Marriage, Children, and Happiness

A study of 218 Denver couples found that marital happiness drops sharply after the birth of their first child. Steeper declines are likely if the mother's parents were divorced, the coupled lived together before marriage, or if the first child is a girl. The lead researcher notes, however, that the study fails to capture the deeper fulfillment of raising a family--and I think fulfillment is a better metric in the long-term than happiness anyway.