I’m in New York, getting ready to take the train up to Providence later today; giving my presentation on consent and male weakness at Brown University tomorrow evening.
There’s a very worthy discussion at Feministe about this Maureen Dowd piece in Saturday’s Times on the question of why, since the early 1970s, women’s happiness seems to have declined while men’s seems to have increased. Gracie and Jillian offer some good responses and analysis.
Assuming the data on happiness (from the General Social Survey) is correct, social conservatives might make hay with this by suggesting that women are suffering the consequences of too much liberation. That conclusion is dampened somewhat by the interesting tidbit that having children increased rather than decreased the likelihood that a woman would report being unhappy. To believe the anti-feminist pop media, it is childlessness that leads aging women to despair; the data suggests exactly the opposite. But as Dowd and her commenters are all aware, it’s difficult to attribute the “joy gap” to any one cause.
Let me suggest two things: first, more than a few men underreport their own unhappiness. Most American males are raised with the “big boys don’t cry” ethos. For a great many adult men, admitting to despair or angst is a form of “crying”; to complain (particularly to a stranger, like a researcher) is a display of weakness. Time and progress have not entirely eradicated the “self-made man” myth from the American psyche; the self-made man is, almost by definition, relentlessly optimistic. Despair and depression are much more likely to be interpreted by men as evidence of personal failure, as proof that one “can’t hack it” in the tough but opportunity-filled real world. The rise in reported male happiness may be evidence that that myth is — blessedly — losing its hold on some men. But it also is equally likely that men are still less likely than women to report unhappiness; one need only look at video games and action movies to see that heroic stoicism is still very much a masculine virtue. Thus when boys and men say “It’s all good”, we do well to probe a bit deeper.
Secondly, women’s unhappiness is surely tied at least in part to the “second shift” phenomenon. The feminist movement has succeeded in opening up new professional opportunities for women, particularly middle and upper-middle class women. Though we have not yet hit the longed-for full parity, women’s wages are much closer to those of their male counterparts than they were thirty or forty years ago. Far more women are working full-time for wages. Many of these women are wives and mothers, and all of the evidence suggests that men’s willingness to work inside the home hasn’t kept pace with women’s willingness and opportunity to work outside the home. In many dual-career families in which both partners put in equal hours in the workplace, the wife still does the lion’s share of the housework as well. Men’s willingness to take on traditionally female roles has, not surprisingly, lagged behind women’s willingness to take on traditional male roles. And as a result, far too many women are utterly exhausted from working what Arlie Hochschild famously called the Second Shift.
Happiness isn’t rocket science, but it is, for so many, elusive. “The noblest and pleasantest of things”, according to Aristotle, happiness comes from a sense of purpose, a set of meaningful relationships, a sense of being valued, an opportunity to have and to share pleasure. But happiness is neither easy nor obligatory, and this study gives us much with which to wrestle and upon which to reflect.
Assuming the data on happiness (from the General Social Survey) is correct
The data is correct, but the media is making an interpretive mountain out of a statistical molehill: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1753
I see Stentor has done my work for me. Cheers, mate.
Hugo,
“But it also is equally likely that men are still less likely than women to report unhappiness; one need only look at video games and action movies to see that heroic stoicism is still very much a masculine virtue”
A virtue that is a problem? Bit oxymoronoic. That said, I agree that men are likely to overreport their happiness (BUT I’d also say that women have learnt how to complain). But I’m glad to hear that any possible gap in happiness can be explained by the something attributable to disappointing male behaviour rather than anything else…
Yes, Sam, it’s all that the bitches love to whine and blame men for everything. Why don’t you just put that on a macro? It will save you posting time.
/eyeroll
I think that happiness is to a large part determined by expectations. Last year Michigan went 3-9 in football. After 2009, 7-5 would put a smile on my face. A Florida fan would be distraught with 7-5.
