Parenthood and psychological well-being in Finland: Does public policy make a difference?

Research based on American data indicates that the presence of children in the family tends to have a negative effect on the mental well being of adul ts. According to McLanahan and Adams (1987 and 1989), this relationship is explained by the temporal and monetary constraints associated with contempo rary parenting. In order to alleviate the problem, they advocate public pol icy solutions such as child allowance and state-subsidized childcare. To ev aluate the salience of such programs, we examine the relationship between p arenthood and psychological well-being in Finland, a country that supplies the kind of support systems that McLanahan and Adams have in mind, yet wher e other conditions related to parental stress are very similar to the U.S. The results from our research indicate that children tend to have no effect on the psychological well being of Finnish women and a positive effect on Finnish men. This pattern of findings supports the "weak" version of the hy pothesis derived from the policy conjecture by McLanahan and Adams.