Having kids is insanely stressful in the beginning. Your entire life shifts to revolve around them and its utterly exhausting. I could not manage having kids and maintaining friendships at the same time and lost most of my friends due to inaction on my part. As kids get older though for me ~10 years old, they begin to have a lot of autonomy. You see the results of all of your efforts and you realize that everything you have done has contributed to create these small awesome little people with their own thoughts and goals. I have not cried since I was a small child, even when close family died I just shrugged and trudged on. I am for the most part relatively unemotional. My kid came into my room the other day, just smiling and telling me about something and it was suddenly the proudest I have ever been, I almost cried in happiness. It was one of the most surreal things I have ever experienced. I am really looking forward to see what he does next in life and am actually happy about getting to find out.

I'm single but I totally get this.

And that's my fear when I get older (without kids). That the happiness of being single now and not dealing with kids and having more disposable income, etc. etc. will only go so far but that I'll be depressed about being lonely in the future when I am a senior.

I can definitely see how my siblings with kids will be way happier as grandparents.

But yeah, I'm content now without kids cause I get to sleep whenever and my disposable income is enough. lol

Also though, I'm never arrogant in making proclamations that people with kids are miserable.

They might have tough times in the beginning, but the older I get the more at peace they seem as parents.

For one thing, after your children have grown up and moved out, most people are really glad they've gone through parenting, have an adult child they are in relation with, potentially grandchildren to enrich their lives with etc.

To claim that having kids makes you happier in the long-term requires comparing against the control group of childless adults. Last I checked, there was no appreciable difference in happiness between these groups in middle age.

The study I read about claimed the opposite - in later stages of life, parents are happier than childless people.

From the data I've seen, the strongest predictors of happiness are maintaining strong social ties. Children are only one way to do that. I've seen no data suggesting having children specifically is associated with more happiness at any stage of life.