As for the kids aspect, in some ways it might have been easier back in the ’50s. I asked my grandmother about this. She wasn’t hauling kids to a squillion organized activities. The kids took the bus. And a lot of the time the kids did their own thing with friends. It just sounds so much less harried than the moms I know.
“. She wasn’t hauling kids to a squillion organized activities. The kids took the bus. And a lot of the time the kids did their own thing with friends. It just sounds so much less harried than the moms I know.”
Hauling kids to organized activities is the least of many mothers problems. A significant portion of mothers are too concerned with how they are going to buy groceries this week, or with how they are going to pay their rent. Not to mention the number of women who are constantly trying to keep one man or the other from viciously abusing them…literally trying to kill them, body, mind and soul.
I dunno; I think my generation of men are happier than their dads were, at least in a couple of key ways. I admit I’m basing this hypothesis on a really small sample size and a lot of hearsay (two husbands = small sample size, other women’s husbands = hearsay), so any actual men out there, feel free to totally shoot me down.
Both my spouses (currently ex’s) frequently confided in me in the past what (a) a huge relief it was to be able to express the deep love they have for either offspring or wife and be able to share their feelings far more openly than their fathers ever could/did and (b) a huge relief it is to not be considered 100% responsible all the time for their family’s survival–that their wives were overwhelmingly likely to be working too. This has been described to me as being especially significant where their own children are concerned. Hearsay evidence has backed up this idea.
This makes me suspect that part of the “happiness gap” for women springs from the fact that women feel like all their traditional responsibilities and the expectations on them are still quite intact but now they are also shouldering some of the traditionally male ones on top of that, similar to your “Second Shift” hypothesis. Also, women have more choices and decisions and autonomy now, and as we all know, which tends to make human beings unhappier, though also a lot of us embrace that additional unhappiness because we worship the freedom that comes along with it (Jeffersonian quotes about exchanging freedom for security come to mind, as well as multiple studies showing that the ignorant tend to consider themselves “happier” than the informed).
The only obvious problem I see with the men-underreporting-happiness hypothesis is that I doubt that men are more likely to underreport their happiness now than they were 20 years ago, so as far as causing an erroneous data shift, one would assume that the same error in data was present then as now. Ie, if men’s reported happiness is rising, that is unlikely to be false because at least the same percentage of men then as now are just as likely to underreport–if not, if you think men are now MORE likely to underreport their happiness than they were 20 years ago, why would that be?
Lots of random babble this morning, sorry.
Faith
We’re baselining happiness against ~1970, however. I’ve been searching for actual domestic violence rates and can’t find it, though the overall rate of violent crimes has dropped since 1970, and the rates of spousal homicides have dropped since 1970. I’d guess, if we could measure it, we’d find the overall rate of domestic violence has dropped since 1970 as well.
I’m not sure the “how much paid work we do” is very relevent either. I can’t find America data, but Canadian women work 30 minutes more per week at paid jobs than they did in ’76, and men 78 minutes less ( http://www4.hrsdc.gc.ca/.3ndic.1t.4r@-eng.jsp?iid=19 ) – this still leaves men working six and a half hours longer a week (Ah, here we go – it’s almost exactly offset by women doing more unpaid work: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-630-x/2008001/article/10705-eng.htm ; Canadian men are now working (paid + unpaid) six minutes more a day than women; there was an hour gap in the other direction in ’86 (that’s not 1970 though, le sigh.) )
The change they measure isn’t very significant though, the survey isn’t very quantifiable in what’s being measured, and shifting expectations probably make it useless. I’d treat it as effectively no information at all.
I thenk Stentor’s citation makes it pretty clear that the statistical shift underlying the overheated rhetoric is, in fact, pretty negligible.
But to the extent there is anything sociodemographic underlying this small shift, I would wager that the most important factor has been overlooked: age. As a society, we’re getting older. This affects the sexes differently. The average pre-menopausal woman has, AFAICT, a relative sexual desirability advantage over the average man of the same age. This is much less true — perhaps not true at all — for post-menopausal women, and I suspect that many women experience this as a loss.
