Christian Kroll - Volunteering, Happiness, and the ‘Motherhood Penalty’ 1 Volunteering, Happiness, and the ‘Motherhood Penalty’ Paper presented at the “Volunteering Counts” conference, Manchester, UK, March 2010. Christian Kroll Department of Sociology London School of Economics e-mail: C.Kroll [at] lse.ac.uk website: http://personal.lse.ac.uk/kroll Abstract: Are volunteers happy? This paper discusses various sociological theories and empirical findings regarding the link between volunteering and subjective well-being (i.e. happiness and life satisfaction). In general, studies tend to report that volunteers are happier than non- volunteers. Recent UK data analyses based on the European Social Survey, however, suggest that not all societal groups benefit from volunteering: Among mothers, it is not at all associated with avowed life satisfaction. At the same time, a very strong correlation between voluntary activity and well-being can be found among childless women (Kroll 2009). Similarly, an Australian study highlighted negative consequences of community participation for women, highlighting issues of gender inequality (Osborne et al. 2008). So while volunteering does lead to higher subjective well-being for many citizens, recent findings demand a more nuanced approach to be taken in the future - with implications for public policy, research, volunteer organisations and society. Keywords: Volunteering, social capital, subjective well-being, life satisfaction, civic engagement