School of Psychological Science, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TU, UK.
MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 2BN, UK.
Genes (Basel). 2023 Mar 14;14(3):716. doi: 10.3390/genes14030716.
Observational research implies a negative effect of having children on wellbeing.
To provide Mendelian randomisation evidence of the effect of having children on parental wellbeing.
Two-sample Mendelian randomisation.
Non-clinical European ancestry participants.
We used the UK Biobank (460,654 male and female European ancestry participants) as a source of genotype-exposure associations, the Social Science Genetics Consortia (SSGAC) (298,420 male and female European ancestry participants), and the Within-Family Consortia (effective sample of 22,656 male and female European ancestry participants) as sources of genotype-outcome associations.
The lifetime effect of an increase in the genetic liability to having children.
The primary analysis was an inverse variance weighed analysis of subjective wellbeing measured in the 2016 SSGAC Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS). Secondary outcomes included pleiotropy robust estimators applied in the SSGAC and an analysis using the Within-Family consortia GWAS.
We did not find strong evidence of a negative (standard deviation) change in wellbeing (β = 0.153 (95% CI: -0.210 to 0.516) per child parented. Secondary outcomes were generally slightly deflated (e.g., -0.049 [95% CI: -0.533 to 0.435] for the Within-Family Consortia and 0.090 [95% CI: -0.167 to 0.347] for weighted median), implying the presence of some residual confounding and pleiotropy.
Contrary to the existing literature, our results are not compatible with a measurable negative effect of number of children on the average wellbeing of a parent over their life course. However, we were unable to explore non-linearities, interactions, or time-varying effects.
观察性研究表明生育子女对幸福感有负面影响。
提供孟德尔随机化证据，证明生育子女对父母幸福感的影响。
两样本孟德尔随机化。
非临床欧洲血统参与者。
我们使用英国生物银行（460654 名男性和女性欧洲血统参与者）作为基因型-暴露关联的来源，社会科学遗传学联盟（SSGAC）（298420 名男性和女性欧洲血统参与者），以及家庭内联盟（22656 名男性和女性欧洲血统有效样本参与者）作为基因型-结果关联的来源。
遗传易感性增加生育子女的终生影响。
主要分析是对 2016 年 SSGAC 全基因组关联研究（GWAS）中测量的主观幸福感进行逆方差加权分析。次要结果包括在 SSGAC 中应用的多效稳健估计器和使用家庭内联盟 GWAS 的分析。
我们没有发现强有力的证据表明幸福感（每生育一个孩子，标准偏差）会出现负向（β=-0.153（95%置信区间：-0.210 至 0.516））显著变化。次要结果通常略有缩小（例如，家庭内联盟为-0.049（95%置信区间：-0.533 至 0.435），加权中位数为 0.090（95%置信区间：-0.167 至 0.347）），这意味着存在一些残余混杂和多效性。
与现有文献相反，我们的结果与生育子女数量对父母一生中平均幸福感的可衡量负面影响不一致。然而，我们无法探索非线性、交互作用或时变效应。
