MOST couples assume having children will make them happier. But time and again researchers find parents are no happier than childless couples. More often children seem to bring unhappiness.

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Husbands and wives both ''benefit when they embrace an ethic of marital generosity that puts the welfare of their spouse first," write the researchers Elizabeth Marquardt and W. Bradford Wilcox in the Atlantic magazine.

Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen thinks scientists and engineers could be more likely to have a child with autism.

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According to a theory he has been building over the past 15 years, the parents of autistic children, and the children themselves, have an aptitude for understanding and analysing predictable, rule-based systems — think machines, mathematics or computer programs. And the genes that endow parents with minds suited to technical tasks, he hypothesizes, could lead to autism when passed on to their children, especially when combined with a dose of similar genes from a like-minded mate

In his book, In Search of Human Nature, historian Carl Degler details how biological explanations for explaining human behaviour, such as Darwinism, have long faded in and out of fashion. Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/culture/blogs/all-men-are-liars/ha...

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