Abstract
Although the question of whether parenthood is generally beneficial for well-being is currently being hotly debated in the social sciences, single parents are nearly unanimously assumed to be worse off than their partnered counterparts. The present research questions this finding by demonstrating that whether single parents are actually less happy than partnered parents depends on a country’s cultural norms regarding childbearing practices. Using two large-scale international data sets (the European Values Study [EVS] and the European Social Survey [ESS]) covering altogether 43 countries, we show that only in collectivist countries and countries with a strong two-parent family norm did parenthood negatively affect the life satisfaction and the emotional well-being of single but not partnered (married or cohabiting) individuals. Most notably, the detrimental effect of a country’s social norm of a two-parent family existed even among single parents who did not share this norm themselves.
Keywords
The question of whether parenthood is beneficial for well-being is currently hotly debated in psychology. Some studies indicate that parents are less happy or satisfied with life than childless individuals (e.g., Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone, 2004), whereas other studies show just the opposite (e.g., Nelson, Kushlev, English, Dunn, & Lyubomirsky, 2013). Currently, researchers do agree on the adversities of single parenthood (Hansen, 2012). Most evidence suggests that childbearing outside of a stable partnership is associated with decreased subjective well-being and mental health (Aassve, Goisis, & Sironi, 2012; Margolis & Myrskylä, 2011). However, this body of literature is mostly based on samples from North America and has never seriously questioned the cross-cultural stability of this finding.
In the present study, we fill this void by exploring the well-being of single and partnered parents as well as their childless peers in a cross-cultural context. Drawing from psychological literature on social influence and the importance of conformity to social norms for one’s well-being and self-concept (Cialdini & Goldstein, 2004), we suggest that the psychological costs of single parenthood can be alleviated in countries with less traditional family norms—countries in which single-parent families are as accepted and recognized as two-parent families. Recent cross-cultural research has shown that adopting uncommon practices or beliefs might lead to social disapproval and a lower well-being (Fulmer et al., 2010; Stavrova, 2014; Stavrova, Schlösser, & Fetchenhauer, 2011, 2013). Negative consequences of non-conformity exist with respect to a large variety of life choices such as cohabitation, religiosity, and moral attitudes (Gebauer, Sedikides, & Neberich, 2012; Soons & Kalmijn, 2009; Stavrova & Fetchenhauer, 2014; Stavrova, Fetchenhauer, & Schlösser, 2013).
Given cross-cultural differences in the acceptance of non-marital childbearing (Kiernan, 2000), it might represent another condition potentially associated with psychological costs in some countries but not in others. In the present research, we used data from a total of 43 countries to examine whether the psychological burden of single parenthood is alleviated if the respective cultural norm recognizes and approves of this form of family arrangement. In addition, we explore the well-being of single parents whose personal norms clash with the norms of their respective cultures. We investigate whether single parents who do not perceive their status as a norm violation but live in a country where most other people do report a lower level of life satisfaction than coupled parents or childless individuals.
Parenthood, Marital Status, and Well-Being
Psychological research on the happiness of parents has produced quite paradoxical findings. On the one hand, studies overwhelmingly show that people believe that parenthood brings happiness, and prospective parents expect their emotional well-being to sky-rocket when their offspring are born (Hansen, 2012; Koropeckyj-Cox & Pendell, 2007; White & Dolan, 2009). Conversely, the majority of studies comparing well-being, depressive symptoms, daily satisfaction, and the relationship quality of parents and non-parents highlighted the negative consequences of parenting (Clark, Diener, Georgellis, & Lucas, 2008; Doss, Rhoades, Stanley, & Markman, 2009; Evenson & Simon, 2005; Kahneman et al., 2004; Luhmann, Hofmann, Eid, & Lucas, 2012; Orbuch, House, Mero, & Webster, 1996; Twenge, Campbell, & Foster, 2003; Wendorf, Lucas, Imamoğlu, Weisfeld, & Weisfeld, 2011). Other authors failed to identify any significant relation between parenthood and happiness (Koropeckyj-Cox, 1998; Rothrauff & Cooney, 2008) or even found parents to be happier than childless individuals (Kohler, Behrman, & Skytthe, 2005; Nelson et al., 2013).
