Women’s Happiness
an unprecedented level of education, greater earning power, more economic independence, more reproductive control and access to virtually any career, from CEO to soldier to leader of the free world. In theory, at least, a woman’s prospects for happiness have never looked brighter.
But, not so fast, reality might be different:
Two recent studies reveal that a majority of American women are finding the holy grail of happiness more elusive. Researchers were startled to find that women now report less happiness than in the early 1970s; and where they once indicated greater levels of happiness and life satisfaction than men, that’s now reversed.
Could these two things be related and would a return to the old gender roles make women happier? No, says Haddock: “most women adamantly oppose a return to rigid gender roles.” So, what’s behind this unhappiness?
[M]en today report spending less time on activities they regard as stressful and unpleasant than a few decades ago. Women still spend about 23 hours a week in the unpleasant-activity zone — which was about 40 minutes more than men four decades ago, and now amounts to 90 minutes more than men.
So, we get stuck with the boring stuff while the guys are having fun! Of course, Haddock also points out that defining happiness, let alone measuring it, is tricky business, especially when comparing across genders: A “gender-based “happiness gap” is particularly complicated, given that men tend to see “Are you happy?” as a yes-or-no proposition. For women, it’s an essay question.” Of course, that might also be a sexist assumption…
Nevertheless, she reports these research findings:
Since 1972, women’s self-described levels of happiness have fallen a few percentage points and now rest below that of men, on average, in every age category. It is particularly pronounced in those ages 30 to 44 — not coincidentally, women dealing with child rearing and aging parents, while reaching a critical point in their careers.
And, although the gap is small, it is troubling – at least to researchers – because it seems to defy the logic that women can achieve more now and therefore they should be happier. Yet again, the time gap plays in:
Working-age women, for example, increasingly spend more time on paid work, caring for adults and watching TV — and less time cooking, ironing, dusting, entertaining and reading — than in the 1960s. But the data also reveals that men are spending less time on paid work and relaxing more — including watching more TV. In essence, men have gotten the knack of spending less time doing things they consider unpleasant.
Again, it looks like the happiness gap is driven by how we spend our time: men relax more, women work more (whether first or second shift). There seems to be a connection here but Haddock now takes a strange turn by looking at the amount of choices we have: somehow having too many choices makes us unhappy.
But for the first time in history, women confront a wider array of life alternatives than men, who rarely contemplate, for example, putting their careers on hold to care for children or aging parents. We’re still adjusting to this shift in the cultural paradigm.
Is it not the amount of choices but that we’re expected to do it all? And if for some reason we can’t or won’t, we’re somehow a failure? I completely disagree with Haddock that the large amount of choices are the problem. The problem is that they are not really choices: We cannot do A or B. We are expected to do A and B. That is not choice. That’s piling on the stuff! Haddock agrees, on a personal level, “The alchemy of female content may be to make bold decisions and then refuse to be tormented by the seductive lure of the untaken path.” Haddock ignores in this statement society’s expectations that create the guilt over not running on all the paths.
After pointing out that there still is quite a bit of real inequality (“women still earn 77 cents for every dollar men earn”), Haddock finally addresses the system side, albeit more as a footnote, and blaming women, rather than all of society:
Many women also set stratospheric expectations for themselves, and for each other — reinforced by the cult of Martha Stewart, a slew of self-improvement books, the prevalence of plastic surgery. We’ve come to regard our work lives, our home lives and our private lives as projects to be endlessly tweaked in pursuit of perfection.
Where do these “stratospheric expectations” come from? We’re not born with them simply because we were born female! She quotes a researcher: “Women need to learn not to be motivated so much by what people expect or say or think of us.” What about telling those people to stop expecting too much from us?
And, of course, there is the general societal expectation to be happy that’s probably also haunting us:
Darrin McMahon, a history professor at Florida State and author of the book “Happiness: A History,” whose critique is not gender specific, argues that we live in a society where we feel pressure to be happy. “When we’re not, we feel like failures,” he says. “What we get is the unhappiness of not being happy.”
