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"  I was in an airport recently when my toddler decided to unleash a category-5 tantrum. As she was flailing and screeching on the floor, a 20-ish woman (not a fellow parent, I could tell) gave me an incredulous look that said, Why would you do this to yourself? I knew that look. I used to give it myself. For years my husband and I had dithered about having a baby. We married in our mid-30s, and since then, our happiness levels had spiked at certain times (like our giddy first months together or during an amazing vacation) and dipped (a joint bank account and we&amp;#039;re still broke?). But overall, we had an exceedingly satisfying life of lazy weekends and peaceful nights by the fire--okay, actually a candle in our small apartment. And it seemed like every time we pondered having a kid, I would read yet another alarming report linking parenthood to plummeting happiness levels. Those studies were better birth control than a Costco-size box of condoms. From the 2006 best-selling psychology book Stumbling on Happiness, which found that &amp;quot;marital satisfaction decreases dramatically after the birth of the first child and increases only when the last child leaves home,&amp;quot; to the instantly viral 2010 New York magazine story &amp;quot;All Joy and No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting,&amp;quot; expert upon expert found that as a group, parents in the United States experience depression and emotional distress more often than adults with no kids. Ultimately, we went for it anyway. I craved connectedness, and wanted to widen the small but vital circle of people I loved most in the world. Also, life with my husband had become a little too orderly, too quiet. Of course, the road to happiness doesn&amp;#039;t always lead to parenthood; some of the most fulfilled women I know are child-free. But that&amp;#039;s the path I chose, knowing it would inform my highs and lows for decades to come. Still, I had no idea how low things could go. I was elated when I had my daughter at the age of 41, but during the first few months I toggled between joy and despair, seemingly by the hour. I kept wondering why I didn&amp;#039;t have more magical moments of gazing at her beatifically, like the beaming mother on our Pampers box. And even though my husband and I had smugly agreed that we would always put our relationship first, we were soon hollering at each other about whose turn it was to fill the wipes container. When my doctor asked me what I was doing about birth control, I did a spit-take into my latte. Three feedings a night and an overflowing Diaper Genie were working handily, thanks. Looking back, I wish I hadn&amp;#039;t put so much pressure on myself. Mothers of newborns are dealing with a colossal life change while their bodies feel like foreign entities and their minds are scrambled by crazy-making hormones and sleep deprivation. When people told me, &amp;quot;Soon the clouds will break,&amp;quot; I barely believed them, but lo and behold: A few months went by, and we got more rest. Our baby started smiling. We fell deeply, irrevocably in love with her. Because here&amp;#039;s the thing: Happiness is cyclical. (Or, as another, older woman said during the airport meltdown, &amp;quot;It gets better.&amp;quot; She kept walking, and then threw over her shoulder, &amp;quot;And worse.&amp;quot;) Whether we&amp;#039;re parents or not, whether we&amp;#039;re old or young, happiness ebbs and flows. What ultimately matters, experts say, is the long game. &amp;quot;Being able to step back and reevaluate is key,&amp;quot; says Matthew Killingsworth, a Harvard University psychologist who studies happiness. &amp;quot;Taking that opportunity to reflect can really impact your happiness. Don&amp;#039;t go on autopilot.&amp;quot; Everyone also has their own idea of when they&amp;#039;ve been most blissful. Some women look mistily at their college years; others point to their early 30s. I&amp;#039;d say my 40s. The good news is that if you&amp;#039;re under 50 and think you&amp;#039;re content now, your best days are still ahead. A 2008 Gallup poll of more than 340,000 people found that happiness levels rise sharply after 50, and continue to do so for several decades. (And in the most recent Gallup happiness poll, in 2011, the 60s came out as the decade when things really pick up.) In her new memoir Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, Anna Quindlen, the Pulitzer Prize--winning journalist famous for her 1980s New York Times column &amp;quot;Life in the 30s,&amp;quot; writes about this phenomenon firsthand. For her, happiness increased at a nondramatic, almost glacial pace over the years. But looking back, it&amp;#039;s crystal clear how much greater things are for her now, at 59. Take girlfriends, for instance: &amp;quot;In my 30s I would think, Oh, my gosh, it&amp;#039;s been weeks since I&amp;#039;ve talked to so-and-so,&amp;quot; she told REDBOOK in a phone conversation. &amp;quot;But now that we&amp;#039;re in our 50s and 60s, we see each other all the time. That&amp;#039;s one of the best things about getting older--once your kids are launched and your career is in a safe place, you have more time for your female friends, who, for me, are the bedrock of sanity.