Sex, socializing, relaxing, praying or meditating and eating are five activities in the descending order that women love to do, a study has found.Exercising and watching TV, it says, were not far behind but 'taking care of children' ranked much below even after cooking.The study was conducted on a group of 900 women in Texas of the United States by a team led by Nobel-prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University.

The participants were required to fill out a long diary and questionnaire detailing everything they did on the previous day and whom they were with at the time and rating a range of feelings on a seven-point scale for each episode, Time magazine quoted the study. The feelings which they were expected to rate included happy, impatient, depressed, worried and tired. Time says that the conclusions seem surprising given that people frequently cite their children as their biggest source of delight. When asked, "What one thing in life has brought you the greatest happiness, 35 per cent said it was their children or grandchildren or both. Spouse was far behind at just 9 per cent and religion a runner-up at 17 per cent. The discrepancy with the study of Texas women, the magazine says, points up one of the key debates in happiness research: Which kind of information is more meaningful global reports of well-being ("My life is happy, and my children are my greatest joy") or more specific data on enjoyment of day-to-day experiences ("What a night! The kids were such a pain!")?