Nice article on the NYT on how happy women and men are.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/26/business/26leonhardt.html?ex=1348545600&en=594e67d014f6dc88&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Today's women have many more choices than their mothers or grandmothers. This is good.
However, choice in itself does not make people more happy. People with more choices are more responsible for their own destiny. This responsibility can, and does, feel onerous.
"All women in my society are housewives, therefore, I am a housewife" is a very comfortable position. "I am a smart, educated woman who chose to walk away from a lucrative, satisfying career to be a housewife" is a much less comfortable position. It's totally unsurprising that women in this position report being less happy.
What the research misses is that these less happy women are better off than their mothers and grandmothers who never had the option of having a career.
This is a serious argument worth making. Serious and influential people, including Professor Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago, have argued that reducing the choices available to individuals is good because it makes people more happy. This is just wrong-headed. Freedom, liberty, the ability to influence one's destiny...these are greater ends than the sort of experienced happiness that gets reported in surveys.
The happy people living in the Matrix were victimes.
3 comments:
Intriguing, though I am inherently deeply suspicious about things like 'happiness research'. To do with the suspicion first, I have no idea how you control for other independent variables - in fact I'd go further and say you can't. Men and women read and watch different things, talk to different people, and are marketed to in dramatically different ways. I cannot begin to think how you'd negate these, unless the idea is not to, but simply to measure some subjective, poorly defined and relatively measured attribute. So, my potentially arrogant disposition is to ignore the 'research', noting only that if you dig into any data set hard enough you will find intriguing, but completely random, high-level correlations.
On your point, I think that there is another force at work here. The freedom for women to work (vote, drive etc.) seems so obvious that I still wonder why it was resisted for so long (still is in many places). But, that freedom may not directly turn into increased happiness - indeed I'd be surprised if it did in general.
Many of the couples I know feel compelled to have both partners working to be able to afford the lifestyle that they think is 'normal' - not showy or exuberant - just normal. Definitions of normal are of course defined by looking at their perceived peers, who are in general doing the same thing in reverse. Since much of happiness is relative this does nothing to make them happier. It gets worse in fact. If most couples have just one person working then to have two gives you a big lift in relative earnings, so means you can afford a much better lifestyle than your peers, and so possibly feel happier. But, if most have both couples working then there is no huge perceived upside to you having both working, but there is a big downside to having just one person working.
So, what started as freedom and choice can easily turn into a perceived necessity. Given that the extremely valuable activity of bringing up children has become no less pressing than it ever was, I can also see there being some guilt about time not spent doing that, or indeed ensuring that the home is neat etc.
Enough - this response is longer than your post!
Isn't the assumption that increased freedom is in any way linked to increased happiness just that? An assumption. We (women,men,living things) must be free because it is right. And this need not make us happy. Truth, justice, freedom, equality for men and women - these are moral positions. Happiness? Its just a state of mind.
Men are happy, and women are less so? This brings forth a torrent of issues, images and arguments. It is men and their one-sided self-serving propaganda that leaves women distraught, hurt, and self-doubting. The (men in, running and controlling the) media inundate us with arguments of "logic" - that men are not born to be monogamous, that women should just understand that, and in order to keep a marriage, they should just turn a blind eye to their man's doings. "He's still with you, isn't he?" As if that's a noble sacrifice deserving of a loving wife's dedication and appreciation.
Especially true of men who grew up in cultures where moms were Tigers, academic achievement reigned supreme (crushing their jock dreams), and men were dominated by controlling women as young boys.........these are the guys that grow up to be monsters. And this description so perfectly fits south Indian Brahmin boys to a T. need I say Tambrams? Not generalizing, but sounding off of my experience here.
These boys grow up to be successful and stable in their careers; but constantly wishing and wanting to know the life they never had - women, booze, flings, causal sex. Now that they are ensconced in seats that are reasonably powerful- what do they do? seek opportunities to re-craft their image - live double lives, as important smart intelligent bosses at day, and arrogant bullying smooth-talking players at night. Forget the loving wife who waits on him dotingly. Its work parties, conferences and off site visits for him. Where he gets women in subordinate positions to do him favors - sexual, evil and ego massaging. Oh such old games they play - what about all the recent incidents involving famous men? are we women to be surprised? shocked? that men are pigs.
We chose to go to work and build careers, but we did not choose to be subject to such humiliation. The more we work, and accomplish things - the quicker the men in our lives are to label us not women like - "you're not sexy anymore, you don't dress up, you don't give me enough sex", while they massage their saggy bottoms, expanding bellies and receding hairlines. And women are supposed to be happy!!!?Q!@@
It doesn't matter if she's young and inexperienced, or married and bored - he charms her into having affairs, promises her his marriage is a wreck, wife doesn't care one bit - why is every tale the same.....oh, coz men think like dicks (or is it with their dicks)?
Your close friend in guilty of this. Sports a clean image for the outside world, and hides his sordid thinking and base intentions from you and your family - but don't trust him around your wife. or your teenage daughter.....don't we all know such men. pigs of the first order.
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