
Liberated and Unhappy - robg
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/opinion/26douthat.html
======
alexandros
For one thing, who said liberty equals happiness? It may be that the animal
born in captivity is happiest, knowing nothing of the world beyond its cage.
That does not of course cause liberty to be pointless. Liberty may enable you
to better provide for yourself and others around you, but it also stresses you
by exposing you to the elements. The problem is with the persistent popular
narrative that equalises the two, its falsity rendering observations
paradoxical.

~~~
utx00
how does it follow from this then, that men are happier?

~~~
ilitirit
Here's one possible explanation:

 _Apparently, women are happy with their lot earlier in their lives, whereas
men have bigger financial goals and tend to be unfulfilled during their 20s,
both financially and in their family lives, which makes them miserable.

But by middle age, men have fulfilled their financial and family life goals
and have cheered up, whereas women are more likely to be unfulfilled and
unhappy.

The authors think a major factor underlying this is the shift in the
proportion of men and women in relationships: men are more likely to be single
in their 20s, and women are more likely to be alone in middle age.

They admit that this rests on the assumption that being married actually makes
people happy, but they point out that if marriage is something you really want
(and they found that 90% of both genders did), then being single might get you
down._

[http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/2008/07/a...](http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/2008/07/are-
men-happier-than-women.html)

~~~
loch_ness_350
No surprise there. Being 19 and male is miserable, except for the few who are
lucky enough to find a soulmate that early, and the low-quality sort of man
who tends to be more generally successful at that age, but I'd much rather be
a single 40-year-old man than a single woman at that age.

I wonder how these findings play out for people who are in long-term stable
relationships. I'd bet that there isn't a huge gender disparity or "cross-
over" for them, since their happiness depends largely on the health of the
relationship, and the number of alternatives isn't really relevant.

~~~
TriinT
_"Being 19 and male is miserable, except for the few who are lucky enough to
find a soulmate that early"_

I get the impression that you didn't enjoy college. Who wants a soulmate so
early? Seriously. Only weak and / or disabled people need someone else to look
after them at the age of 19.

------
100k
I need an automatic Ross Douthat filter.

He knows so much about women.

 _One successful foray ended on the guest bed of a high school friend's
parents, with a girl who resembled a chunkier Reese Witherspoon drunkenly
masticating my neck and cheeks. It had taken some time to reach this
point--"Do most Harvard guys take so long to get what they want?" she had
asked, pushing her tongue into my mouth. I wasn't sure what to say, but then I
wasn't sure this was what I wanted. My throat was dry from too much vodka, and
her breasts, spilling out of pink pajamas, threatened my ability to. I was
supposed to be excited, but I was bored and somewhat disgusted with myself,
with her, with the whole business... and then whatever residual enthusiasm I
felt for the venture dissipated, with shocking speed, as she nibbled at my ear
and whispered--"You know, I'm on the pill..."_

From his book _Privilege_ , page 184.

See: [http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/03/fear-of-reese-
withersp...](http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/03/fear-of-reese-witherspoon-
look-alikes-on-the-pill.html)

------
whacked_new
This is a simple issue: awareness of opportunity cost leads to unhappiness.
The expanded perception of individual potential ("you can be anything you
want!"), and the Feminism movement that has given that sentiment extra appeal
("you can have everything that men have, and more!") makes the awareness even
more acute.

When your appetite is grossly inflated, you will be constantly hungry and
dissatisfied, almost by definition.

I vaguely remember research that finds perception of opportunity cost giving
the same brain response as the loss of a physical object (70% sure; I'll be
gladly corrected). If this is the case, it's even more amusing: you can nearly
create limitless unhappiness, because there is an unlimited number of "phantom
things" that you can tell people that they "are capable of owning" but it is
mathematically impossible for them to do so.

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joecode
The source cited by this article only indicates that women's happiness has
declined, but not that it is actually lower than that of men. In fact I recall
reading a report recently that men are still less happy overall.

Another possible explanation for the observed decline is that women, no longer
expected to be so docile and submissive, are less inclined to pretend to be
happy when they really aren't.

~~~
sbt
From the article: "Today, that gender gap has reversed. Male happiness has
inched up, and female happiness has dropped. In postfeminist America, men are
happier than women."

~~~
joecode
Yes, I believe the last sentence is false.

------
matt1
The first thing that comes to mind reading this is the emphasis Americans tend
to place on skinny, Barbie like figures. We see it everywhere from the
checkout counters at the grocery stores to the commercials on TV. Most women
will never look like the covermodels, yet they're made to believe thats what
it means to be beautiful. No wonder women are generally more unhappy now than
they were a few decades ago.

(But as the author states, it's probably not so simple.)

------
alexandros
Another reading of the same results:
<http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1456>

------
req2
So despite the fact that single motherhood has no apparent effect on
happiness[1], his solution to the "happiness gap" is instituting a social
stigma against sex, to prevent single motherhood.

[1] > A working-class Hispanic woman is far more likely to be a single mother
than her white and wealthy counterpart, yet the male-female happiness gap
holds in East Hampton and East L.A. alike.

~~~
Semiapies
Well, yeah - the author's a religious conservative (hired recently to keep
some representation of Team Red in the NYT editorial pages), and he's
shamelessly grabbing random data and trying to make them support his political
goals.

~~~
weegee
[citation needed]

~~~
Semiapies
Citation available at the linked site. :)

------
sbt
Women's liberation since the 60s has only indirectly made women unhappy.
Contraception has made women unhappy, and men happy.

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kingkongrevenge
Women instinctively want to date and marry up. The recent economic equality
discussed in the article has made that mathematically impossible. Just a
thought.

~~~
kgrin
> Women instinctively want to date and marry up.

On what basis do you make that claim? And doesn't the same hold true for men?
(Maybe along a different axis, e.g. physical attractiveness - see "trophy
wife")

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TriinT
So much ado about nothing...

Lacking a rigorous and universal definition of what happiness is, all this
talk is pretty much pointless. Maybe the whole feminist movement fed women
with unrealistic expectations and their misery stems from the reality-
expectation mismatch. Anyways, who cares?

~~~
cschwarm
In the social sciences, it's usual to use an operational definition [1]. For
many variables are constructs [2] and they cannot be observed directly.

The authors of the above paper seem to have used different operational
definitions, and they all point in the same direction. So one can state with
reasonable certainty that women's happiness declined in the last 30 years.

A discussion about potential explanations for the phenomenon can hardly be
called pointless.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational> [2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construct_(philosophy_of_scienc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construct_\(philosophy_of_science\))

~~~
TriinT
"Social sciences" is an oxymoron. Everyone with a functioning brain knows
that....

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weegee
women were so "happy" 40 years ago they decided to march in the streets for
the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment). women were so happy 40 years ago they were
burning their bras for equality. women were so happy 40 years ago they made
far less than their male counterparts and sex discrimination was open and
readily accepted in business. yep, women sure were happy 40 years ago. the
author is a nut!

------
dukeofchutney
Modern womankind has, over the past decades, increasingly rebelled against the
natural order of things as instituted by the God many claim doesn't exist and
now, faced with the results of that decision they appear to want sympathy.

It occurs to me that 'seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness
and all these things will be added unto you' would be a response that gets to
the nub of the problems demonstrated here.

