Happy Adolescence Leads to Happy Adulthood...and Divorce

So now when I look at pics like this, I know around 20%
of these excited kids will be divorced. Thanks science!
From English Subject Centre.

Apparently in keeping with this week's divorce theme, the Vancouver Sun reports that a happy adolescence increases the likelihood of a happy adulthood, but also increases the likelihood of divorce. This information comes from a study in the The Journal of Positive Psychology that analyzed data on 2,776 British citizens born in 1946. The data concerned teacher evaluations of students aged 13 to 15, rating them on their popularity, ease of making friends, energy levels, and overall happiness.

This interesting rating method revealed that around 20% of the kids who scored highly in multiple areas were divorced by age 53, compared to around 16% of the kids who scored poorly, even with no change in the likelihood of marriage. The difference of four percent appears small, but is significant enough to warrant further investigation. (For comparison, the divorce rate in the United States is somewhere around 43%, increasing to around 75% the more marriages a person has.)

The study, carried out by Felicia Huppert of the University of Cambridge and Marcus Richards of Britain's Medical Research Council, says, "The explanation for this is not immediately obvious and warrants further investigation. One possible factor might be that positive children have higher self-esteem or self-efficacy than their peers and are therefore more willing to leave a marriage if it is not meeting their needs."

HOWEVER, before you try to protect teenagers by making them sad, the study goes on to say that the benefits of a happy adolescence outweigh the downsides. Happy teenagers go on to become adults who are more satisfied with their jobs, more social, and 60% less likely to develop mental disorders. Whew!

Divorce or Separation May Be Worse for Child Happiness Than Poverty

Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage.
From An opinion on film.

Today The Daily Mail reports on something that you may already suspect:  divorce or separation of parents has a more negative effect on children's life satisfaction than poverty. This information comes from a new survey by the Understanding Society, a British government-funded organization.

Initial findings show that British children rank lower in overall life satisfaction than children in other developed countries. Parental happiness plays a big role in how happy they feel. They also experience a higher prevalence of bullying than children in the United States.

The researchers interviewed 34,500 people, including 2,000 children between 10 and 15 years old. The organization hopes to survey around 100,000 people every year to gain a deeper understanding of issues such as health, crime, finances, and work.

Professor Nick Buck, the director of Understanding Society, says, "We are collecting a much richer set of data than the national census, for instance, and I think this is going to lead to a major change in the way social research is performed, to understand how individual wellbeing and happiness is developed, and how behavior impacts on later outcomes."