Here's a few cherry picked studies[1] there's a _bump_ in happiness that regresses to pre-kiddo levels permanently.

[2] Happy people with money have more kids, and people who have kids after 30 and with non-poverty wages are happier.

1. https://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-2012-013.pdf

2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5505668/

3. bonus: A heavily biased study showing overall increases https://ifstudies.org/blog/life-with-kids-is-better-analyzin...

There's a decent book on the baseline phenomenon called Happiness Hypothesis: Largely speaking you'll return to baseline levels of subjective wellbeing, but recall that fufillment is not subjective wellbeing.

Of course if you read The Atlantic (the same magazine that tells you to throw your kids art away and never get married, they'll say the opposite [4]

4. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/11/does-havi...

You wont be convinced. That's ok. I think we'll just disagree here. But, if you let these articles direct your life, or if I were to let them direct mine, we'd be fools.

This whole thread is honestly hilarious. "No sir, you are not happy, you are not fufilled, here is the data, sir"