Tracking the Effects of Parenthood on Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from Hungary

Parenthood has complex consequences for subjective well-being as this life event is both rewarding and stressful. It is not surprising, therefore, that various—sometimes conflicting—theories have emerged about the topic.

First of all, value of children theory postulates that parenthood has a positive effect on subjective well-being. This theory argues that children fulfil different parental needs. Hoffmann and Hoffmann (1973) suggested several ways in which children can modify parental satisfaction, such as by being a source of entertainment, expanding the sense of self, creating a social identity, and generating economic utility. Furthermore, this theory also claims that parenthood has a persistent effect as ageing children fulfil different types of needs throughout their entire lives (Nauck 2007).

Further, demand and reward theory argues that both the positive and the negative effects of having children should be taken into account as these effects offset each other (Nomaguchi 2012; Nomaguchi and Milkie 2003; Umberson et al. 2010). On the one hand, parenthood is rewarding and can be grasped, for example, based on relationship satisfaction with a child. On the other hand, parenthood is also associated with enormous costs. Hansen (2012) distinguishes between psychological cost, marital cost, financial cost, and opportunity cost in relation to childbearing. Based on this theory, both childbearing-related costs and benefits tend to decline as children age (Nomaguchi 2009; Nomaguchi and Milkie 2003; Munch et al. 1997).

Finally, set-point theory claims that people have a stable baseline level of subjective well-being which is determined by personality traits and other genetic factors (Headey and Wearing 1989). According to this theory, after major life events such as having a child individuals eventually adapt to their new situation and their subjective well-being returns to the initial baseline level (Myers 1999). As a consequence, it is claimed that parenthood also has only a temporary effect on subjective well-being.

Up-to-date empirical evidence about the relationship between parenthood and subjective well-being is mostly restricted to observations from western countries where longitudinal data are available. This body of research has typically found a positive effect of parenthood for the average person (Balbo and Arpino 2016; Frijters et al. 2011; Pollmann-Schult 2014), while only limited research has shown an insignificant effect (Angeles 2010; Keizer et al. 2010). In contrast, cross-sectional studies, that also covered non-western countries, produced mixed evidence, with some finding a negative link between parenthood and subjective well-being (Hansen 2012; McLanahan and Adams 1987; Stanca 2012), and others a positive one (Aassve et al. 2012).

Longitudinal research also permits tracking of how the effect of parenthood on well-being changes over time among individuals. All of the reviewed papers found that subjective well-being declines as children grow up. In some cases, subjective well-being even returns to its pre-birth level, which is consistent with set-point theory (Balbo and Arpino 2016; Clark et al. 2008; Frijters et al. 2011; Myrskylä and Margolis 2014), although other authors have found significantly higher well-being among parents in the long term (Baetschmann et al. 2016; Mikucka 2016; Pollmann-Schult 2014). Moreover, parenthood not only affects subjective well-being after the birth of a child, but even before this, as parents prepare for the new arrival. The literature refers to this phenomenon as the anticipation effect, the existence of which is supported by several studies (Baetschmann et al. 2016; Clark et al. 2008; Frijters et al. 2011; Mikucka 2016; Myrskylä and Margolis 2014).

In Hungary, no research has so far estimated the causal relationship between parenthood and subjective well-being using longitudinal data. However, there have been some cross-sectional studies. Molnár and Kapitány (2013) found that individuals who are on parental leave have significantly higher subjective well-being than the rest of the population. Furthermore, Neulinger and Radó (2018) found a significant positive association between well-being and the presence of a young child among parents who are in a relationship, but no significant one between the presence of an older child and subjective well-being, or among single parents. Comparative cross-sectional research has often included Hungary but has arrived at different conclusions (Aassve et al. 2012; Billari 2009; Margolis and Myrskylä 2011; Vanassche et al. 2013).

Many theories recognize parity differences in the effect of parenthood on subjective well-being. First, set-point theory assumes that people eventually adopt to parenthood. If this adaptation occurs gradually, then the effect of parenthood should peak when the first child is young because the birth of first child is more novel than the birth of subsequent children. Thus, the effect of parenthood is stronger with the first child, while weaker effects are associated with higher order children (Aassve et al. 2012; Lucas et al. 2004; Mikucka 2016).

