I’ve been waiting for these two studies for a while and they both came across my feed reader on the same day. The first comes via story in the New York Times about the efficacy of parenting classes, and the power of a present father. The study reported on in the article shows that when the mom makes room for dad to parent in his own way, he is more likely to be involved, and the children benefit directly from his increased participation.

This demonstrates that dads are parenting more, they parent differently, but their presence benefits the kids.  If mom can accommodate dad’s style of parenting, then the kids win -- they perform better in school, social problems decrease.  If, on the other hand, moms play gatekeeper and insists that dad play the parenting game by her rules, the result will be less involved dad, and a negative impact on the kids.

Involved dads are good for kids even if they don’t parent like mom, so *back off* ladies, and let us do it our own way.

I’ve also grown tired of reading social science that seem to delight in pronouncing that having kids doesn’t make you happier. I’m not sure if the thrill derives from flying in the face of conventional wisdom and common sense (or is there a higher than average rate of childlessness in academia?), but these happiness studies read to me as downright giddy.

Finally, Po Bronson, over at the Nurtureshock blog, has unearthed a study that corrects for marital status.  And the results show that kids do make you happier, if you are married. Bronson speculates that the result makes sense because unplanned or out of wedlock conception leads to complication and potentially unhappiness.  Whereas planned pregnancies to married couples are more likely to be in line with a life plan, and therefore satisfying.

I’m not gloating or trying to pass any judgement about people that elect to remain childless.  I think that for many people, not having kids definitely allow them to live happier lives.  Personally, I know for with great certainty that I would be less happy without kids, and I just want a little social science to back that up.