Baby bliss: Longitudinal evidence for set-point theory around childbirth for cognitive and affective well-being.

Abstract

Background: Becoming a parent relates not only to joy but also to new challenges. Consistent with set-point theory, previous research found that life satisfaction increased around childbirth but decreased back to baseline in the following years. However, it remains unresolved whether individual facets of affective well-being show lasting or temporary changes around childbirth. Method: In 5,532 first-time parents from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we tested how life satisfaction, happiness, sadness, anxiety, and anger changed in the five years before and five years after becoming a parent. Results: Parents experienced a large increase in life satisfaction and happiness in the years surrounding the birth of their first child. This increase was most pronounced in the first year of parenthood. Sadness and anger decreased in the years before childbirth, reached their lowest point in the first year of parenthood, and increased in the following years. Anxiety slightly increased in the five years before childbirth but was lower thereafter. Most well-being changes bounced back in the long run, resulting in comparable well-being levels five years after versus five years before becoming a parent. Conclusions: These findings suggest that set-point theory also applies to different facets of affective well-being across the transition to parenthood.

Working life as a double-edged sword: Opposing changes in subjective well-being surrounding the transition to work and retirement.

“…Means and standard deviations for life satisfaction, happiness, sadness, anxiety, and anger in individual years before and after the transition can be found in Table S4 in the online supplemental materials. ASSELMANN AND SPECHT 8 suggest stability (Asselmann & Specht, 2022a, 2022b, 2023a, 2023b. In contrast to our study, previous research rarely distinguished between affective changes before versus after retirement, which might partially explain seemingly inconsistent results.…”

“…The random effects of most transition-related predictors increased the model fit, indicating that individual people differed in their transition-related well-being changes. However, the anticipatory changes in anxiety among career starters as well as all short-term effects (in both samples) did not vary significantly between individuals, which is consistent with previous findings (Asselmann & Specht, 2023a;Denissen et al, 2019), Furthermore, the analyses were repeated with all four random effects (for the anticipation, socialization, short-term, and long-term variable) at the same time. In these analyses (Tables 3 and 4), the main results remained unchanged.…”

“…Regarding effect sizes, the largest changes were found in anger, highlighting the role of work-related stress, which typically increases when entering and decreases when leaving working life. However, the effects were relatively small and comparable to well-being changes around other work-related transitions (e.g., becoming a leader; Asselmann & Specht, 2023b) but weaker than those around other major life events such as childbirth (Asselmann & Specht, 2023a) or the death of a loved one (Asselmann & Specht, 2022b).…”

“…That is, well-being changes before versus after retirement went in different directions. Methodologically, it is thus essential to distinguish between anticipation and posttransition effects to avoid that opposing trends falsely suggest stability (Asselmann & Specht, 2022a, 2022b, 2023a, 2023b). In contrast to our study, previous research rarely distinguished between affective changes before versus after retirement, which might partially explain seemingly inconsistent results.…”

“…Using data from the SOEP, the authors previously examined changes in personality traits in the years before and after becoming a parent (Asselmann & Specht, 2021b), romantic relationship events (Asselmann & Specht, 2020a), the death of a partner (Asselmann & Specht, 2020b), the transition to work and retirement (Asselmann & Specht, 2021a), and becoming a leader (Asselmann et al, 2023). They also investigated changes in subjective well-being in the years before and after becoming a parent (Asselmann & Specht, 2023a), romantic relationship events (Asselmann & Specht, 2022a), the death of a loved one (Asselmann & Specht, 2022b), and becoming a leader (Asselmann & Specht, 2023b). These previous publications do not overlap with the current study because they focused on the Big Five and other personality traits and/or other life events and transitions.…”