According to the demand and reward theory, the moderating effect of parity is based on a comparison of the marginal utility and marginal cost of having a child. First, empirical results show that the law of diminishing marginal utility also apply to the value of children, thus the reward of having a child decreases with each additional child (Nauck 2007; Nomaguchi 2012). Second, there is inconsistency in the empirical findings about the marginal cost of children (Kageyama and Matsuura 2018; Thévenon 2010; Troske and Voicu 2009). Considering both marginal utility and marginal costs several authors have argued that having additional children is less ‘beneficial’ and thus elicits a smaller increase in subjective well-being (Aassve et al. 2012; Mikucka 2016).

The vast majority of longitudinal studies have found that first children have a positive effect on subjective well-being (Baetschmann et al. 2016; Balbo and Arpino 2016; Baranowska and Matysiak 2011; Kohler et al. 2005; Matysiak et al. 2016; Mikucka 2016; Mikucka and Rizzi 2019; Myrskylä and Margolis 2014), but a few studies have not supported this finding (Angeles 2010; Pedersen and Schmidt 2014). Further, several empirical studies have provided evidence to support set-point theory and value of children theory by finding that the effect of parenthood gradually decreases for higher-order children. These studies have found that second children have a non-significant (Angeles 2010; Baranowska and Matysiak 2011; Kohler, et al. 2005; Pollmann-Schult 2014) or only a temporary effect (Matysiak et al. 2016; Myrskylä and Margolis 2014). However, some studies have found that second children have a positive and lasting effect (Balbo and Arpino 2016) and sometimes even a particularly strong positive effect (Mikucka 2016).

The moderating effect of gender is especially important as couples generally make fertility decisions together (Bauer and Kneip 2012). If only one of the genders derives well-being from parenthood, this may create obstacles to parity progression. For example, Aassve et al. (2016) found a multiplicative effect for partners’ subjective well-being on parity progression. Further, the authors found that females’ subjective well-being matters more in decisions about the first child, whereas males’ subjective well-being has more influence in decision-making about higher-order children.

The value of children theory argues that, on average, females benefit more from having children than males since women are more likely to claim that children strengthen primary group ties, provide fun, expand the self, and foster social identity. However, the theory also claims that parenthood is rewarding for both genders (Hoffman and Hoffman 1973; Hoffman et al. 1978).

Further, demand and reward theory emphasize that parenthood might influence mothers and fathers differently as they face distinct child-related opportunities and restrictions. On the one hand, most studies have found that women’s burdens may be heavier during parenthood, suggesting that women’s subjective well-being is more negatively affected after the arrival of children. During parenthood, women tend to have higher stress (Nomaguchi and Milkie 2003), greater work-life conflict (Goldsteen and Ross 1989), more household and parenthood duties (Bianchi et al. 2006; Bird 1999; Nomaguchi and Milkie 2003), worse career opportunities (Bianchi 2000), and less leisure time (Craig and Mullan 2013; Mattingly and Bianchi 2003). Furthermore, females typically experience a greater decrease in marital satisfaction and more marital conflicts than males after the birth of a child (Twene and Campbell 2003; Nomaguchi and Milkie 2003). However, in general, finance-related stress is more pronounced for men than it is for women as males experience more pressure to provide for their families (Pollmann-Schult 2014). Also, males more frequently report a higher level of sexual dissatisfaction than women following the transition to parenthood (Twene and Campbell 2003). On the other hand, whether mothers or fathers experience more reward is less certain. Some studies found that that there are no differences between the genders in this regard (Nomaguchi and Milkie 2003). Others have argued that mothers spend more time with their children than fathers, therefore motherhood is more rewarding than fatherhood (Nomaguchi 2012). Other authors have emphasised that fathers, in contrast to mothers, often contribute to childbearing only through playing or other enjoyable activities, thus fatherhood is more rewarding than motherhood (Nelson et al. 2014).