Lisa KS: Your sample size is, as you point out, pretty small, though I think some of your conclusions are valid. More importantly, though, your sample size is skewed towards “men who have mates,” which I think tends to occur in a lot of feminist discussions. When thinking about the male experience, women naturally think about the men they know, which is disproportionately those who are in (or have been in) the ‘dating game.’ There’s a sizable contingent of males who are largely not in ‘the game’, and as a group, their experience of gender is different from those men who are. The “virgin shaming” of men (the flip side of slut shaming women, where men are reviled for having too few sexual partners) appears to be sadly no less prevalent among feminists than society as a whole. The net result of all this is an important part of the gender experience tends to be overlooked in feminist discourse.
The mainstream media is so eager about publishing “scientific” results without any thought. Many researches are even taken out of context to draw conclusions one just can’t know. A good example my statistics professor told us: A study shows that people who often use their mobile phone have more sleeping problems. Conclusion: The electrosmog of mobile phones is bad for us. Of course, the real reason could be anything.. Managers phone a lot with mobile phoes because of their job, work much and so get little sleep..People who sleep badly like to call their friends more because the’yre bored..whatever. Unfortunately, most people don’t have an education in critizising statistics and understanding the problems with taking such things for granted, and the media doesn’t show the whole study but picks only the intresting, but probably false conclusions for publishing. Sexists, but also some feminists tend to be quick on picking up on such “truths”.
By the way, great blog. Greetings, Sina
People’s comments seem as plausible as the original data, and what I get from them is 1, there’s not much in the numbers, and 2, there are plenty of explanations which tend to undercut the bald statement that “women are getting unhappier and men are getting happier”. It’s not that simple, but don’t the media just looooooove tossing that kind of thing upon us? I have the feeling, especially if it’s somehow to women’s detriment.
Maybe the most interesting part is why this kind of thing appears, and why we’re so eager to receive it.
“I’ve been searching for actual domestic violence rates and can’t find it, though the overall rate of violent crimes has dropped since 1970, and the rates of spousal homicides have dropped since 1970.”
I’m not sure what your point is exactly. For starters, I’m not at all convinced that the rate of violence against women has truly dropped since the ’70s. Perhaps it has in the U.S., but it certainly hasn’t globally. Regardless, saying that rates of domestic homicide have dropped doesn’t mean a damn thing. That still means that women are getting KILLED. It also says nothing of the number of women who are not actually being physically killed but who are still getting viciously abused. It also doesn’t change the fact that many women still very much live in fear of violence from men even if they aren’t actually enduring.
“I’m not sure the “how much paid work we do†is very relevent either.”
You think that women aren’t stressed and unhappy over their jobs? Really? Yea, sure. The realities that women have to face when it comes to working outside the home have absolutely nothing to do with why women are unhappy. Realities like still earning less than men and still enduring discrimination and harassment at work. Not to mention being able to find affordable child care just so that they can go to work in the first place. Yea, women aren’t stressed about work at all. The idea that work might have something to do with women’s unhappiness is just a bunch of crazy talk.
Myhtago,
“Yes, Sam, it’s all that the bitches love to whine and blame men for everything.”
Actually, feminism is sort of “institutionalised complaining”, in a way, like any other kind of activism. And in addition to that, women have learnt that there is nothing that they should just swallow and thus they have learnt to voice their concerns. That’s commendable, but it also distorts such statistics if the other group is doing the opposite.
As for the blaming the men thing, that actually wasn’t directed at women, but rather an observation with respect to Hugo’s writing. He always finds an explanatory variable that he can blame on men. He actually *has a macro* in that respect
Faith
I think you’ve ignored what I said. We’re talking about a survey of American women, so the relevant domestic violence rate, if you want to point to one, is the one in the United States. And we’re comparing now to 1970; what the rate is is irrelevant, only the change in the rate between now and then matters. If you want to argue that the rate has increased since ’70, feel free to do so, but I don’t have a tailored number, and other indicators suggest it has decreased.
