Children and family have positive influence on happiness, most Germans believe

Children and family a positive influence on happiness. This shows a survey by the Insa Foundation for the UN World Family Day.

In a survey by the opinion research institute Insa, 76 per cent of those questioned with children said they were happy, and 68 per cent of those questioned without children said they were satisfied. This reports the Catholic German daily Die Tagespost. Overall, 72 per cent of all those surveyed said they were satisfied with their lives overall. The Insa Foundation interviewed 10,000 citizens in Germany on the occasion of the United Nations Family Day on May 15th.

The survey found that people who don't have children but want to have them value the social position of the family higher (71 per cent) than those with children (56 per cent).

Although the traditional family picture makes up the majority, a lot of people tolerate other life plans. For 42 per cent of those surveyed, it doesn't matter whether people decide against the traditional family model of father, mother and child. As the study stated, it is not relevant whether one lives the traditional family image or not.

The study results suggest that family and work are not opposites: 42 per cent of respondents stated that family has a positive influence on their work. Among respondents with children, even 45 per cent said so. Two-thirds of all respondents (67 per cent) said their job positively impacted family life. Seventy-one per cent of respondents with children made this statement, and 61 per cent of respondents without children.