Empirical findings are also inconsistent about the moderating effect of gender. Most studies have found that women have higher subjective well-being after the birth of a child than men (Angeles 2010; Clark et al. 2008; Clark and Georgellis 2013; Myrskylä and Margolis 2014; Sironi and Billari 2013). Furthermore, some of these studies have found that fatherhood has non-significant (Sironi and Billari 2013) or only a temporary effect (Baranowska and Matysiak 2011). However, other research has found that both genders equally benefit from having a child (Pollmann-Schult 2014). Finally, some studies have even supported the idea that men benefit more from having children in terms of subjective well-being (Aassve et al. 2012; Balbo and Arpino 2016; Nelson et al. 2013), while a few studies claim that only fathers benefit significantly from parenthood (Nelson et al. 2013).

The focus of this paper is Hungary, where fertility rates have been decreasing for the last 40 years and the total fertility rate has remained under 1.5 for the last 25 years. Figure 1 illustrates the Hungarian fertility rate in European comparison. There are multiple reasons for the relatively low fertility level in Hungary, including poor economic conditions, the dismantling of institutions, value shifts, and social anomie (Spéder and Kapitány 2014). Empirical studies suggest that the low number of children can mostly be attributed to the fact that second children are not being born, whereas childlessness still plays a relatively minor role (Miettinen and Szalma 2014; Szalma and Takács 2015). Further, Hungarians generally have strong intentions of having children since there is a considerable gap between the ideal and actual number of children (Molnár 2009; Kapitány and Spéder 2015). Thus, the low level of childlessness and high ideal number of children together indicate that in Hungary the value of children is still relatively high, despite the low fertility rates.

In terms of the generosity of the family support system, Hungary is an exceptional case. By law, parents are eligible to 24 weeks’ leave at 70% of the average salary before birth and to 3 years of flat-rate benefits (Makay et al. 2012). This is one of the longest terms of parental leave in Europe. Moreover, the policy environment not only makes it possible to leave the labor market for this long, but mothers utilize this option to an extremely high degree. Only 10% of mothers with a young child (under 3 years old) were employed in 2005—by far the lowest employment rate among the OECD countries (see Fig. 2). The minimal opportunities for flexible work and poor access to childcare encourage parents to take full advantage of the 3-year period of parental leave (Radó et al. 2016). Further, this long period of parental leave is also strongly supported by public opinion: 94% of Hungarians think that mothers should stay at home until their children are at least 2 years old (Blaskó 2011).

Such long and widely exploited parental leave creates different costs in the short and long term. On the one hand, one might expect that the short-term cost of children would be relatively low, thus the short-term positive impact on subjective well-being would be relatively strong. On the other hand, long parental leave increases the costs of children in the long term, which could negatively affect the progression of subjective well-being. As it is usually females who take parental leave, they are penalized more (Aassve et al. 2012, Bartus et al. 2013). However, the high opportunity cost for women can also create spillover effects on males’ subjective well-being, since in male-breadwinner households it is typically men who experience finance-related stress (Pollmann-Schult 2014).

The following, often competing hypotheses are formulated based on the international theoretical background and the Hungarian context.

Table 1 summarizes the treatment variables in this study, which are (1) parenthood in general, (2) motherhood, (3) fatherhood, (4) having a first child, and (5) having a second child. This table also details the composition of the treatment and control groups. In all cases, those whose child(ren) was (were) born between the first wave (2001/2002) and 2003 were omitted from the analysis to eliminate the anticipation effect.¹

To help estimate the overall effect of parenthood, respondents were asked to list details about all of their children, including year of birth. This question served to measure the treatment variable which took a value of ‘1’ if a respondent’s child(ren) was (were) born between 2003 and the second wave (2004/2005) and ‘0’ if no child was born.

The parity effect was distinguished by reducing the initial dataset for (1) those who had had no children before the observation period, and (2) those who had had only one child before the observation period. Firstly, a dataset which contained details about those who were initially childless was used to distinguish the effect of the first child. Secondly, a dataset that included those who initially had one child was used to estimate the effect of the second child. Further, the moderating effect of gender was observed by splitting the initial dataset between (1) women and (2) men. Afterwards, the same treatment variables which had been developed to measure the overall effects of parenthood were applied to these subgroups.

