Becoming a parent should lead to more mature behavior and increased responsibility, caring, and emotional stability. At least that’s what the theory goes.
In fact, our personality changes when having children, but not exactly like that. A study published in the European Journal of Personality has found that new mothers become kinder and more outgoing, and new fathers become a little less outgoing, but more conscientious.
In addition, researchers at the University of Berlin, who studied the five great personality traits, often referred to as the “Big 5” (extroversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism) found that more outgoing people are more likely to form a family , and that after being parents we become more introverted.
Gender stereotypes based on traditional roles
Becoming a parent is one of the most amazing and lasting experiences in life. New parents must be available around the clock, respond to their newborn’s needs, and adjust their life accordingly. But how is this important life event related to personality development?
According to the principle of social investment, having a baby should promote more mature behavior and lead to increased awareness, complacency, and emotional stability. However, studies on the role of childbirth in personality development challenge this idea.
Eva Asselmann and Jule Specht, from the Department of Psychology at the Humboldt University in Berlin, studied socio-economic data collected from 19,875 people in Germany who had undergone annual assessments since 1984. Volunteers responded to personality tests four times between 2005 and 2017 , distinguishing between those who were parents for the first time during the study and those who did not have children.
They measured whether the five major personality traits (the “Big 5”) differ between people who will or will not become parents, whether personality changes before and after becoming parents, and whether these effects vary by gender, age and lifestyle.
Thus, they discovered that these traits are different before and after becoming parents, especially openness and extroversion:
- Mothers were slightly kinder, while fathers were slightly more conscientious in the years after their first child was born . The researchers believe it would have to do with traditional gender role stereotypes: mothers might spend a lot of time with their baby at home, respond to him in a sensitive and warm way, and therefore behave more personable.
Rather, parents may feel responsible for covering their family’s living expenses, working harder, and acting more reliably to manage their family and career at the same time.
- Consciousness differs with parenting, although the differences vary considerably by age. Younger parents experienced a short-term transient increase in maturity in the baby’s first year of life, but then it declined. However, in middle-aged people, becoming parents was followed by a slight but lasting long-term increase in maturity in subsequent years. Older parents were more emotionally stable.
The researchers think that the explanation could be that, on average, younger parents have fewer responsibilities before the birth of their first child than older parents (for example, when they have not yet started working full time). Therefore, being responsible for a newborn 24 hours a day could lead to increased maturity in the baby’s first year of life.
- Regarding the way of life, they mainly studied the differences between parents who lived as a couple or alone at the birth of their child. Thus, they did not find considerable changes in personality before and after having a child in those who lived alone , although there were very few so it could not be taken as a statistical reference.
Conclusion: our personality changes when we become parents, without this meaning that fatherhood or motherhood makes us more mature, although the responsibility of taking care of our children and protecting them, if it makes us kinder and more stable people. Do you agree with the conclusions of the study? Have you lived that transition towards responsibility when your child was born? We would love to hear about your experience.
Vía | “Testing the Social Investment Principle Around Childbirth: Little Evidence for Personality Maturation Before and After Becoming a Parent”
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