A comprehensive review of decades of data reveals that single parents have lower life satisfaction on average than parents who live with a partner. However, under certain conditions, these solo caregivers report higher levels of well-being than adults living without a partner or child. The findings are a synthesis of nearly half a century of research and were published in the Journal of Happiness Studies.
Modern housing structures are rapidly diversifying around the world. Along with this change, the reasons why people become single parents have also changed, primarily from bereavement to separation, divorce, and intentionally raising children alone.
As the prevalence of single-parent households increases, so does academic focus on their economic and social realities. Much of the existing literature refers to physical and economic hardship. Single parents often carry the double burden of providing income and managing childcare without other adults in the home.
They face a high risk of poverty and often report intense conflicts between work obligations and family responsibilities. Scholars want to understand how these complex challenges influence an individual’s subjective sense of well-being. Assessing an individual’s self-reported happiness provides a broad picture of how that person perceives their overall quality of life.
Suzanne Elsass, a researcher at the National Family Research Institute at the University of Bamberg in Germany, led the recent study. She worked alongside Teresa Mehle from the German Federal Statistical Office and Ruud Veenhoven from Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Elsas and her team conducted a study to synthesize scattered data on single parents. Previous research on this topic has often been fragmented, with single parenthood playing a complementary role in broader demographic studies. The team aimed to collect these isolated data points to build a comprehensive picture of how single parenthood relates to general life satisfaction.
The researchers extracted material from the World Database of Happiness. This is a public archive that collects and standardizes the findings of scientific publications assessing subjective life satisfaction. To ensure consistency, the research team only included studies that measured happiness as a stable evaluation of an individual’s life as a whole.
They excluded studies that measured short-term emotional states, such as fleeting pleasure. They also ignored research that focused on specific areas of satisfaction, such as satisfaction with one’s job or neighborhood.
Their review analyzed data from 54 different publications. These papers include approximately 2.5 million people surveyed from 1972 to 2020. The majority of survey data comes from countries in the Global North region, especially Europe, the United States, and Australia.
Elsas and her colleagues found highly consistent patterns across time periods and geographic boundaries. Compared to those raising children with a partner, single parents report lower levels of happiness on average. This finding was evident regardless of whether researchers looked at single mothers, single fathers, or both groups.
The picture becomes even more nuanced when comparing single parents and single adults without children. In most of these comparisons, non-parents reported higher levels of happiness. However, in some cases from different countries, single parents report higher life satisfaction than their partnered and childless counterparts.
This study highlighted several factors that are strongly associated with the well-being of single mothers and fathers. Naturally, access to money and career opportunities played a big role. Parents who worked part-time or full-time were generally happier than unemployed parents.
Higher income was positively correlated with life satisfaction. Conversely, financial stress and unresolved tensions between career demands and family obligations were associated with lower well-being. Raising a family alone is a huge burden, but gainful employment appears to offer psychological benefits comparable to the loss of free time.
Social support systems also emerged as an influential factor for single parents. People with strong informal networks, such as trusted friendships or support from relatives, reported higher levels of happiness. Components of personal fulfillment, such as romantic relationships and an active sex life, were similarly associated with increased life satisfaction.
At the other end of the spectrum, those who expressed feelings of loneliness or felt resentment from their community reported lower levels of well-being. Fundamentally, this data paints a picture of social beings who thrive on connection, especially when navigating the demanding demands of raising a child alone.
Childcare infrastructure has been found to be a highly relevant topic, but its impact varies depending on local attitudes. In West Germany, single mothers who relied on formal or informal childcare were happier on average. However, in East Germany, the use of half-day childcare was associated with lower life satisfaction.
Broader national policies and gender norms play a silent but structural role in shaping life satisfaction. Higher national gender equality scores were associated with higher happiness among single mothers. Expanding full-day childcare options is also positively correlated with macro-level parental well-being.
Time itself acts as a balancing mechanism. The study found that single parents often experience a decline in happiness soon after separation or divorce. As years pass, life satisfaction tends to recover and increase, suggesting that people adapt and develop effective coping strategies over time.
Although this review covers a large sample size, the authors note some inherent limitations in the underlying research. The biggest reason for this is that it is not possible to determine whether being a single parent directly causes a decline in happiness. Most people choose their relationship status, and the life events leading up to single parenthood are deeply intertwined with other factors that influence mental health.
The researchers also cautioned about survivorship bias in the data. Survivorship bias occurs when a sample is disproportionately formed by people who have remained in a particular condition for an extended period of time. People who have been single parents for many years are more likely to be caught in these investigations than people who quickly remarry or cohabit.
Another gap in the literature is the significant lack of focus on single fathers. Because single fathers constitute a small demographic group, population surveys often lack enough participants to draw definitive conclusions about them. Although the few available studies show no statistically significant differences between the well-being patterns of single mothers and fathers, researchers stress that more targeted research is needed.
The ages of the children involved also vary widely across the literature. Some researchers define a single parent as someone who cares for a child under the age of 15, while others include dependents up to the age of 25. This lack of a standardized definition complicates comparisons of single parents in different national contexts.
The definition of single parenthood varied widely across the 54 studies. Some studies included widowed parents, others focused on divorced people, and some included people who had never been married. Future research will need to account for different routes to single parenthood, as the experiences of those who intentionally become single parents may be very different from those of grieving widows.
Finally, the authors suggest that future analyzes should consider national policies more closely. Considering how specific divorce laws, family allowances, and reproductive rights relate to the well-being of single parents could provide practical guidance to policy makers. Reducing the practical burden of single parents will go a long way in improving their quality of life.
The study, “Happiness and Single Parenthood: A Literature Review Using Online Research Archives,” was authored by Susanne Elsas, Teresa Möhrle, and Ruut Veenhoven.