Subjective well-being was measured in all waves with the following question: “On an eleven-point scale, how satisfied are you with the trajectory of your life?” This variable used a value of ‘0’ to mean ‘not satisfied at all’, and a value of ‘10’ for ‘completely satisfied’. The outcome variable was the change in subjective well-being before and after exposure to treatment. More specifically, the change in subjective well-being was calculated in terms of the change in life satisfaction between the first and second waves to measure short-term change, and between the first and fourth waves to estimate long-term change. The short-term effect refers to the effect of having a 0- to 2-year-old child, since in this case the children were born between 2003 and 2004/2005, in regard to which I observed changes in subjective well-being between 2001/2002 and 2004/2005. With children of this age, parents are entitled to parental leave in Hungary. Therefore, the generosity of parental leave directly influences the short-term effect. The long-term effect refers to the effect of having a 7- to 10-year-old child, since such children were born between 2003 and 2004/2005, in regard to which I observed changes in subjective well-being between 2001/2002 and 2012/2013. Subjective well-being was treated as an interval variable as other studies have found that it makes little difference treating it as an ordinal (Ferrer-i-Carbonell and Frijters 2004).

The correlations between subjective well-being and the treatment variables are displayed in Table 2. This analysis reveals that, in general, parenthood—more specifically, fatherhood and having a first child—was associated with a short-term increase in subjective well-being but not with a long-term change. However, motherhood and the arrival of a second child were not associated with a significant increase in subjective well-being either in the short or long term.

Statistically speaking, those variables should be involved as covariates that have an effect on the treatment and the outcome, although they should not be affected by the treatment variable. Thus, one should involve only pre-treatment covariates which are less likely to be affected by the treatment (Elwert and Winship 2014; Rosenbaum and Rubin 1984). Therefore, all the matching variables were measured in the first wave at least 1 year before exposure to treatment. Previous research in this topic has identified the confounding variables (e.g. Balbo and Arpino 2016) which were also included in this research.

Matching variables included demographic and socio-economic variables. Education was categorized as primary or less, vocational, general secondary, and tertiary. Four categories of residence were distinguished: villages, smaller cities, bigger cities, and the capital city. Age (in years) and equivalent household income (thousand HUF) were measured as continuous variables. Gender was also controlled for. The first-wave value for subjective well-being was also involved. Subjective health, satisfaction with housing, and perceived well-being were also measured on a ten-point scale.

Family-related characteristics were also controlled for. Marital status was recorded as single, married living together, married living apart, divorced, and widow/er. Length of current marriage was measured as the difference between the year of data collection (first wave) and the date of marriage. Satisfaction with partner was categorized as does not have a partner, dissatisfied, neutral, rather satisfied, very satisfied, and no answer. Partner activity status was measured similarly to the respondent’s own labour market status. Moreover, the analysis recorded how many children the respondent had.

To estimate the subgroup effect of parenthood, certain matching variables were omitted since they played a role in conceptualizing the treatment variable. Thus, gender was not controlled for when estimating the effect of mother or fatherhood. Similarly, number of children was not used as a matching variable when estimating the effect of the first or second children.

See the distribution of the matching variables in Table 4 for the initial (raw) dataset and for the matched dataset.

First, the general effect of parenthood on subjective well-being was analysed. In order to rule out confounding variables, those to whom a child was born in the observation period (i.e. the treatment group) were matched to those to whom no children were born in this period (i.e. the control group) using genetic matching. This process reduced the number in the control group from 5154 to 166 but caused no change in the number in the treated group (233). More about the improvement in balance can be seen in the Appendix in Table 4 and Fig. 3.

In contrast to the simple correlation analysis (see Table 2), the multivariate analysis (see Table 3) reveals that parenthood has a large positive significant effect both in the short and the long term. The estimated treatment effect in this research is 0.61 for the short term and 0.54 for the long term, which is higher than was found, for example, in Great Britain (0.20 in the short term and 0.04 in the long term) when similar methodology was applied (Balbo and Arpino 2016).

