Jean Twenge, Jenet Erickson, Wendy Wang and Brad Wilcox:
Clearly, many single women today perceive getting married or becoming a mother to be transitions of loss. But is this perception true?
New data paint a different picture. In the 2022 General Social Survey (GSS), the nation’s leading social barometer, married mothers are happier than single childless women as well as married childless women and unmarried mothers.10 Other surveys have found similar results.11
To better clarify how marriage and motherhood are linked to women’s happiness, we fielded the Women’s Well-Being Survey (WWS) of 3,000 U.S. women, ages 25 to 55, conducted by YouGov in early March 2025 (for details, see About the Data and Methodology). We wanted to know: Why are married mothers the happiest group of women?
Happiness
Consistent with previous surveys, our new survey finds that married mothers are happier than unmarried women or women without children. Nearly twice as many married mothers say they are “very happy” as unmarried women without children.
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more.