Official: Married mums significantly happier than single or never-married mothers
Married mums are significantly happier than single or never-married mothers, claims a major new study from the Marriage Foundation.
Using data from the Millennium Cohort Study, the UK’s leading pro-marriage think tank analysed the responses from 3,700 mothers, all of whom had their first child between 2000-02. It found that just over half 52 per cent reported being “highly satisfied” with their life when their child was aged fourteen, scoring eight or more out of 10.
However, the data revealed that mothers who married before the birth of their child were much more likely to be happier, with 59 per cent reporting being “highly satisfied”, rising to 61 per cent of mothers who married after the birth of their first child.
By contrast, just under half, 49 per cent of mums who never married but were still with their partner reported being highly satisfied.
Among those mothers whose relationships ended, including those who subsequently re-partnered, the probability of high life satisfaction was 45 per cent for those who married before the birth, 57 per cent for those who married afterwards, 42 per cent for those who never married and 45 per cent for those who started out as lone mothers.
The study, by Dr Harry Benson, Research Director of the Marriage Foundation and author of the book RELIABLE LOVE - The Psychology of Marriage and Commitment, controlled for a wide range of factors measured soon after the birth of their first child, including: the mother’s age, education, ethnicity, income, psychological distress and initial level of life satisfaction.
Dr Benson writes in the report: “I have often been asked whether I looked at happiness, rather than just relationship stability. After all, it is one thing for couples to stay together and another for them to be happy together…
“…My key PhD finding was that parents who marry before, during or after pregnancy face a significantly lower risk of their relationship breaking down than couples who never marry, regardless of their socioeconomic and other background characteristics. I described how several psychological theories provide plausible explanations for why the act of marrying may itself influence couples’ attitudes and behaviour in ways that reduce the risk of separation.
“This led me to conclude that policies which encourage more couples to marry could potentially reduce the high levels of family breakdown we currently see.
“But what about happiness? Does being married necessarily mean being happy together? Could policies that encourage more couples to marry simply result in more couples remaining in unhappy relationships?
“This study addresses that question by looking at mothers’ life satisfaction fourteen years after the birth of their first child. It asks not only whether mothers who married are more likely to remain with the father of their child, but also whether marriage is associated with greater life satisfaction among mothers whose relationships do remain intact.”
The study continues: “The findings suggest that it is. Mothers who married and stayed together were substantially more likely to report high life satisfaction than mothers who stayed together but never married. Marriage was also associated with a greater likelihood of the parents remaining together in the first place.
“The results therefore provide no evidence that encouraging marriage simply means encouraging more couples to remain unhappily together. Instead, they raise the possibility that marriage is associated both with greater relationship stability and, among couples who remain together, with greater maternal life satisfaction.”
The report is not all good news. Fewer parents, married or not, report high levels of life satisfaction by the time they have teenagers. Among mothers who married before the birth of their first child, at nine months just over three-quarters (77 per cent) reported being highly satisfied, while seven in 10 (71 per cent) of mothers who married after the birth of their first child reported being highly satisfied. Similar declines were also found among mothers who were divorced or never married, meaning among all mothers, regardless of relationship type, the number reporting being highly satisfied fell from 65 per cent to 53 per cent.
Dr Benson commented: “Marriage Foundation’s findings confirm that marriage not only improves the stability of those couples with children, but interestingly also boosts happiness, with between 10-12 per cent more of married mothers reporting being highly satisfied with life than non-married mothers. In short, married mums are more likely to be happier after the birth of their first child, and this continues all the way until their child turns 14.
“This phenomenon can’t be explained by other background factors such as age, education, wealth, housing type, employment status, etc. But perhaps, the psychological benefits of being married, of being in a committed relationship with your partner that has been unambiguously expressed through the act of marrying, can go some way to explain these results. Indeed, in my PHD, having controlled for 27 different variables, I found a shocking systemic underestimation of the importance of marriage in the UK due to a number of flawed reports, which failed to pick up a huge amount of missing data. Once all the data was analysed, the results show marriage accounts for fully half of the increased stability levels you see when you compare married couples to cohabiting couples. These findings challenge the foundation of Government social policy over the last quarter of a century, which has been at best ambivalent towards the institution and at worst put significant barriers in the way of poorer couples from tying the knot because of the punitive and capricious benefits system. Those who doubt this should reflect on the fact that the poorest married couples are more likely to stay together than the richest cohabitees.”
Dr Benson did not look at the happiness of fathers in the study, but plans to do this at a future point.
The report concludes: “The central message is therefore simple. Marriage is associated with a greater likelihood that parents will stay together. But even when couples do stay together, married mothers are more likely to report being highly satisfied with life. That second finding cannot be explained simply by the greater stability associated with marriage. It points towards the possibility that commitment itself may matter.”