Taking care of children is a highly relevant activity, because people associate parenthood with personal fulfillment but it often requires downplaying the self and devoting oneself to caring for the children. Our sample was evenly divided between parents and nonparents. For nonparents, taking care of children had no relationship to either happiness or meaningfulness, but for parents, the more time they spent taking care of children, the more meaningful their lives were. (Time spent taking care of children had no relation to happiness and if anything trended toward reducing happiness.)

These findings illuminate the so-called ‘parenthood paradox,’ which is that most people want to be happy and want to become parents, but those two goals are in conflict insofar as becoming a parent often reduces happiness (e.g. Twenge, Campbell, & Foster, 2003; cf. Nelson et al., in press). Baumeister (1991) proposed that the parenthood paradox can be resolved by proposing that people seek not just happiness but also meaning, and so, they become parents because the gains in meaningfulness offset any losses in happiness. The present findings are consistent with that conclusion, which has broader implications for positive psychology, because they suggest that people will pursue meaningfulness even at the expense of happiness.