According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, the number of children which grow up with only one parent since birth has reached a new record. This is because women are more often becoming a single mother. And this is not unintentionally: women consciously choose for this because they have a children's wish. They do not let the fact that they are not married yet stand in the way of making this dream come true.
According to Ruut Veenhoven, Happiness Professor of the Erasmus Happiness Economics Research Organization of Erasmus University Rotterdam, these so-called 'conscious single mothers' are less happy than married women, because they usually went through a divorce. With regards to the children that grow up with only one parent since birth, we do not know what the happiness-effect is on them because their parent did consciously choose to have a child and thus they form a special category. What will be most important for these children, is that the environment in which they grow up is stable. When the parents of the children went through divorce, this will initially have a negative happiness effect on the child. However, in the long-run, the effects tend to be small.
Marriage
According to Happiness Professor Ruut Veenhoven, people marry for love and not for the legal benefits. These legal benefits can namely be obtained as well through a registered partnership. The ritual of marriage gives an extra accent to the love between you and your partner. And through marriage, you show this to your partner, your family and yourself.