Thursday Dec 13 2:30 AM
By Niki O'Callaghan
LONDON (Reuters Life!) - Men are happiest when they have a full-time job and women prefer part-time work, but don't expect either to feel their lives have improved when the baby arrives, according to new research in Britain.
Life satisfaction for men is influenced only by whether or not they have a job, while women prefer part-time jobs and those with children are much happier if they have any job at all -- regardless of how many hours they work, a new study by Britain's Institute for Social and Economic Research said.
The survey of 3,856 couples from 1996 to 2003 showed that the presence of children brings no increase in life satisfaction for men and an increase for life satisfaction in women only when the children begin attending school.
"My guess is that it is a struggle for the mothers of 3-4 year olds actually to balance all the things they have to do," Alison Booth, a co-author of the study: "Job Satisfaction and Family Happiness: The Part-time Work Puzzle" told Reuters in an email on Wednesday.
The study also found that the health and work status of partners had no bearing on an individual's own sense of well-being.
Significantly, it found that young children between the ages of 3-4 had a negative effect on female life satisfaction and that children below the age of five significantly reduced life satisfaction for men.
The survey showed that 17 percent of men said their work made them happier than their offspring did and that hours worked did not affect their job satisfaction.
Women posed a puzzle for the authors of the study because they discovered that those without children derived higher job satisfaction from part-time jobs than they did from full-time work, without affecting life satisfaction.
But women with children derived their biggest increase in life satisfaction from full-time work.
"Hours satisfaction and job satisfaction indicate that women prefer part-time jobs, irrespective of whether these are small or large," the study said. "But when it comes to female life satisfaction, hours of work hardly matter."
