The researchers wrote up their findings on the lottery winners and the accident victims in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The paper is now considered one of the founding texts of happiness studies, a field that has yielded some surprisingly morose results. It’s not just hitting the jackpot that fails to lift spirits; a whole range of activities that people tend to think will make them happy—getting a raise, moving to California, having kids—do not, it turns out, have that effect. (Studies have shown that women find caring for their children less pleasurable than napping or jogging and only slightly more satisfying than doing the dishes.)

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/03/22/100322crbo_books_kolbert?currentPage=all

(Glad I kept this citation; knew at some point I would run into someone claiming parenthood is a joy. Wish I had the one that said parenthood was a net gain in happiness only years/decades later after the memories have been distorted enough.)