What researchers tend to agree on is that single individuals are particularly negatively affected by parenting experiences (Aassve et al., 2012; Greenfield & Marks, 2006; Margolis & Myrskylä, 2011; Nelson et al., 2013; Stanca, 2012). Single parents report lower levels of happiness and life satisfaction than partnered parents (Aassve et al., 2012; Nelson et al., 2013; Shields & Wooden, 2003). The adversities of single parenthood are commonly explained as high financial costs, missing career opportunities, undermined coping resources and social support, and struggles with an ex-partner over custody in cases of divorce or even selection bias, with unhappy individuals being “predisposed” to single parenthood (Davies, Avison, & McAlpine, 1997; Lee, Law, & Tam, 1999). Some studies have even shown that the commonly reported negative effect of parenthood on well-being is actually restricted to single parents (Angeles, 2010; Evenson & Simon, 2005; Shields & Wooden, 2003).
Notably, the pattern of results is somewhat different in Northern European countries, in which parenting was shown to have a similar (mostly positive) effect on single individuals and those in a partnership (Daukantaite & Zukauskiene, 2006; Hansen, Slagsvold, & Moum, 2009; Kohler et al., 2005). For example, Hansen and colleagues showed parenthood to be related to a greater life satisfaction among married, single, and formerly married individuals in Norway (Hansen et al., 2009). Similarly, a study conducted in Denmark demonstrated that a first-born child increased single and partnered parents’ happiness to the same extent (Kohler et al., 2005).
Obviously, the degree to which the psychological benefits or misery of parenthood depends on parents’ partnership status varies across cultures. However, the existing literature has not yet attempted to identify the reason for these variations. We suggest that cultural differences in the social norms associated with single parenthood, such as family traditionalism and collectivism, play an important role in this process.
Conformity and Well-Being
Non-conformity to social norms and expectations has been associated with social disapproval or rejection (Christensen, Rothgerber, Wood, & Matz, 2004; Hechter & Opp, 2001) and negative emotional outcomes among norm violators (Berns, Capra, Moore, & Noussair, 2010; Christensen et al., 2004). For example, students who discover that the majority of other students hold an opinion different from theirs tend to feel negatively about themselves (Pool, Wood, & Leck, 1998). The emotional misery of deviance has also been demonstrated in neuroimaging studies (de Quervain et al., 2004; Rilling et al., 2002). For example, individuals who discovered that their ratings of certain songs did not correspond to their peers’ ratings were likely to adjust their ratings to conform more closely to others’—a reaction triggered by an activation in the left and right anterior insula, the brain regions responsible for processing psychological arousal (Berns et al., 2010).
Conformity and Well-Being in Cross-Cultural Research
Recently, psychological research has begun to examine the emotional consequences of conformity versus deviance from social norms in large groups such as countries (Kalmijn, 2010; Stavrova, Fetchenhauer, & Schlösser, 2012; Stavrova, Schlösser, & Fetchenhauer, 2013). It has been suggested that individuals’ characteristics that are common and valued in a certain national context can be interpreted as normative (Kalmijn, 2007; Stavrova, 2014; Stavrova et al., 2011). Consequently, in the way that violating one’s in-group norms brings about distress and a loss of self-esteem, deviating from such country-wide normative standards might also be associated with negative consequences for well-being. This assumption found support across multiple empirical studies. In countries or regions with a strong norm of work, unemployed individuals are likely to be subject to a particularly large loss of life satisfaction compared with countries with more tolerant attitudes toward living on public funds (Stavrova et al., 2011). Similarly, in countries in which most people are religious and religiosity is considered a highly desirable personal characteristic, non-believers report lower social integration, psychological adjustment, recognition by others, and subjective well-being (Diener, Tay, & Myers, 2011; Gebauer et al., 2012; Stavrova, Fetchenhauer, & Schlösser, 2013). Even the effects of factors that have long been considered universal predictors of greater well-being, such as virtuous and helping behavior, were shown to be subject to a country’s normative climate. For example, in countries in which above-average virtuous cooperators are punished in economic experiments, holding virtuous attitudes is no longer related to happiness (Stavrova, Schlösser, & Fetchenhauer, 2013). The importance of conformity has been shown even with respect to personality: In countries with a higher average level of extroversion, extroverts were shown to be happier than in introvert-dominated countries (Fulmer et al., 2010).