Pointing out that women might need to stop feeling responsible for everybody and everything, Haddock concludes
If nothing else, the declaration of a happiness gender gap is generating provocative conversation. The researchers themselves note that because men traditionally were less happy, perhaps women’s happiness has diminished as they’ve entered into their world and are now bedeviled by the same woes that have long depressed men.
Or maybe the happiness gap isn’t actually new at all. “Freakonomics” author and economist Steven Levitt suggests “there was enormous social pressure on women in the old days to pretend they were happy even if they weren’t.”
I think Haddock makes some good points, and certainly asking questions about the gender gap makes sense. Yet, her response reeks of “blaming the victim.” Rather than stepping back and pointing out the superwoman expectations, Haddock admonishes women for trying to be superwoman. As women we have the right to refuse to be superwoman. However, as long as society (including ourselves) expects us to be superwoman, we will feel less happy and more guilty because we just can’t do it all.
I think the over-riding principle that explains why women are unhappy despite the modern freedom of choices is “we are the product of our environment.” We live in a capitalist, consumer culture. We are bombarded with messages, if we watch tv, watch movies, read magazines, and read newspapers, that, if what I have heard about the manipulative nature of advertising is true, is intended to keep us constantly comparing ourselves to other people, especially the perfect people in ad’s who have everything that is nice and who seem to be happy. Therefore, none of us, men or women, will be able to be happy if we cannot control our thoughts and emotions in spite of these manipulative messages that try to make us unhappy so that we’ll go out and buy something so that we will feel as good as the imaginery people in the ad’s for a while, and then we feel less-than, and have to go out and buy something else. I explain the fact that women are more unhappy than men because women are more bombarded by consumer messages than men, women are expected to focus on their appearance much more than men, their clothes, their makeup, their hair styles, shoes, shoes, shoes, ha, ha. These are all consumer products telling women to spend, spend, spend, and you’ll feel equal to others, for a while. So I’m saying women are more the victims of media manipulation and until they can break free they will not find lasting, true happiness. But as a man, I must say I do like women who have all of those nice things. That’s my two cents.
Jan: What study shows that “women’s happiness boost when she is healthy and in a relationship”? The only validly designed studies that I’ve seen show that there is no relationships between marriage and happiness, most definitely not a causal relationship (please see Bella DePaulo’s book “Singled Out” for more on that).
Options for happiness are all around us. Getting into a relationships, getting married, having children, healthy perhaps and more. And it is us who will find/choose this option that comfortably suits us. A study shows that women’s happiness boost when she is healthy and in a relationship.
-Jan
Thank you for your comment, Aaron! What you’re mentioning reminds me of the “buyer’s remorse” found in marketing research: after a purchase, a buyer wonders if they’ve bought the right thing, especially if someone else tells them what kind of a lemon they bought…
The point I was trying to make, though, isn’t that we have too many options but that we’re expected not to choose but to do it all. I maintain that is the problem, not the quantity of options.
Also, if we have more options, couldn’t we avoid the remorse you mention by deciding that once we’ve made the choice, we’re done with the choosing? I.e., we don’t go back to question our choice. We accept our choice rather than spending time on what-if scenarios.
Instead of choosing for Little Mary, we could give her a few options, help her chose (which is a process we need to learn) and then help her accept her choice. I don’t think the solution is choosing for the child (and I don’t know if that’s what you’re suggesting). I agree with you, though, that more options don’t mean greater happiness. However, I don’t think that fewer options mean greater happiness either. It’s what we do with the options and how we react to our choice – if we actually have one – that matters.
Women surely have more options than thirty years ago, and OPTIONS may be part of the problem! As I write about in my new book, more options does not contribute to greater happiness, and often just the opposite. Research has found that too many options leave us befuddled, wondering if we chose the right path, wondering if greater happiness might have been ours had we gone that way instead of this. Perhaps the decline in women’s self-reported happiness over thirty years is part of this phenomenon. I urge parents to avoid the trap in rearing kids–the trap that has us believing that more options for Little Mary will make her a happier child.
Aaron Cooper, PhD
author, “I Just Want My Kids To Be Happy! Why you shouldn’t say it, why you shouldn’t think it, what you should embrace instead.” mykidshappiness.com