By Donna Hemmila

Christine Carter makes it her business to be happy. The executive director of UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center has dedicated her academic career to happiness – how to learn it, how to practice it and – most importantly for the center's mission – how to share it with the world.

"I just consider myself so lucky to be able to focus on happiness," she said. "If you have happiness, what else do you need?"

The Greater Good Science Center, housed within UC Berkeley's Institute of Human Development, supports research into the roots of positive emotions. UC Berkeley alumni Thomas and Ruth Ann Hornaday helped launch the center in 2001 with a $1 million gift. Originally called the Center for the Development of Peace and Well-being, the interdisciplinary research center operates on the premise that you can't have a peaceful world without peaceful people. The center offers undergraduate and graduate fellowships and publishes a quarterly Greater Good Magazine to highlight research into altruistic behavior, healthy relationships and positive child development.

"Hundreds of years of academic research has focused on negative things," Carter said. "Our focus is radically different, and our goal is to translate it so people can use it."

At the freethinking Berkeley campus, Carter's happiness research finds fertile ground to flourish, but among academics outside the UC system she has drawn her share of snickering: "I was told, 'People will think you're dumb. It's too soft. It's not rigorous.' I could care less."

Carter, who graduated from Dartmouth College before earning a doctorate in sociology from UC Berkeley, has a background in marketing management and business consulting. Her academic interests in being happy took a fortuitous turn after daughters Fiona and Molly were born. Carter, like most new parents, began looking for information on raising well-adjusted, happy children.

"I woke up one day and realized I have two children, and I didn't know what I was doing," she said.

Not content with run-of-the-mill parenting books, she set about to find sound scientific research that would aid in creating happy childhoods for her daughters.

Today one of the mainstays of the Greater Good center's outreach is her lively Half Full Blog: Science for Raising Happy Kids. There she shares tips on topics such as developing gratitude, surviving summer vacation and changing bad habits into good ones. The blog comes with videos, book recommendations and an extensive reference list for further reading.

The blog offers parents a wealth of information on how to foster a happy home life, all backed up with scientific research. When Carter is extolling the benefits of family dinnertime, for example, she cites a Harvard study that found kids who ate dinner with their families five days a week or more learned an average of seven times more new vocabulary words than kids who were read to every night.

To say Carter has a passion for the power of family meals would be an understatement. No other family activity produces so many positive benefits, she said, and the results of a simply meal together go beyond linguistic accomplishments. Other studies have shown the positive influence dining as a family have on social and emotional development as well as family bonding.

"There's also symbolic value," said Carter. "Families have a lot of rituals around holidays and major events. Those daily symbolic rituals are just as significant as the big ones."

In her own family, the dinner ritual includes a time to express gratitude. Carter encourages her daughters, now 7 and 5, to share things they are grateful for while the family holds hands.

"It's a very sweet moment for ourselves and our family," said Carter. "We all end up feeling a sense of connection."

Carter said she is often asked if she and her family are, indeed, really happy. She believes they are, but that doesn't mean they don't all experience other emotions. When her children are sad or angry, she encourages them to share those feelings as well. And one of her recent blog topics focused on how to fight with your partner without emotionally scarring your children.

"I'm not happy all the time," Carter said. "But I am one of the happiest people you'll meet."

Donna Hemmila is editor of Our University.