Parenthood in Europe: Less life satisfaction, more meaning – DW – 06/01/2025

DW

01-06-2025

A new study confirms what many parents already knew: Children give life meaning. The price that parents pay is lower life satisfaction, especially for mothers — but some countries fare better than others.
I once heard someone say, "Having a child is like outsourcing a vital organ that runs around outside all by itself and climbs trees." Having a child is as fascinating and meaningful as it can also be worrying and exhausting.
A new study on parental satisfaction confirms this apparent contradiction. Compared to people who are childfree, parents feel their lives are more fulfilled. However, parents are not more satisfied with their lives than non-parents. On the contrary: they are often more dissatisfied.
These are the findings of the sociologists Marita Jacob and Ansgar Hudde from the University of Cologne, published this month in the specialist Journal of Marriage and Family. The researchers based their study on data from the European Social Survey, which had more than 43,000 respondents from 30 countries.
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Jacob and Hudde determined that, regardless of nationality or social status, both mothers and fathers felt that their lives had a deeper meaning.
But the same was not true of their satisfaction with their lives. This depended to a large extent not only on the respondent's living situation, but also on family policy in their country. And the difference was gendered: Mothers' life satisfaction levels were lower than those of fathers.
Scandinavia: Hardly any difference between parents and childfree
"Parents in challenging life situations are less satisfied," says Marita Jacob, a sociology professor at the University of Cologne. Challenging might mean, for example, that they are a single parent, young, with low educational qualifications. Hardly surprising, you might think, that they are less satisfied.
But Jacob says it is not inevitable. "In Scandinavian countries, the differences between social groups are far less pronounced," she says. In these countries, the difference in life satisfaction between parents and child-free people is also far less than, for example, in central and eastern Europe.
Childcare, financial support for parents, parental leave — these family policy measures work very well in the Scandinavian countries, says Jacob. "My speculation is that these measures impact on society as a whole, meaning that children are not seen solely as their parents' problem, but as a responsibility for the community as a whole."
This attitude is also reflected in Scandinavian business culture, Jacob says. She explains that it is more normal there for parents to start and leave work early, as well as for important meetings to be scheduled around the rhythm of family life.
Greater gender equality leads to greater satisfaction
Family life is still primarily taken care of by women. In Germany, one in two women reduces her working hours in order to be able to look after her children. Just under 6% of German men who work part-time do so for family reasons. The majority of parental leave in Germany is also taken by mothers.
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Another factor that may help to explain why parents in Finland are more satisfied than parents in Germany is gender equality.Equal pay in the Scandinavian countries, and a smaller gender pay gap as a result, means women there are more satisfied, says Jacob. She adds that this also has positive effects on the partnership, and thus also on the family.
"A child is not a project you can manage all by yourself"
Marita Jacob says that when her children were small, she banded together with other parents. "We would each always pick up several children from the kindergarten."
Anyone who has small children knows that an extra half-hour, or half an hour less, can absolutely determine whether or not the day will end in a nervous breakdown. This is why Jacob recommends that parents should not only offer each other more support, but should also accept it when offered.
Children are important — not only to counterbalance our ageing society, which won't be able to look after all its senior citizens without a young generation. As Marita Jacob stresses: "Children also have intrinsic value. They bring liveliness, new ideas and innovations to society."
This is why the sociologist believes that the bulk of the responsibility for them lies with policymakers. "Children shouldn't be their parents' problem when childcare is unreliable ,or there are problems with the school," she says. "Children are the responsibility of society as a whole."
This article has been translated from German.