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19th June 2021
08:30am BST

And what they found, was that the presence of children made little to no differences in life satisfaction. Interestingly, the researchers also found limited differences in personality traits between parents and child-free individuals.
Jennifer Watling Neal and Zachary Neal are both associate professors in MSU's department of psychology, and were the authors behind the study. They believe their research is unique because it separated 'non-parents' (people who aren't parents) into three categories – 'child-free', 'childless' and 'not-yet-parents'.
"Most studies haven't asked the questions necessary to distinguish "child-free" individuals – those who choose not to have children – from other types of non-parents," said Watling Neal about their research.
"Non-parents can also include the "not-yet-parents" who are planning to have kids, and "childless" people who couldn't have kids due to infertility or circumstance. Previous studies simply lumped all non-parents into a single category to compare them to parents."
The study used a set of three questions to determine if people had children, wanted to have children or didn’t want to have children.
"After controlling for demographic characteristics, we found no differences in life satisfaction and limited differences in personality traits between child-free individuals and parents not-yet-parents, or childless individuals," said Neal.
"We also found that child-free individuals were more liberal than parents, and that people who aren't child-free felt substantially less warm toward child-free individuals."