The social norms approach to well-being resonates well with the emerging normative perspective in cross-cultural research (Fischer et al., 2009; Shteynberg, Gelfand, & Kim, 2009). Multiple studies have recently highlighted the importance of the normative (especially the descriptive) aspect of cultural values and dimensions. It has been shown that perceptions of what is normative in a certain culture drive individuals’ attachment to that culture (Wan, Chiu, Peng, & Tam, 2007; Wan, Kim-pong, et al., 2007) and explain cultural differences in cognition, perception, and behavior (Fischer et al., 2009; Shteynberg et al., 2009; Zou et al., 2009). However, this research has mostly focused on the general dimensions of cultures such as individualism/collectivism or cultural values such as autonomy or harmony (Schwartz, 1992). At the same time, some researchers (e.g., Shteynberg et al., 2009) have appealed to move beyond the global dimensions of culture (e.g., individualism–collectivism) and focus on the norms that are relevant for the behavior in question. The present research can be considered as a case in point: Besides cultural differences in individualism–collectivism, we are using the norms of family and childbearing arrangements measured as “hard facts”—the country-level prevalence of births to married parents and country-level aggregated respondents’ attitudes toward single-parent families.
The Present Study
In the present study, we examine the question of whether the negative effect of non-marital childbearing on parents’ well-being is shaped by social norms and expectations regarding childbearing practices in 43 European countries.
To measure the childbearing-related normative aspects of national cultures, we recurred to a number of indicators. First, we made use of the classification of norms as either descriptive or injunctive (Cialdini, Reno, & Kallgren, 1990). Descriptive norms reflect the “hard facts” or, in other words, what people usually do. Injunctive norms, on the other hand, describe the normative expectations regarding certain behaviors or lifestyles, or, in other words, what people should do.
Drawing from this distinction, to measure a country’s norm of the two-parent family, we constructed an index consisting of two indicators. The first indicator reflects the descriptive aspect of the norm—the prevalence of live births to married parents, taken from a statistics database of the European Commission (Eurostat, 2014). A higher score on this measure indicated a stronger descriptive norm of the two-parent family. The second indicator reflects the injunctive aspect of the two-parent family norm and represents the percentage of respondents in each country who agreed with the statement that children need both parents to be happy (European Values Study [EVS], 2008). This indicator reflects the degree to which a society considers a traditional two-parent family to be desirable for a child’s well-being. Indeed, this indicator is directly related to a country’s average disapproval of alternative family arrangements, such as women who want to have a child without a stable relationship with a man, r(45) = .37, p = .01, as well as other non-traditional family arrangements, including cohabiting couples, r(45) = .59, p < .001, or homosexual couples with the desire to adopt, r(45) = .75, p < .001. 1 The descriptive and the injunctive indicators of the norm of two-parent families are strongly correlated, r(43) = .52. We z-standardized them and combined them into one index that we refer to as the two-parent family norm.
Second, the two-parent family norm can also be reflected in a more pervasive global dimension of culture—individualism/collectivism. Therefore, we used cultural differences in individualism/collectivism as an alternative indicator of cultural norms of family arrangement. Collectivism implies a stronger integration of individuals in family networks, an emphasis on group membership in self-definition, and more traditional family values (extended family, presence of children, rejection of abortion and divorce etc.) than individualism (Hofstede, 2001; Minkov, Blagoev, & Hofstede, 2013; Triandis, 1995). Collectivist cultures are more likely to enforce the two-parent family norm: The correlation between individualism and the above described index of the two-parent family norm is r(33) = −.53, p < .01. This implies that there might be a stronger backlash against single parents in collectivist than in individualist countries, making them less happy and satisfied compared with their counterparts in individualist countries.
