Last I checked, the correlation between happiness and circumstance was remarkably weak in all but the most poverty stricken populations. The reality is that the factors cited may have little or nothing to do with self-reported "happiness" at all. But it's worth noting that people who's lives are measurably improving are generally happier than people whose circumstances are stagnant or deteriorating - even when the deteriorating circumstance is far, far more comfortable than the respective improving circumstance.

I am not saying the topic is funny.

But that was a hilarious post.

Thanks!

Why people report on these things at all--has there been a rigorous tracking of female attitudes for the past 40 years? Is the person that was reached at home over the rotary phone the same or comparable as the individual who still has a land line and was contacted today? Or are they interviewing grad students? I guess I just think that it's hard to really say a woman of today is less happy than a woman 40 years ago.

Look, I know I'd be happier if Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham were home barefoot and pregnant, but I don't think they would be. Plus that'd mean Ann would have to be a biological woman.

While douthat might sound remarkably close to doucheba....oh forget it already I'm being sexist. Anyway a little introspection on the fruits of feminism might not be such a bad idea.

As you point out feminsim has basically provided women with a near endless of array of choices of how to live their lives. Married, not married! Gay, straight! Children, no children! Career, housewifery! So on and so forth...

Our society is permiated by the idea that increased freedom of choice will guarantee increased happiness. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case. In fact there are some very good arguements that at a certain threshold increased choices result in significantly decreased satisfaction. Check out the The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz, it's an excellent read on the subject.

By no means am I advocated you should all put on your bonnets and get back in the kitchen, just consider the idea that the gains of feminism and this "paradox" of happiness might in fact be correlated.

Interesting explanation, except that women's lots, by and large, seem to have been improving over the past 40 years. Men are the ones whose wages have been stagnating, at least at the East LA end of the equation. So you'd think the men would be unhappy.

Of course men could just be idiots, which is an equally plausible explanation. I keep coming back to my initial skepticism as to whether you can really compare happiness over 40 years in anything approaching a scientific fashion.

Urban dictionary definition of "asshat": "One whose head is so far up their rear end it could pass for a hat; used to describe a person who is stubborn, cruel, or otherwise unpleasant to be around." Yep that describes Ross pretty well.

Douthat has been a pathetic intellectual lightweight for as long as he's been writing for national publications..and probably longer than that. Not to mention the alternately highly-selective, and then utterly muddle-headed thinking the man has committed in print on every subject he chooses to land on.

Christ. Click on a random google link and you can find better writing about nearly anything. It's not just that he's stuck with a bankrupt politicial and moral ideology, the man couldn't write a sharp (let alone honest) sentence if his life depended on it. Standards at Harvard must really have gone down the tubes in the last decade, if a sad-sack like Douthat can get a degree there.

Oh, I didn't mean that in any long-term sense, but only in the relatively immediate and individual sense. I agree that comparing self-reported happiness from forty years ago to self-reported happiness now is likely an entirely meaningless figure.

The simple fact of the matter is that there's no way to baseline the scale. I can say that 41 pounds today is heavier than 40 pounds 40 years ago because we have a standard, repeatable measure of what each pound really is. But a person whose spent their whole life happy and a person whose spent their whole life unhappy might both respond as "moderately happy" as they don't have comparable baselines to judge against.

seriously, how did that vapid article make it to print? who did dunderheaded douthat pay off on the editorial board? his reasoning just doesn't make any sense. and of course the way he frames the issue belies any purported earnestness in searching for an answer.

i'm really confused... has the 'liberal media' started to pity the GOP?

Douthat follows the specious reasoning of conservatism:

First, that simply introducing the concept that women needed parity, solves the problem. It does not. This is a trick.

Second, that women, having made progress (i.e. that they've been "liberated"), are now finding they are unhappy. Hence we need to "go back to something", retrograde thinking.

In women gaining parity in our society both women and men have learned the following:

* that we are all screwed.

*We are all subject to a crappy system of overwork and underpay in a context of vast inequity between classes.

* That we are all subject to inadequate social insurance including health and education, natal and elder care.

* We are all subject to the same repression

The "liberation" of one liberates us all.

"Angel in the House"

Okay four words. Among the words...

The Victorian Poem swept generations up in its ideals of wifely virtue, among which was an absolutely cheerful and supportive demeanor. In other words, when asked "are you happy?" or "please rate your level of happiness with your situation in life" the good Angel would never had answer "it sucks", and not only because that euphemism wasn't invented yet.

Fast foward to the 50s, and while it's not Victorian England anymore, it's also still laced with vestiges of this sort of thinking. That is, if in Douthat's own estimation this was "pre-liberation" times, then almost by definition women were far less likely to complain, which would reflect badly on their husband and their family and would imply that they were doing a lousy job of their role in life which was, among other things, to keep morale up and not complain.

None of this is absolute but there's enough of that effect going on easily to make the small percentage point changes in these polls. In any case it's a huge consideration, which Douthat missed entirely. Based on what I've seen of him so far that would seem to be a speciality of his.