LONDON: If you think that working moms become gloomy as a consequence of toiling both at office and home, you need to get your facts checked, for an academic research has revealed that working mums are happier than stay-at-home moms irrespective of the hours they have to spend in the office.

The study was led by Alison Booth and Jan Van Ours and was carried out by the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex. It found that even those mothers who work more than 45 hours a week benefit from much higher levels of "life satisfaction" than full-time moms.

This finding counters the long held assumption that mothers would be more pleased if they stayed home with their children. It was concluded three years ago by a research conducted by the Centre for Policy Studies that almost half of the mothers were working for monetary reasons.

It was also found that children had no role in increasing life satisfaction for men. However, among women, it increases only when children start going to school.