W. Bradford Wilcox points to new Pew data showing that mothers tend to be happier when they scale back their work lives to spend time at home with their kids:
What does this data really tell us? Let’s start with explaining what it doesn’t tell us. These results do not prove that spending less time at work makes women happier. It could be, for instance, that happier women are more likely to make work sacrifices, in the first place. Or it could be that more affluent mothers, who are more likely to be happy above a certain level of income, can spend more time with their families than poorer moms.
But these results are consistent with a pattern found regularly in research on women’s work and family preferences: Most (married) mothers would prefer not to work full-time, and the most popular option for women, when it comes to juggling work and family, is part-time work. … This data suggests that one reason married mothers who make work sacrifices are happier is that they would prefer to scale back at work—at least for some portion of their lives as mothers—and are happier when they can do so.
The Dish 