We welcome Bhargava, Kassam, and Lowenstein’s (2014) commentary on our article (Nelson, Kushlev, English, Dunn, & Lyubomirsky, 2013). The question we addressed, however, is different from the one Bhargava and colleagues posed. Although we slipped into using causal language in a few places, our primary aim was to examine the bivariate relationship between parenthood and well-being. Motivated in part by media portrayals of parents who are “miserable” and who “hate parenting,” we simply asked whether happiness and parenthood can coexist. Our analyses revealed that, overall, when parents and nonparents were asked about their happiness levels, the parents were slightly happier. Other fields also use this approach; for example, many researchers have assessed the direct correlation between income and wellbeing, facilitating comparisons of data sets around the world (see Diener & Biswas-Diener, 2002, for a review).
展开▼
