Surely these two situations are entirely incompatible?
•have a household income under $100,000
•work in a professional position (i.e., as a doctor or a lawyer).
Dreams have been described as dress rehearsals for real life, opportunities to gratify wishes, and a form of nocturnal therapy. A new theory aims to make sense of it all.
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If you were introduced to a random group of white-collar workers and offered $1 million if you could select the happiest person in the group, what kind of person would you pick: A man or a woman? Married or single? Children or no children?
According to a new survey released this month, your odds of winning the cash would increase if you skipped any 40-something, single female professionals and focused on the middle-aged male managers with one child at home and a wife who works part-time. In its Office Pulse survey, Captivate Network, a media solutions company, says its uncovered "profiles of the happiest and unhappiest workers."
And here is the profile of the happiest workers:
And the unhappiest profile?:
In a press release, the company reported that its survey of 670 North American white-collar workers found men to be "consistently happier than women"—both in and out of the office. The results also revealed that men are nearly twice as likely to report feeling balance in their work and personal lives. Men are more likely than women to take breaks during the day for personal activities; in fact, they're much more likely to take breaks simply to relax.
Is the survey a fluke, or at least flawed? I'm not so sure.
A more comprehensive analysis of trends in subjective well-being across several decades came to similar conclusions regarding female happiness. In The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness published by the American Economic Journal, researchers Betsy Stevenson and Justin Wolfers found that although women's life circumstances have improved greatly over the past few decades by most objective measures, their happiness has declined—both in absolute terms and relative to men's.
There are no simple answers to this gender disparity. But one finding that has consistently emerged from the literature is that women are pulled in many more directions than men. While in the past, men primarily served as "breadwinners" and women primarily assumed "domestic" roles, over the past few decades more and more women have become breadwinners, or at least co-breadwinners. What I don't think they expected was that even though they were bringing home the bacon, they would still have to cook it, if they wanted to eat, along with many other tasks.
The Office Pulse survey reported that 56 percent of working women assume responsibility for cooking at home, compared to only 29 percent of working men—and 62 percent take care of the laundry compared to only 31 percent of the men. The survey found similarly large discrepancies between women and men when it came to cleaning and grocery shopping.
Further, a survey by the National Parenting Association (NPA) revealed that 50 percent of married working women are primarily responsible for meal preparation, compared to only nine percent of their partners; and that 51 percent take time off from work to care for a sick child, again compared to just nine percent of partners. The NPA survey also revealed that married career women devote an average of 11 hours a week to managing and executing household chores and responsibilities, which constitutes 61 percent of the total time spent on these chores in their homes. In short, while women's roles in the workforce have grown considerably over time, their responsibilities inside the home have shifted far less. Other studies have found that the same holds true for child care: Working mothers do the bulk of it.
Making matters worse is the fact that women also tend to worry more than men about the well-being of their families. According to the Center for Work-Life Policy, women are more likely to see a direct connection between time they spend at work and negative effects on their families—more junk food, more time in front of the TV, less parental supervision. But men tend to blame external factors—the media, bad peer groups, "society"—for troubles at home.
These multiple, often conflicting roles leave many women feeling as if they're performing a colossal daily juggling act and it's taking a toll on their happiness. The Office Pulse survey found that women are more likely than men to experience stress, headaches, muscle tension, weight gain, and depression. A poll conducted by the American Psychological Association discovered that not only do women feel more stress than men over finances and the economy, they're also more likely to experience stress-related symptoms like headaches, irritability, and depression.
What does all this mean for women? In many ways, it's simple; in many ways, it's not. What I mean is, for the situation to improve, things need to change; if things don't change, women and the daughters who follow them will continue to suffer the consequences of chronic stress, burnout, and other incapacitating conditions. That's clear and simple.
But actually incorporating these changes into high-octane lifestyles can be quite challenging.
First, most people in today's world—men, women, and children—are super busy, so the likelihood of anyone else stepping up to take on the laundry or cooking is remote–especially if they aren't asked to help. Second, most successful women believe that they should be able to do it all. As Christine Hassler writes in The Myth of Having It All, "Somewhere along the path of the women's liberation movement, we began to buy into the belief that to be an empowered woman means we have to do everything that both men and women do. So instead of making choices, we have tried to fulfill both gender roles at the same time."
She adds, "Instead of giving us a tremendous amount of freedom and opportunity, this concept of having it all has morphed into something that excuses putting so much on our plates that we are stressed out, burned out, and running out of time for ourselves (and our loved ones) every single day."
But as most successful women know from experience, just because something is challenging doesn't mean it's impossible. If women want to survive and thrive—and want their daughters to do the same—we need to start rethinking and reconfiguring what has become a dangerous way of life.
That begins with a different mindset.
One of the most important things we can do is to let go of some well-intended but misunderstood and often misrepresented ideals, like "balance" and "having it all." The latter, while a seemingly empowering and satisfying endeavor, has turned into an emotional (and in some cases literal) death sentence for many career women as they strive to do everything and be everything to everyone. Here's the question you must ask yourself: If the pursuit of "having it all" causes you to be so tired and unhappy—or exhausted and miserable—then what's the point?
Achieving balance is another mindset that needs to change. As noted in High Octane Women: How Superachievers Can Avoid Burnout, "If you're going to strive for balance, you can't take it on as a mission you have to tackle and conquer every day, creating a perfectly balanced scale where everyone in your life is happy because you devoted just the right amount of time to each of them."
There should be no stress in balance. If you view it as a "do or die" mission or an "all or none" accomplishment, it will just turn into one more stressor. The key is to not let balance define you. You should define balance based on who you are, how you live, and what you want. If your circumstances require that work take up 70 percent of your time, do what you need to do to make sure that at least some of your remaining 30 percent is spent doing something self-nurturing and stress-reducing.
