It is confirmation of what many weary commuters have secretly suspected.
Research has found that stay-at-home parents are happier than those who go out to work.
A study carried out for the insurer Liverpool Victoria found that “full-time” parents are up to 62% more content than people in other lines of work.
Researchers surveyed more than 3,100 adults working in 23 fields, including “homemakers” – just over a quarter of whom were men – about how content they were.
Just 13% of the stay-at-home mothers and fathers said they were dissatisfied in their role – less than half the number of civil servants, carers or those working in retail who voiced discontent.
As part of the analysis, each category of job was assigned a happiness score.
Homemakers scored the highest with an overall happiness rating of 87.2%.
Other occupations that fared well include hospitality and events management – 86.3%; creative arts and design – 84.4%; the charity sector – 83.9%; and leisure, sport and tourism – 83.7%.
The least satisfied were working in marketing, advertising and public relations, with a happiness rating of 53.8%.
The others in the bottom five were: police and security officers – 59.4%; salesmen and women – 67.4%; civil servants – 70%; and shop workers – 70.8%.
The survey also highlighted how hard full-time parents work, with homemakers working 66 hours a week on average, with tasks like childcare, cooking and cleaning taking up the majority of their time.
The Office for National Statistics values the work of a homemaker at £38,162 per year.
Myles Rix, Managing Director of Protection at London Victoria, said: “Despite being crucial to many households in the UK, very few families have protection in place that would allow them to pay for help if the homemaker was unable to do their day-to-day tasks.
“It makes sense to guard against unnecessary household stress by ensuring that both the breadwinner and homemaker are covered by income protection.”
The findings chime with data from the UK’s official national “well-being” index in 2014 which showed that those who do not work because they are caring for children or loved-ones believe their life is more ‘worthwhile’ than people of other employment status.
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Source: London Victoria