&amp;quot; Quindlen also feels liberated from the body-image angst that plagues younger women. &amp;quot;It comes with having friends who have been sick,&amp;quot; she explains. &amp;quot;When your friend&amp;#039;s had a mastectomy, you don&amp;#039;t waste a whole lot of time worrying about what your breasts look like anymore. You&amp;#039;re just so glad that everything still works, and you&amp;#039;re kind of astonished by it. Sometimes I look at my feet and I think, These same feet have been carrying me around for almost 60 years. These are the same knees I used to scab up when I was 7. It&amp;#039;s shocking!&amp;quot;  Research supports the idea that it&amp;#039;s the little things, not the Hallmark-moment milestones, that contribute most to contentment. &amp;quot;People who have good moments have good lives overall,&amp;quot; says Killingsworth. &amp;quot;The mundane, day-to-day stuff turns out to be pretty important.&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s precisely what you&amp;#039;ll see in the time lines in this story, by women who honestly narrate their waves of joy and disappointment, some marked by events like weddings and deaths, some not at all. Right now I&amp;#039;m riding a nice crest. My daughter is 3, so my life is definitely chaotic, but I&amp;#039;m 10 times more contented. Pre-kids, my highs involved standing on the Great Wall of China, or having a 10-course meal in a five-star restaurant--fantastically exciting, but fleeting. Now my happiness is a million tiny, lovely instances and snapshots that, when strung together, make a richer, more satisfying whole. And for the most part, they&amp;#039;re totally unremarkable. When I tell my daughter we&amp;#039;re going to the drugstore to pick up tampons, she reacts with the ecstasy of a Price Is Right contestant. How can I help but laugh? &amp;quot;You look so pretty, Mama,&amp;quot; she&amp;#039;ll say, reverently stroking my stained, stretched-out yoga pants. Having a child has made me feel more connected with the world in general, too--something I didn&amp;#039;t even know I craved until she was born. I&amp;#039;m constantly pulled into spontaneous conversations when I&amp;#039;m out with my daughter. It takes me hours sometimes just to buy some cilantro. Having her has made me feel more a part of the human family--which is a cornerstone of too many happiness studies to mention. And the funny thing is, while septuagenarians always stop to ask about her, I once got into a long conversation with an enormous guy who had a rottweiler neck tattoo. It turned out he also had a toddler son, who, he told me proudly, was already walking at 8 months. As for my marriage, all is well--which leads me to disagree with the contention that parenthood makes your relationship a festival of misery. To begin with, many studies reveal that being married or living with a partner makes you happier. And other research shows that marital satisfaction is pretty easy to come by: A large 2011 relationship report called &amp;quot;The State of Our Unions&amp;quot; found that people are happier in their marriages when they make a regular effort to be nice to their spouse in little ways--nothing crazy, just gestures like making them a cup of coffee or giving them a back rub. That&amp;#039;s doable, even if you have a Duggar-size brood. Another way anyone can be happier is to have a sane work-life balance, says researcher Dan Buettner, a National Geographic fellow who recently did a five-year study of the happiest populations in the world (located in Denmark, Singapore, Mexico, and California, if you&amp;#039;re interested.) He says Americans tend to think that if we work hard and make a pile of cash, we&amp;#039;ll be content--when in fact, for a family of four, an average income of $75,000 is shown to be the ceiling for day-to-day happiness, and the ideal workweek is no more than 40 hours. Forget the unachievable idea of Having It All, which does nothing but foster deadly parental guilt. A University of Washington study last year found that working mothers with Supermom attitudes who said it was a cinch to blend their work and home lives showed more symptoms of depression than working moms who figured they&amp;#039;d have to make sacrifices to pull off the juggling act. Now that I think about it, maybe the way to be happy is to stop obsessing about it and just be struck--and grateful--when it happens. Research has found that people who actively strive to be happy end up feeling worse than when they started. So let&amp;#039;s all step back and take the really long view: Some researchers believe that our mood probably peaks at the ripe old age of 85, when people have fewer responsibilities and struggles over issues like their career. Less angst, more perspective, and a cutthroat game of Mah-Jongg? Sounds like a happy ending to me. Tickling your baby, cracking up with a friend--these are the building blocks of bliss. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/body/mental-health/how-to/a14066/how-to-be-happier/>