthood on individual wellbeing and decisions regarding parenthood. Such policies need to be purposeful for working parents of school going children and consistent with economic strategy and labour market goals.Originality/valueMuch of the existing economic research on individual wellbeing and parenthood are focused on the fertility decision rather than examining the factors affecting the life satisfaction of different cohorts of parents thus leading to more targeted and informed policies. Contemporary weighting methodology is employed.
Highlights
Over the last decades there has been an extensive debate in the literature on the impact of having children on individual wellbeing
In this paper we explored the association between parenthood and life satisfaction for parents residing with minor children in Ireland
Our findings are based on ordered probit regressions that control for parenthood, gender, age, employment status, education and a proxy for income
Summary
Over the last decades there has been an extensive debate in the literature on the impact of having children on individual wellbeing. Recent research suggests that more generous national family policies (Glass et al, 2016), including family benefits and flexible work hours (Pollmann-schult, 2018), tend to ameliorate the economic burden of having children for parents thereby reducing the adverse effects on wellbeing. The impact of such policies depends on family characteristics, for example working versus non-working parents. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
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