Want a happy marriage? Then have kids!

Children are the key to a happy married life, says a new study. Previous research has suggested that increasing the number of children does not make people any happier, and in some cases the more children people have, the less satisfied they are with their lives.

Children are the key to a happy married life, says a new study.

Previous research has suggested that increasing the number of children does not make people any happier, and in some cases the more children people have, the less satisfied they are with their lives.

Rather bleakly, this has been attributed to the fact that raising children involves a lot of hard work and only a few occasional rewards.

Luis Angeles from the University of Glasgow, who led the study, believes that this explanation is too simplistic.

When asked about the most important things in their lives, most people place their children near or even at the top of their list.

Contrary to previous work, Angeles' analysis of the relationship between having children and life satisfaction takes into account the role of individual characteristics, including marital status, gender, age, income and education.

For married individuals of all ages and married women in particular, children increase life satisfaction and life satisfaction goes up with the number of children in the household, a Glasgow release said.

These results were published online in Springer's Journal of Happiness Studies.