Method
Data and Participants
To examine the effect of these cultural norms on single and partnered parents’ well-being, we recurred to two large-scale surveys: the EVS (2010) and the European Social Survey (ESS, 2006, 2012). In the EVS, country samples were gathered in a multistage sampling procedure. The final sample included 32,553 individuals (20,453 parents, of whom 3,037 were single parents) from 43 countries. The analyses using the EVS focused on life satisfaction as measure of subjective well-being. The ESS was used to complement these analyses using indicators of emotional well-being: frequency of positive and negative emotions that were available in the third and the sixth waves, which were combined for the analysis, resulting in the final sample of 85,051 individuals (32,293 parents, of whom 5,730 were single) nested in 27 countries (see Table 1 for country-level descriptive statistics). 2
Country-Level Descriptive Statistics.
Percentage of the population who agree that children need both parents to grow up happily.
Share of live births to married parents.
Participated in the European Social Survey (ESS).
Measurement
In both surveys, individuals who reported having at least one resident child were coded as 1, and individuals who reported having no resident children were coded as 0. Individuals who were married or had a resident partner were coded as 1, and individuals who had no resident partner were coded as 0.
We considered a number of socio-demographic variables (age, sex, employment status, education, income 3 ) and self-identification as a “religious person” (with the categories “a non-religious person” or an “atheist,” coded as 0 and a “religious person,” coded as 1 in the EVS; and a scale 0 “not at all religious” to 10 “very religious” in the ESS).
As a measure of individualism, we used Hofstede’s (2001) individualism index. This index was available for 33 of the 43 countries in the EVS and for 25 of the 27 countries in the ESS. To control for countries’ differences in wealth, we included the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita (United Nations Development Programme, 2007).
Life satisfaction
Participants completed a single-item measure of life satisfaction that asked them to assess their satisfaction with life on a 10-point scale ranging from 1 (dissatisfied) to 10 (satisfied). The question asked, “All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?” This measure, which has been shown to have appropriate external validity, is commonly used in cross-cultural studies of life satisfaction (Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999; Kahneman & Krueger, 2006).
Positive and negative emotions
Participants were asked to indicate how often during the past week they experienced positive (felt happy, enjoyed life, felt calm and peaceful; Cronbach’s α .75) and negative (felt depressed, sad, anxious, lonely; felt everything they did was an effort; the sleep was restless; they could not get going; Cronbach’s α .86) emotions. 4
In the EVS only, participants were requested to indicate whether they tended to agree (coded as 1) or disagree (coded as 0) with the statement, “Children need both parents to grow up happily.” Individuals who agreed with this statement were considered to hold a strong personal norm of the two-parent family.
Results
A simple comparison of average life satisfaction scores of single and partnered parents and childless individuals in different European countries (Table 1) suggests that the importance of a stable partnership for parents’ well-being differs across countries. For example, in Georgia, being a single parent has a huge negative effect on life satisfaction. Single parents in Georgia report a life satisfaction of 4.41 (SD = 2.36), whereas coupled parents reach a life satisfaction of 5.70 (SD = 2.41), t(850) = −5.77, p < .001. The data from Denmark paint quite a different picture. Single parents in Denmark (M = 8.21, SD = 1.56) are not significantly less satisfied than partnered parents (M = 8.54, SD = 1.52), t(386) = −1.18, p = .24.
Using multilevel modeling, we examined whether cross-cultural differences in the norm of the two-parent family explain why single parenthood is associated with a stronger decrease in life satisfaction in some countries than in others.
Table 2 presents the main results of these analyses. All the models included the fixed effects of one of the measures of cultural climate (a country’s norm of two-parent families or individualism), individuals’ parenthood and partnership statuses, a three-way interaction among them, and the respective two-way interactions. They also modeled intercept, parenthood, partnership, and the parenthood × partnership interaction as random effects. The models also controlled for individuals’ socio-demographic characteristics and countries’ GDPs (the effects of these variables on life satisfaction are not discussed here in detail, as they are discussed elsewhere; e.g., Diener et al., 1999).
Multilevel Regressions of Parenthood, Partnership Status, and Individualism on Life Satisfaction, and Positive and Negative Emotions.
