Ellen Goodman: Happy or not, women not nostalgic for the old days

4:18 PM Friday, October 30, 2009

Not long ago a group of writers decided to publish a book of essays we called: “Feminism Made Me Happy.” It was an in-your-face title, a deliberate attempt to counter the narrative we all knew by heart. The one that described how the women’s movement had left us stressed-out, discontented, wrenched from home, hearth, and motherhood to struggle and fail at doing it all.

Writers being what they are, we never did the book — excuse me, we haven’t yet done the book! — but we have had some terrific lunches. Now I think we are due for another one because we are in the midst of another dust-up over research published under the headline: “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness.”

Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, partners in marriage and research, dove into the data and came up with numbers suggesting a decline in women’s happiness or, to be more precise, in their “self-reported subjective well-being.”

In 1972, women were four points more likely than men to describe themselves as “very happy.” Today they are one point less likely than men to check that box.

This is hardly proof of a mass depression, but the story fueled the predictable debates on Web sites and talk shows. The controversy pitted those who blame declining happiness on too much change against those who blame it on too little change. And those, of course, who just blame the messengers.

Stevenson and Wolfers should have known they were walking into this propeller when they linked the women’s movement to happiness. The paradox, as this pair framed it, was that despite improvements in women’s lives over the last 35 years, despite barriers that went down and opportunities that went up, women weren’t “self-reporting” greater happiness.

Our lunch group could have warned the researchers against one sentence that truly raised hackles. “As women’s expectations move into alignment with their experiences,” they say, “this decline in happiness may reverse.” Oh goodie, lower your expectations and get happy, gals?

In fairness, the researchers didn’t pin the decline in happiness — oops, “self-reported subjective well-being” — on any specific ideology or social change. After all, it affected married and single, parents and nonparents, working and stay-at-home mothers alike.

Indeed Stevenson, a new mom, says she was surprised by the paradox. “I look back and think, ‘Oh my God I have to be happier than my mother. I have so many more choices.’”

She and her husband pulled many strings to unravel the happiness conundrum. Have we doubled the areas in which women are expected to perform brilliantly? Was 1972 a blip of hope on the radar? Are women now permitted to express rather than repress unhappiness?

Or, for that matter, is a subjective assessment of well-being a pretty useless way to assess social change?

One thing we can say for sure is that women aren’t nostalgic for the old days. If anyone is, watch a few episodes of “Mad Men” as an antidote with its suffocated Mad Wife Betty Draper and its slapped-down Working Woman Peggy Olsen.

If you prefer nonfiction, leaf through the early chapters of Gail Collins’ history of “When Everything Changed” to days when a flight attendant was weighed, measured and hired to be a flying geisha.

Going forward to the past won’t bring a grin to our lips — excuse me, a self-reported sense of well-being to our database. Happiness is an pretty elusive state and an even more elusive research subject.

We are happy as our least happy child, worried as the idea of Iran with a nuclear weapon, insecure as our retirement fund.

As for linking happiness and social history, today’s flight attendant isn’t going to wake up every morning and assess her own well-being in comparison to her 1970s predecessor any more than I wake up grateful not to walk four miles in the snow to school. It doesn’t work that way.

Feminism made me happy? Not, I assure you in a permanent state of good cheer. It opened doors. It opened our eyes — to everything including what still needs to be done. The women’s movement never promised us a rose garden or a warm bath of contentment. It offered a new way to understand the world, a lens on injustice and a tool to use in the pursuit of happiness. It’s a work in progress.

That’s happiness? Close enough.

Ellen Goodman is a columnist for The Boston Globe. E-mail address: ellengoodman@me.com.

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cont'd: Few of us will write the great novel or compose the great song. Few of us will have the fear and adulation of peers and subordinates to tell us we are formidable. We will struggle paycheck-to-paycheck, bogged down in tedium and routine, hoping for the occasional memorable moment to give our lives some meaning and satisfaction. And, today, we will do all this alone or in broken families. The Feminist dream was a snow job. Maybe unfulfilled expectations bring reduced happiness.

Bob540
12:29 PM, 11/2/2009

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If there has been a "let down" for women, it has been from the realization that few women are going to experience the Feminist dream: That women in general, when less fettered by "sexism", would have these exciting careers and lives. There are the fortunate few women who have that. But, generally life for women is about as exciting as life for most men -- not very. Most of us aren't high-powered corporate execs or professionals lauded with accolades. Most men, and women, labor in obscurity.

Bob540
12:23 PM, 11/2/2009

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