In today’s Times, Ross Douthat discusses a recent study by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness.” Stevenson and Wolfers found that while male happiness levels have increased over time, women’s happiness levels have dropped. This finding holds true across income/race lines.
Looking to find a compromise between feminism and conservativism, Douthat blames the rise in single parenthood and inadequate work-family policies. But the authors clearly shoot down these hypotheses. (see page 17). One should really read the paper that one is citing.
In the conclusion of the paper, Stevenson and Wolfers discuss their own explanations for the findings. They say that perhaps woman are more sensitive than men to big social shifts, such as the decline in social cohesion. Perhaps our expectations are now too high about what we can achieve, and we are inevitably let down by reality.
Interesting paper.
Apt. 11d 
Broken link to the Stevenson/Wolfers paper.
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thanks. fixed.
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I went to the Douthat column and clicked the link there, which brought me to the abstract, which is probably all he read. 😉
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Here’s a non-PC hypothesis: geographical mobility helps men live far away from in-laws (which makes them happy), but it takes women away from their families (which makes them unhappy).
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“One should really read the paper that one is citing.”
Can we nail this to the forehead of everyone with a regular column in a major newspaper? If nailing is too extreme, I am sure that a staple will do.
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Well, he asks for more social stigma directed toward single-mothers and people who use prostitutes (although, as one of the NYY commenters noted, these phenomena are not really related).
Doug — I think a nail is fine.
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I surmise that rising expectations have a lot to do with it as well. Back in the bad old days, a woman thanked her stars if her husband supported the family, didn’t abuse her or the kids, and didn’t have an alcohol or gambling problem. Women who worked mostly were confined to teaching, nursing and clerical work.
Nowadays the world has changed for the better; women have far more options for careers and have come to expect and demand a companionate marriage of equals. A woman stuck in a dead-end job and an unhappy marriage with a domineering husband is less likely to say “well, that’s the way it is, I should be happy and grateful for what I have” and more likely to say “This isn’t what I want! What’s wrong with me that I don’t have it?” Rising expectations lead to discontent in those who cannot achieve them.
I would argue that the decline in women’s happiness is paradoxically a good thing in that we are no longer willing to be content with crumbs.
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I don’t have time to read the paper, but skimmed the intro and some thoughts come to mind. First, I suspect men are happier putting in more family time and less work time. Plenty of men I know (and I think there are studies to back this up) suggest that men want to participate more in the family. This doesn’t mean housework, but does mean caring for children, being present for meals, for school activities, etc. Second, I wonder if there aren’t a number of women who don’t want to work but either have to financially or feel pressure to socially. The two-income family is a norm in many sectors of society these days. Third, that emotional part of maintaining the household–huge! I found myself at work many days remembering or thinking about stuff I needed to do at home. I don’t think my husband does that as much. Skipping to the end of the article, I think it’s an interesting observation regarding who women now compare themselves to. I wonder if many women view their lives in comparison to men’s and find it lacking. And there’s the expectation thing. I certainly thought that by now we’d have paid maternity leave, family-friendly work policies and husbands who did half the housework. Didn’t quite work out.
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I was struck how broad-based this is. Whatever’s going on is happening in both the States and western Europe, and to all levels of people. The very breadth of the issue rules out millions of things.
This is just me, but I couldn’t help but think this is an extension of the whole Bowling Alone phenomenon. As they note in the paper, there are correlations between women not having enough time to devote to their relationships and their happiness. I was unable to tell if this correlation existed in Europe as well, where people’s time-at-work commitments are more constrained by legal protections.
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I don’t know that it’s expectations. I’ve never raised any woman’s expectations, but most of them are still upset with me.
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“A woman stuck in a dead-end job and an unhappy marriage with a domineering husband is less likely to say “well, that’s the way it is, I should be happy and grateful for what I have” and more likely to say “This isn’t what I want! What’s wrong with me that I don’t have it?” Rising expectations lead to discontent in those who cannot achieve them.”
But what if the expectations have very little connection to what is feasible in the real world? What if women are expecting men who are dynamite providers (but home at 5:25), good around the house (but not picky about neatness or home cooking), a great lover (but not too sexually demanding), good with the kids (but eager to do everything mom’s way). Anybody with those expectations is going to be miserable.
The unreasonableness of rising material expectations is even more obvious and the whole country is in the process of learning what kind of income can actually support a $200,000, $400,000, or $600,000 home. By the way, it would be interesting if someone were to figure out what kind of income you’d need to comfortably afford the lifestyle we see on TV and home magazines. (I believe somebody’s already done this for Sex and the City.)
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I suspect there’s truth in all the conjectures above, which are different but not entirely conflicting. Each seems plausible to some extent.
Laura/geeky mom — to what extent is the gendered phenomenon of thinking about what needs to be done at home while at work overcome-able by reflection? I am quite good at not thinking about what needs to be done at home except in specific time-periods which I allocate to it. My wife has, rather suddenly, started ignoring it, I suspect because her job has become very demanding and, finally, she has accepted that I can cope with it all, and that, for example, she does not need to be consulted about getting the kids from A to B when she is in no position to do anything about it. I’ve experienced this as a considerable relief. And, knowing that she is not thinking about things, I realise that the thinking I do about them will actually be worth doing because I can act on it.
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anon–interesting. I think overcoming the obsession with housework/family care is quite personal. I’ve been in demanding jobs in the past where I’ve dropped everything to do with family and the house and just expected my husband to deal with it and for the most part, he did. But, I will say, rather than developing his own way of doing things, he looked at the situation as temporary and did things like order pizza every night. Were the situation to become permanent, I think we’d have to have a long conversation about what we both expect in terms of work around the house. Eating out every night is not something we can afford nor is it healthy and we’d have to agree on that (which I think we do), and further, we’d have to discuss all that goes into meal planning. I think some people will notice that the laundry isn’t getting done and start doing it and others will just ignore it until someone else finally does it.
Now, on the kid front, my husband is pretty good when I just say, this week you’ll have to deal. Google calendar has helped us immensely in this regard, plus the kids are old enough now that they know what’s going on in their lives.
So I do think this whole thing can be overcome, but I feel like in my case, there’d have to be a conversation and that it wouldn’t just happen. We’ll see, as I’m sure that at some point, I’ll return to full-time work.
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“Laura/geeky mom — to what extent is the gendered phenomenon of thinking about what needs to be done at home while at work overcome-able by reflection?”
This is a tough one, including all the complicated interactions Laura describes. I think there’s another one, though, which is what’s expected. One of my first memories in trying equal parenting was when I tried sending my husband to a “parents” group only to discover that it was really a “moms” group, resulting in a discussion about whether moms night out needed to be turned into parents night out, a one time attempt that didn’t really work all that well. As long as the majority of primary caretakers are women, men (and the families they caretake) run into problems, including for example, calls to the mom when something goes awry.
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