The more the merrier when it comes to how many kids you should have.
A new study from Edith Cowan University in Australia has found that the happiest parents have four or more children.
Hard to believe? Yes. Even the author of the study thought she her research would find that more babies meant less happy moms and dads.
“[The parents] usually say they always wanted a large family, it was planned that way, and it was a lifestyle they’d chosen,” lead researcher Dr. Bronwyn Harman, who spent five years analyzing what kinds of families were the most satisfied, told The Sydney Morning Herald. She interviewed hundreds of parents and found that the happiest ones had put the most emphasis on growing their families.
Even though larger families also had more expenses and tended to be more chaotic, the downsides were balanced out by the parents’ joy of having more children, her research showed.
And the kids in those families are happy too; Harman’s findings revealed that they learned independence at a young age, but were never lonely because they always had someone to play with.
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