I don’t have a strong view on whether having children increases or decreases hedonistic well-being (though it seems likely to increase well-being in desire/preference terms).
Yes, I haven’t looked closely but it seems like a complicated topic.
Pollmann-Schult 2018 thinks that the having kids<>life satisfaction relationship depends a lot on the context:
There are, however, considerable cross-country variations in life satisfaction between parents and non-parents. Within Europe, parenthood is more positively associated with happiness in social democratic countries than in conservative, liberal, and Eastern European countries (Aassve et al. 2012).
Notably Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian parents are more satisfied with their lives than their childless counterparts (Kohler et al. 2005; Hansen et al. 2009; Daukantaite and Zukauskiene 2006). A positive association between parenthood and life satisfaction has also been found in Russia (Mikucka 2016).
Parents in the USA and continental European countries, in contrast, experience equal or lower levels of life satisfaction than childless individuals (Alesina et al. 2004; Umberson and Gove 1989; Keizer et al. 2010; Myrskylä and Margolis 2014; Pollmann-Schult 2014; Rizzi and Mikucka 2015).
Yes, I haven’t looked closely but it seems like a complicated topic.
Pollmann-Schult 2018 thinks that the having kids<>life satisfaction relationship depends a lot on the context: