Liberated and Unhappy?
I unfortunately haven’t had opportunity to post much lately (damn work!) but I wanted to take a quick minute to bring this article to Femmeiniste’s attention. This opinion piece in yesterday’s NY Times, entitled “Liberated and Unhappy”, comments that the many advances women have enjoyed over the last few decades – educational, social, financial – have not, it seems, brought them any greater happiness.
To quote:
“American women are wealthier, healthier and better educated than they were 30 years ago … on some fronts — graduation rates, life expectancy and even job security — men look increasingly like the second sex.”
And yet:
“But all the achievements of the feminist era may have delivered women to greater unhappiness … male happiness has inched up, and female happiness has dropped. In postfeminist America, men are happier than women. ”
The piece goes on to cite various potential factors in the decline of female happiness, including, for instance, the decline of the two-parent family (implying that single motherhood is definitely a downer for most women); the “second shift” of more responsibility at work coupled with an equal or greater share of housework; or perhaps even the political shift from a more egalitarian society to a capitalistic one. The author doesn’t offer any simple solutions, although he does seem firmly convinced that single motherhood deserves some significant share of the blame and we should all do something about it.
Anyway, this raises all kinds of interesting issues, starting with this one: Are women REALLY less happy, or are they simply more free to express how they really feel? (Was everyone really that content back in the 1960′s?!?)
Definitely encourage you to read the article (and some of the comments – this has generated an active discussion on the NYT site) and add your thoughts below.
The whole question of self-reporting of happiness seems really problematic. Didn’t they determine in those studies saying that Denmark was the happiest nation on earth that the key to the reported happiness levels was reduced expectations? If you expect next to nothing and get not very much, that may be doing really well. But if you expect the stars and get a lot, aren’t you still doing better overall even if the gap between what you expect and what you get is larger?
Personally, I find it impossible to believe that I would have been happier before feminism — but possibly as a multiracial, high energy, science-oriented woman who does not expect to ever get particularly oogly over anyone’s children but her own I’m an outlier. I wouldn’t have made any better a 50s housewife than my father would have, having inherited his temperament — and I guarantee that would have been a bad scene!
Single motherhood has got to be tough on both kids and the mother, but I have to wonder how many neuroses were instilled in children by mothers who would have really been happier in the workplace had they had the option, and were forced to stay at home and channel 100% of their energies and ambitions into their children.
ok – when I went to school, you had about three choices for a career when you were finished. You could be a nurse, a teacher, or a secretary. It was assumed everyone would be a housewife because (duh), what other options were there.
I remember in high school, my brother worked at a plant that the wage as almost 2.00 an hour higher for guys in high school than girls in high school even though they were doing the same job. I think minimum wage was maybe three dollars an hour so put that into perspective. That’s a huge jump. It was believed that women didn’t really need the money because the men were going to provide for them anyway. That was legal and justified and boy did I ever fight with my brother on that one (why wasn’t he quitting that job! how could he work there! etc.).
I’ve been a single parent and a married parent. (being a single parent is a hell of lot less stressful by the way) I’ve worked full-time, I’ve worked shift work, I’ve stayed home for a year or so to take care of my kids. I’ve also been a student while raising kids. Let me tell you, it’s much better since things are more equal between the genders. Of course I have a bigger workload than said husband type because he was raised in an environment that men did not cook or clean and has a tendency to come home, sit at the table, waiting to be served. (he’s slowly starving to death now that there are no kids in the home). Our solution (because he doesn’t *think* about how his actions look or feel) is that he pays for a housecleaner because I’m not the live-in maid. That works for us.
okay, I got side-tracked. I think many of my generation that probably had a “say” in such a survey are stuck in that middle ground of having more options and more freedom but it’s still not an equal balance of the work load (so therefore doing more than their predecesors). I believe it will balance out with the next generation (as I watch my boy-child cook meals, clean the house and so on because to him that is the norm). Overall, happiness is so subjective that it’s impossible to really measure. How I interpret it is so different than how someone else will but I can assure you with all honesty, it’s much better now for women than it used to be. Asking a bunch of women if they’re happy doesn’t really mean much when you compare it to happiness rates from a few decades ago. You need to ask women like me – the ones who remember and ask them to subjectively compare how happy they were when they weren’t allowed to take a drafting class in school (because only guys grew up to architects) as compared to now when they’re allowed to own their own businesses and then get a comparison or accurate perspective. It really boggles my mind that people can look to find issue with equality for anyone and try to show how equality and freedom doesn’t equal happiness? How bizarre.