Note. All continuous variables are centered on the grand mean. All models include all control variables listed in the measurement section; robust standard errors are reported.
p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
Model 1 (Table 2) showed a significant three-way interaction between parenthood, partnership status, and country’s norm of two-parent families (b = 0.24, p < .01), indicating that the effect of partnership status on a parent’s life satisfaction is significantly dependent on the strength of a country’s two-parent family norm. We inspected this interaction by estimating the simple slopes of parenthood for individuals with a different partnership status living in countries with a strong (1 SD above M) and a weak (1 SD below M) norm of the two-parent family. As Figure 1 shows, in countries in which single parenthood finds a high degree of social acceptance, parenthood does not have a negative impact on life satisfaction for either single (b = −0.07, p = .36) or partnered individuals (b = −0.01, p = .84). In contrast, in countries with a strong two-parent family norm, parenthood has a significant negative effect on the life satisfaction of single (b = −0.40, p < .001) but not on partnered individuals (b = 0.07, p = .41). It should be noted that the effects we report are robust against various individual socio-demographic characteristics and per-capita GDP included in the multilevel regression analyses; therefore, these effects account for possible differences in income, educational level, and other socio-demographic characteristics between single parents, coupled parents, and childless individuals.
Life satisfaction scores of parents and childless individuals who either have or do not have a resident partner (adjusted for individuals’ characteristics and countries’ GDP); individualist (+1 SD) versus collectivist (−1 SD) countries; countries with a strong (+1 SD) versus a weak (−1 SD) two-parent family norm.
Model 2 replicates this pattern of results using countries’ differences in individualism as an alternative indicator of traditional family norms. A significant three-way interaction (b = −0.01, p < .05) emerged indicating that the effect of having a resident partner on parents’ life satisfaction depends on a country’s individualism. We decomposed this interaction using the same technique as described above. Figure 1 shows that in individualist countries (1 SD above M), parenthood does not have a negative impact on life satisfaction for either single (b = −0.04, p = .69) or partnered individuals (b = −0.05, p = .49). In contrast, in collectivist countries (1 SD below M), parenthood has a significant negative effect on the life satisfaction of single (b = −0.36, p < .001) but not partnered individuals (b = 0.04, p = .74). Hence, the results of the analyses with two different indicators of the cultural norm of two-parent family provide converging evidence that a country’s normative climate shapes the effect of single versus partnered parenthood on well-being. Next, we examined whether these results extend to other indicators of subjective well-being: the frequency of positive and negative emotions.
Regarding positive emotions (Models 3 and 4), the analysis yielded a significant three-way interaction between parenthood, partnership status, and a country’s norm (b = 0.07, p < .01). Similarly, the three-way interaction between parenthood, partnership, and individualism turned significant as well (b = −0.003, p < .01). In collectivist countries and countries with a strong norm of two-parent families, parenthood had a negative effect on the frequency of positive emotions of single (strong norm countries: b = −0.07, p = .01; collectivist countries: b = −0.05, p = .004) but not on coupled (strong norm countries: b = −0.01, p = .57; collectivist countries: b = −0.01, p = .72) parents. In contrast, in individualist countries and countries with a weak norm of two-parent families, parenthood had no longer any negative impact on single individuals’ positive emotions (weak norm countries: b = −0.03, p = .91; individualist countries: b = −0.02, p = .51). Somewhat unexpectedly, in individualist countries and countries where the norm of two-parent families was weak, among those individuals who had a resident partner, parents were more likely to experience less positive emotions than childless individuals (weak norm countries: b = −0.06, p = .001; individualist countries: b = −0.07, p = .000). These interactions are depicted in Figure 2.
Frequency of positive emotions of parents and childless individuals who either have or do not have a resident partner (adjusted for individuals’ characteristics and countries’ GDP); individualist (+1 SD) versus collectivist (−1 SD) countries; countries with a strong (+1 SD) versus a weak (−1 SD) two-parent family norm.
