Although public debate ensues over whether parents or nonparents have higher levels of emotional well-being, scholars suggest that being a parent is associated with a mixed bag of emotions. Drawing on the American Time Use Survey for the years 2010, 2012, and 2013 and unique measures of subjective well-being that capture positive and negative emotions linked to daily activities, we “unpack” this mixed bag. We do so by examining contextual variation in the parenting emotions gap based on activity type, whether parents’ children were present, parenting stage, and respondent’s gender. We found that parenting was associated with more positive emotions than nonparenting, but also more negative emotions. This pattern existed only during housework and leisure, not during paid work. Moreover, patterns in positive emotions existed only when parents’ children were present; patterns in negative emotions were primarily observed during earlier stages of parenting. Results were similar for men and women.

尽管随后就父母或非父母是否具有较高的情感幸福度进行了公开辩论，但学者们认为，成为父母与情感混杂在一起。我们根据2010年，2012年和2013年的美国时间使用情况调查以及主观幸福感的独特测量方法来捕捉与日常活动有关的正面和负面情绪，我们对此“混合装”进行了“包装”。为此，我们根据活动类型，是否存在父母的子女，育儿阶段以及受访者的性别来检查育儿情绪差距的背景变化。我们发现，父母抚养比非父母抚养会带来更多的积极情绪，但负面情绪也会更多。这种模式仅存在于家务劳动和休闲期间，而不存在于有偿工作中。此外，积极情绪的模式只有在父母的孩子在场时才存在。负面情绪的模式主要在育儿的早期阶段观察到。男女结果相似。