The multivariate result is consistent with Hypothesis 1A, which predicted a persistent positive effect on subjective well-being based on value of children theory. However, this finding contests Hypothesis 1B by suggesting that the subjective well-being of parents does not return to the pre-birth baseline level even seven to 10 years after birth. Thus, the empirical evidence presented in this research contradicts set-point theory, similarly to some other international evidence (Baetschmann et al. 2016; Mikucka 2016; Pollmann-Schult 2014).

I used Rosenbaum’s (2002) sensitivity analysis to bound the treatment effect estimates. The \(\varGamma_{general}\) parameter is 1.51 in terms of the short-term effect, and 1.38 for the long-term. The parameter for the short-term effect is larger than the 1.5 threshold, which suggests the robustness of the estimates and indicates that it is very unlikely that an unobserved difference in covariates would change the interference of the short-term effect. However, the \(\varGamma_{general}^{long - term}\) parameter for the long-term effect on parenthood is more significantly below this threshold. Thus, parenthood also has a long-term positive effect, but it is more sensitive to unobserved confounders.

Further, the effect of parenthood on subjective well-being was analysed in terms of parity. Again, matching was undertaken to obtain sufficient balance between the treatment and the control group. In terms of measuring the first child effect, matching reduced the control group from 725 to 87 responses but did not modify the size of the treatment group (134). In the case of the second child, matching reduced the dataset from 1274 control individuals and 82 treated individuals to 75 control and 82 treated.

Matching using longitudinal data (see Table 3) revealed that both the first child and the second child had a positive effect both in the short and long term. This evidence is at odds with Hypothesis 2B and supports Hypothesis 2A, and is in line with those studies which found that the value of children is high in Hungary (Molnár 2009; Kapitány and Spéder 2015). However, the result that even second children have a lasting positive effect on subjective well-being is especially interesting in light of the relatively low number of second children in Hungary.

Again, Rosenbaum’s (2002) sensitivity analysis was conducted to measure the robustness of the estimations. The estimations for the first child effect were robust (\(\varGamma_{first}^{short - term}\): 1.58; \(\varGamma_{first}^{long - term}\): 1.50). The estimation of second children effects was also fairly robust in terms of the measurement of short-term changes (\(\varGamma_{\sec ond}^{short - term}\): 1.46); however, the estimation of long-term effects of the second child was more sensitive to unobserved confounders (\(\varGamma_{\sec ond}^{long - term}\): 1.38).

Finally, the effect of parenthood on subjective well-being was analysed in terms of gender (see Table 3). In the case of females, matching reduced the control group from 3105 to 93, and maintained the 131 members of the treatment group. In the case of males, matching decreased the number of members of the control group from 2049 to 77, while the number of individuals in the treated group stayed at 102.

Matching using longitudinal data shows that motherhood has a strong long-lasting positive effect. Moreover, the latter model confirms that fatherhood has a moderate positive effect in the short term, and no significant effect in the long term. This finding is in line with Hypothesis 3C, but contests Hypothesis 3A and 3B. Thus, the results contradict set-point theory since mothers’ subjective well-being does not return to the baseline level, even in the long term. Further, the value of children theory is not confirmed for fathers. However, gender differences can be explained in terms of costs and benefits. More specifically, the finding shows that for females the benefits of childbearing outweigh the costs, but for males the costs offset benefits in the long term. This finding is in line with the results of some earlier studies conducted in other CEE countries (Baranowska and Matysiak 2011; Sironi and Billari 2013).

Sensitivity analysis on the estimations of motherhood effect reveals that the results are fairly robust (\(\varGamma_{female}\) : 1.62 for short-term effect; 1.61 for long-term effect). However, the short-term effect of fatherhood is less robust (\(\varGamma_{male}^{short - term}\): 1.38). Thus, although fatherhood also has a significantly positive short-term effect, this result is more sensitive to unobserved confounders. As a consequence, the gender differences in terms of parenthood effect might be even more pronounced than this analysis has suggested.