The second bit is more to Hugo. Hugo posits that “And as a result, far too many women are utterly exhausted from working what Arlie Hochschild famously called the Second Shift.”, while the census data shows that men and women work about the same, that a larger fractions of women’s work is paid now than historical (and a lower fraction of men’s) would make women more unhappy and men happier isn’t something I’d buy without either a theoretical mechanism or a more on target measurement. I didn’t say anything remotely like You think that women aren’t stressed and unhappy over their jobs?. I suggested there’s no reason to think women are more unhappy than men about the amount of work they have to do when it’s the same total (though less is paid); If you want to suggest that women are unhappier now than in 1970 because of their work, something needs to have changed. Merely saying “Work can be stressful and make you unhappy” isn’t an argument. Work was stressful and could make you unhappy in 1970 too.
Is this offshoot about domestic violence an example of thread drift, or are we permitted to comment upon it?
“I think you’ve ignored what I said.”
I think that your point is invalid regardless of whether rates have dropped or increased. I think that what is going on is that women are free to voice their complaints more than we were in the ’70s, and that people are more likely to notice when we voice our complaints. I haven’t got a clue if women are any more unhappy now than in the ’70s (in the US or elsewhere). I can only imagine that -I- would be much less happier if I had come to age in 1970. I imagine I would have been downright miserable to be perfectly blunt.
“If you want to suggest that women are unhappier now than in 1970 because of their work, something needs to have changed.”
Not necessarily. It could just be more a matter of women getting increasingly fed-up with the fact that very little has truly changed and that no matter how hard we try, men and misogynistic women keep standing in the way of progress.
“Complaining”, in English, carries a negative connotation. We don’t say that a man in Darfur “complained” to the UN that his young daughter was raped and murdered by janjaweed militia, for example.
As for male complaining, that’s what Playboy was founded on, you may recall.
ballgame, interesting thought, but here’s another way to look at it: in a society where women’s primarily value is their sexual attractiveness, and the norm for ‘sexually attractiveness’ skews young, aging for women is not simply a shift in sexual desirability from women to men; it’s a loss of worth as a person (think of some middle-aged and older women’s description of themselves as becoming ‘invisible’).
Faith-
You have no way of knowing whether or not you would have been happier had you come of age in 1970 or not. Your expectations would have been different had that been the case and expectations are key to the subjective perception of “happiness.” Context and culture affects attitudes. Had you been the daughter of a South Carolina plantation owner who came of age in the 1850′s the odds are pretty good that you would have been a racist.
Myth-
Our youth obsessed culture needs changing. Many of the awesome things in nature are ancient. I love visiting national parks and seeing ancient, sometimes half dead trees. Newly planted trees are cute, but I’m not gonna hike 10 hours and get eaten up by black flies to see 20 year old pine trees. We need to start viewing old people like ancient trees.
There is no greater threat to freedom than the happy slave.
The problem with Sam’s notion of “institutional whining,” like Maureen Dowd’s use of the word “aggrieved” in her column, is that it treats rising expectations as if they were a bad thing.
By the same logic it’s “institutional whining” to wish the iPhone wasn’t tethered to AT&T’s miserable service because we *ought* to feel lucky to have such a versatile and shiny thing in our pockets at all. And yet I bloody well *am* unhappy that I have to run over to the nearest window when (and if!) it rings because I’ve now got an expectation that I ought to be able to answer it while sitting on my couch.
What’s funny (suspicious funny, not ha-ha funny) is that it’s not even exceptional that we feel that way about technology. (Seriously, if someone told me I should feel lucky to have wireless at all, or that we should roll back to the “good old days” of 14,000 baud analog modems?) But when the rising expectations are about gender it’s suddenly whining.