Yet if we measure the actual satisfaction of people who have children, a very different story emerges. As figure 23 shows, couples generally start out quite happy in their marriages and then become progressively less satisfied over the course of their lives together, getting close to their original levels of satisfaction only when their children leave home.17 Despite what we read in the popular press, the only known symptom of “empty nest syndrome” is increased smiling.18 Interestingly, this pattern of satisfaction over the life cycle describes women (who are usually the primary caretakers of
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