The results regarding negative emotions (Models 5 and 6, Figure 3) follow exactly the same pattern (three-way interaction including a country’s norm: b = −0.07, p < .01 and individualism: b = 0.002, p < .05). In collectivist countries and countries with a strong norm of two-parent families, parenthood’s effect on negative emotions was restricted to single individuals (norm deviants; strong norm countries: b = 0.08, p = .003; collectivist countries: b = 0.03, p = .079), whereas couples were not affected by parenthood in any way (strong norm countries: b = −0.01, p = .37; collectivist countries: b = −0.01, p = .51). In contrast, in individualist countries and countries with a weak norm of two-parent families, single parents were not significantly negatively affected (weak norm countries: b = −0.01, p = .35; individualist countries: b = 0.004, p = .79), whereas coupled parents reported a slightly elevated level of negative emotions compared with their childless counterparts (weak norm countries: b = 0.02, p = .01; individualist countries: b = 0.02, p = .000).
Frequency of negative emotions of parents and childless individuals who either have or do not have a resident partner (adjusted for individuals’ characteristics and countries’ GDP); individualist (+1 SD) versus collectivist (−1 SD) countries; countries with a strong (+1 SD) versus a weak (−1 SD) two-parent family norm.
To summarize, we have reliably found that the negative effect of single parenthood on life satisfaction and emotions is restricted to collectivist countries and countries with a strong norm of two-parent families.
Analyses of Personal Two-Parent Family Norms
So far, we have shown that only in countries with strong traditional family norms, being single enhances the psychological costs of parenthood. Might a decreased level of life satisfaction in single parents have sources other than social pressure? Single parents may not only suffer from social disapproval but also feel guilty for not being able to provide a complete family for their children—which, as their cultural beliefs claim, would prevent the children from growing up happily. In other words, they might not feel shamed by the society as much as they feel guilty for depriving their children of happy lives.
To answer this question, we investigated whether the effect of a country’s norm would persist even among individuals who do not share this norm themselves. Therefore, we estimated a four-way interaction among parenthood, partnership status, the societal norm of a two-parent family, and individuals’ personal agreement with the statement that children need both parents to grow up happily (referred to as a personal norm and only available in the EVS). We included all individual-level control variables as well as per-capita GDP.
The four-way interaction became insignificant (b = −0.20, p = .29), meaning that a country’s normative climate has a similar detrimental effect on single parents regardless of their personal adherence to the norm. 5 Single parents residing in a culture in which people tend to believe in the importance of a two-parent family report a lower life satisfaction than partnered parents or childless individuals, even when they do not hold this belief themselves. A similar pattern emerges for individuals who share the belief that to be happy, children need both parents: Parents who have no resident partner are less satisfied with life than partnered parents or childless individuals, but only when they reside in a country with a strong norm of the two-parent family.
Robustness Check
As our dependent measures might be subject to culture-based response biases (Fischer, 2004), we repeated all the analyses using the within-country standardized measures of the dependent variables. Individuals’ life satisfaction and emotions scores obtained using this procedure represent their relative position compared with other individuals in the respective countries. The analyses using these bias standardized dependent measures completely replicated the results obtained with the raw scores. 6
General Discussion
In this study, we demonstrated the importance of cultural norms in shaping the well-being of single and partnered parents and childless individuals. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first investigation evaluating the effect of a country’s normative climate (namely, the prevalence and acceptance of single-parent families as well as the individualism/collectivism dimension of culture) on the psychological well-being of single and partnered parents.
Our results demonstrated that a country’s norms regarding the importance of two parents in raising a child play a crucial role in determining whether the well-being of single parents is affected by their parenting experience in any way. In collectivist countries and countries with a high prevalence of two-parent families and a widespread belief that growing up in single-parent families makes children unhappy (e.g., Ukraine and Turkey), parents raising children alone were actually the unhappy ones. In such countries, parenthood was associated with a lower life satisfaction, and less positive and more negative emotions among single individuals, whereas parenthood had largely no effect on the well-being of individuals with a resident partner. These findings are consistent with our predictions based on the literature on conformity and well-being (e.g., Stavrova et al., 2012): In countries with a strong norm of two-parent families, single parents represent normative deviants and might therefore be subject to social sanctions such as disapproval or rejection.
