Are people who marry before having kids happier?

Millennials can add better mental health to the list of reasons they should hit certain life milestones in a particular order, according to new research from the Institute for Family Studies.
The “success sequence” — three steps that include graduating from high school, getting a job, marrying before having kids, in that order — provides a “huge boost to mental health,” according to Wendy Wang, the institute’s director of research, and Samuel T. Wilkinson, an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale University.
While the sequence has been touted in a lot of research as key to avoiding poverty and reducing the risk of divorce, the study is possibly the first to look at the impact on mental health, Wilkinson, also an associate director of the Yale Depression Research Program, told Deseret News.
Focusing on young adults born between 1980 and 1984, who were surveyed in their mid-30s, Wang said they studied three groups of millennials: those who married before having children, those who had children before or without marrying and those who never married and didn’t have children. Their analysis showed:
The report, “The Success Sequence and Millennial Mental Health,” finds that young adults who are married when they have children enjoy better mental health than those who have a baby outside of or before marriage. They are also happier and have better mental health than those who never married and don’t have children. It says those who are married before having children are not as apt to experience “high emotional distress” by their mid-30s (12%), compared to those who had a baby first (19%). And more of the sequence followers report being healthy (65% vs. 52%) and feeling happy at least most of the time (82% vs. 74%).
“So it looks like the people who had children before marriage or outside marriage, their mental health and physical overall well being is kind of similar to the ones who have never married and are childless. The group that stands out is the one who married before having children,” Wang said.
The report comes in the midst of a mental health and loneliness crisis in the U.S. Per the report, “Suicide, anxiety, depression and drug overdose deaths have all risen to record levels. Younger generations have been hit especially hard during this crisis. Millennial men and women experience increased anxiety and depression compared to previous generations at the same age.”
While acknowledging the impact of financial well-being on mental health, Wang and Wilkinson said that’s certainly not the whole story. They point out that even when they controlled for income, the findings on the success sequence boosting mental health held up. “The sequence remains a significant factor in predicting your adult mental health,” they wrote. “The odds of experiencing high emotional distress by their mid-30s are reduced by about 50% for young adults who have completed the three steps of the success sequence, after controlling for their income and a range of background factors including gender, race and family background.”
Wilkinson said he hopes that young people will pay attention. Amid a mental health crisis, people are trying to figure out what would make a difference. “It’s a very complicated question and it doesn’t just have one answer, but I hope that young people will see the success sequence as a kind of pitch to make goals and life plans for the kind of life that will be desirable and that will help them achieve better financial outcomes and mental health.”
The duo used the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, analyzing the 1997 cohort to see how they were faring in their 30s. The young people were born between 1980 and 1984 and are considered the oldest millennials. The group was surveyed first in 1997, when they were between ages 12 and 17, then annually from 1997 to 2011 and every two years since then.
Round 18 of the surveys — 6,734 respondents are still in the surveys — are the focus of the institute’s analysis. Findings were weighted to be nationally representative.
To look at mental health, they used the five-item short version of the Mental Health Inventory contained within that National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. It measures “risks for suffering anxiety and depression, loss of behavioral or emotional control and overall psychological well-being. Respondents were asked about how they felt during the previous month through a set of five questions, which include feeling nervous, feeling calm and peaceful, feeling downhearted and blue, being happy, and feeling so down in the dumps that nothing could cheer them up.”
Those surveyed answered how often they felt that way, on a four-point scale.
They found that “the incidence of high mental distress at ages 32 to 38 drops dramatically with each completed step of the sequence. Millennials who completed all three steps are much less likely to be highly emotionally distressed by their mid-30s, compared to those who missed these steps (9% vs. 30%).”
Mental distress is significantly higher for women who had children before marriage and are now divorced. One-third of them report mental distress. About 21% of married women who do not have children report high mental distress, as do 23% of never-married childless women. The lowest level of distress is found among mothers who had their children after marrying and who are still married, at 12%.
The study found those who married after having children are about twice as likely to divorce or separate by their mid-30s, compared to those who married first (27% vs. 14%).
They also found a gender gap when it comes to mental health among the millennials. “Women are consistently more likely than men to report experiencing emotional distress,” they wrote. “The gender gap is the largest among millennials who missed all three steps of the success sequence (38% vs. 22%). But even among those who followed all three steps, women are still more likely than men to experience higher emotional distress (12% vs. 7%).”
Wilkinson said the finding that women have more emotional distress is repeated across different cultures and there are likely several factors at play, including hormonal shifts. “There are forms of depression and anxiety that men just aren’t biologically prone to, like postpartum depression” or depression related to menopause, he said. “The other aspect is that women, biologically and emotionally, tend to be more sensitive to negative emotion and negative social interactions. There are just psychological sex differences in that regard.”
Wang and Wilkinson also noted a racial gap in mental health. White young adults who did things in a different order than the success sequence experience more anxiety and depression than their Black or Hispanic peers, while there’s no statistically significant difference by race for those who get a high school diploma or better, a job, then marry and have kids, as the sequence prescribes.
Wilkinson noted the finding on race was “not necessarily in line with other consensus views or other reports and work. We’re trying to figure out what that means.”