The vast majority of studies looking into the relationship between childbearing and subjective well-being use overall measures where respondents either report their general level of happiness or their life satisfaction, leaving substantial doubt about the underlying mechanisms. However, life satisfaction and happiness are intuitively multidimensional concepts, simply because there cannot be only one aspect that affects individuals' well-being. In this study, by considering seventeen specific life satisfaction domains, these features come out very clearly. Whereas all the domains considered matter for the overall life satisfaction, only three of them, namely satisfaction with leisure, health and satisfaction with the partnership, change dramatically surrounding childbearing events. Even though we cannot generalise (since these results stem from one particular panel survey, i.e., Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia data), it appears that the typical anticipation and post-child decrease of life satisfaction, so often found in existing studies, stems from changes in these three domains.

绝大多数调查生育与主观幸福感之间关系的研究都使用整体衡量标准，其中受访者要么报告他们的总体幸福水平，要么报告他们的生活满意度，对潜在机制留下了实质性的怀疑。然而，生活满意度和幸福感是直观的多维概念，因为不能只有一个方面影响个人的幸福感。在这项研究中，通过考虑 17 个特定的生活满意度领域，这些特征非常清晰。尽管所有考虑的领域都对整体生活满意度很重要，但其中只有三个领域，即休闲满意度、健康满意度和伙伴关系满意度，围绕生育事件发生了巨大变化。