In individualist countries in which childbearing in single-parent families represented a socially acceptable practice (e.g., Norway and Denmark), the results pattern was quite different. In these countries, single parents no longer reported a lower level of well-being than partnered parents. In other words, parenthood was not associated with any additional negative consequences for single (compared with partnered) individuals. This is a particularly interesting finding because it provides some boundary conditions for the widespread assumption (backed up by studies based on North American samples) that parenthood is more detrimental to the psychological well-being of single than coupled individuals. Specifically, our results show that under certain circumstances, parenthood does not “hurt” single individuals at all. In other words, in countries in which parents were freed from the moral obligation to provide their children with a traditional family, the psychological burden of single parents was alleviated.
We also examined an alternative explanation for these finding. It appears possible that in countries with a strong two-parent family norm, the reason for the unhappiness of single parents does not lie in the shameful experience of social disapproval and alienation but in the feeling of guilt for not being able to provide their children with a full family and worries regarding their children’s potential unhappiness. However, our analysis showed that single parents who personally endorsed the belief that children need both parents to grow up happily were not especially negatively affected. In fact, in countries with a strong two-parent family norm, single parents were the least satisfied, even when they did not personally share this norm themselves.
One of the limitations of our analysis is that we could not differentiate among various types of family constellations. Individuals were asked whether they had any children (biological, step, foster, or adopted) in their household; those who reported having at least one child were categorized as “parents.” Although using this procedure we could define “single parents” the way they are typically defined in the literature (as single individuals with at least one dependent child at home), it did not allow us to differentiate between biological, step, adopted, or foster children. This might be important as the latter three categories might be more common among couples than among single parents. However, because our analysis did not focus on a direct comparison of partnered and single parents but rather on the interaction of parenthood, partnership, and a country’s two-parent family norm, our conclusions are unlikely to be compromised by placing biological and step children in the same category. Yet, a more stringent analysis is required to provide us with a more definitive answer regarding the generalizability of our findings.
Our findings provided some interesting insights regarding the currently hotly debated question: Is parenting in general good or bad for well-being (Nelson et al., 2013)? Although this was not the main goal of our analysis, we discerned that in countries with a strong norm of a two-parent family, parenting is related to a lower life satisfaction in general; in contrast, in countries without such beliefs, parents are as satisfied with life as childless individuals (even if they rear their children alone). This pattern of results persists, even when adjusted for individuals’ socio-demographic differences and countries’ differences in wealth. We tend to interpret this finding in the following way. In countries in which single parenthood is socially accepted, childbearing norms are generally more relaxed and permissive, so parents are allowed more freedom regarding childrearing practices, which rids them of the pressure to conform to the societal ideal of a good parent. We suggest that a more careful examination of the degree to which cultural norms force parents to stick to certain behaviors and lifestyles might actually contribute to the current debates regarding whether parenthood brings about happiness or unhappiness.
As our focus was on the normative aspects of cultural values, our findings can be considered in light of the emerging normative perspective on cross-cultural research (Fischer et al., 2009). Some recent cross-cultural studies highlighted the normative aspect of cultural values in explaining cross-cultural differences in cognition and behavior (Fischer et al., 2009; Wan, Chiu, et al., 2007). The present research further extends this literature by focusing on the associations between the normative aspects of culture and subjective well-being. On the example of single parenthood, we showed how non-conformity to cultural norms can have detrimental effects on subjective well-being. Importantly, this is the first study showing that the effect of non-conformity on societal norms persists even among individuals who do not share these norms themselves. Single parents who did not believe in the importance of the two-parent family nevertheless felt unhappy if they lived in societies with a strong two-parent family norm. These findings are important in light of the internalization discussion (Schwartz, 1977; Wood, Christensen, Hebl, & Rothgerber, 1997) and the differentiation between societal and personal norms (Lapinski & Rimal, 2005; Stavrova et al., 2012).
Do children need both parents to grow up happily? Our study was not designed to prove this belief right or wrong. What our results revealed is that countries’ differences in this belief are, ironically, quite important to single parents’ happiness. Specifically, a strong societal belief that children from single-parent families grow up unhappily is associated with the increased unhappiness of single parents. In other words, what we mistake for the adversities of single parenthood is at least partially a consequence of non-conformity to societal expectations.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.