Finally, don't be shy about sharing the load. As I frequently remind friends and clients, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
There is no reason that doctrine can't apply equally in the home and at the office.
There is nothing wrong with being chief cook and bottle washer as long as those things don't consume every moment of your waking hours. If they do, you are on a collision course with burnout. And that is a road you definitely don't want to be on.
© 2011 Sherrie Bourg Carter. All rights reserved.
Be sure to read the following responses to this post by our bloggers:
Surely these two situations are entirely incompatible?
•have a household income under $100,000
•work in a professional position (i.e., as a doctor or a lawyer).
Not at all. Many, if not all, of such women have children, which means they cannot devote full-time to their careers.
Since they've been told since childhood that having a family is degrading, and that only a successful career can make a woman happy, their reaction to the Sordid Truth Of Life is not surprising.
Yes but the prototype here is an unmarried, childless woman. This example seems very strange to me, well. If a woman went through the time to obtain a professional position yet still makes less than $100,000 a year even with no spouse or children, its not exactly a surprise that she would be unhappy. Sort of an odd article.
Only 25% of lawyer get more then 100k yearly ..
The solution is obvious. The men should accept responsibility for their role in laundry, meals, child care, etc. Why wasn't this mentioned?
But it said single women were the unhappiest. So what has that got to do with sharing housework, childcare etc? Because presumably single women aren't doung those things anyway.
Exactly...first they state that unmarried women are the most unhappy, then they talk about the issue of married couples sharing cooking duties.
Maybe they don't want to face the fact that the New Order is not all that satisfying to women.
Nailed it... Can't fight biology. Even though women are becoming more powerful socially, politically, and economically the majority of them still want to be moms and wives. As someone else stated, but this article woefully neglected- perhaps this New Order of the all-powerful Woman ain't all its cracked up to be. I think the author took a wrong turn in addressing the discontentment among married working mothers when the premise of the article was that ther unhappiest "person" was a 42 year old unmarried, childless woman. That was the softball to swing at in a Physcology Today piece.
I love it! Biology and unhappiness! With men becoming more aware of female nature with the addition of Red Pill theory - The sky is the limit!
This was exactly my thought. The studies show the unmarried woman was unhappiest, yet the whole article is about how husbands are dead weight. Clear mysandry bias in this article to cover over the failure of the sexual revolution to deliver on its unrealistic promises.
Agreed! What about what's going on with the unmarried woman they said was the unhappiest? And author doesn't mention most who are clinically depressed are women.
Um, these are women without men who are unhappy i.e. "single" women.
Now, here's a question: are the traditional wives happy?
But the one married has the name of who precisely is to blame, so the righteous indignation is more fulfilling. For those remaining unattached it is only men in general.
(Halfway joking --- but halfway not.) ;-b
Actually, for the answer as to why this is so, take a peek at evolutionary psychology. It's Fascinating.
Yeah, it's the good old fall back position for unhappy women. Blame men for your unhappiness. Grow up, we didn't take you to raise.
Anonymous wrote:The solution is obvious. The men should accept responsibility for their role in laundry, meals, child care, etc. Why wasn't this mentioned?
Maybe it wasn't mentioned because it isn't true.
Did the man ask the woman to leave the home and go get a career or did she do it because she wanted to?
I have absolutely no obligation to take on more work just because you chose to do so.
to witness the absolute entitlement - unconcious, totally, of course.
Most assuredly, we have to do this, that, and the other. It's in some unnamed book, the rules therein which keep shifting. And these can be easily changed because it is arbitrary and founded upon mere whim.
I am a professional, had several opportunities towards marriage, but after many years of dating and precisely this kind of interminable "you should" guilting stürm-und-drang am quite relieved to be flying solo.
Missed that death trap.
But really, sitting back and stroking the stubble - it is all kind of funny, in an entertaining way.
It is not as if the men are idling. Looking around me, men tend do less in the daily chores but study after study shows men and women have the same amount of free time. For some reasons, the chores men tend to do are not counted. Also, men work on average more per day for the same job and are still the majority breadwinners. In the US men pay 80% of the taxes and women 20%. There is a reason for that.
So no, not so obvious.
I was married and responsible for all the housework/cooking/groceries etc. while also the primary breadwinner. It was an exhausting and unhappy life. So, I left. I am now divorced and much much happier. I'll never marry again. It's an institution that serves men better than it does women.
OMG !
You're personal anecdote disproves everything said here!
I agree with the 1st comment.
42 years old,
I agree that the solutions offered her are confusing: what is the profile of this professional woman?
Is she single because she's divorced, or single because she's never been married? Either way, she can't "share the load" with someone.
If she's a doctor or lawyer doing work that services the poor, it's certainly possible she makes less that $100,000-- but then again, maybe her salary status is the source of her unhappiness. She's facing discrimination!
I'll debunk this 42-year-old-unhappy-single-woman bogus "study" in my Living Single blog sometime in the near future.
You go girl!
Don't give any ground to those married scum!
I shall fight no more forever !
Bella DePaulo Ph.D. wrote:I'll debunk this 42-year-old-unhappy-single-woman bogus "study" in my Living Single blog sometime in the near future.
Please do include epidemiologic or scientific data, not just personal anecdote.
The couple/mate bashing DePaulo is here to tell us that singles are victims again and non-singles are just awful for not thinking about her all the time..give it a freaking rest..
I've got a thought: women are always trashing men, mocking them, criticizing them, claiming superiority. But, here we have a study showing men are happier. I have a novel idea: why don't women make believe men are not so ffreaking stupid after all and maybe try to learn something from them: like, maybe its OK for the house not to be perfectly neat and its better to chill and have fun with your friends, rather than neurotically claen everything and demand perfection from themselves and their mates...
Nope: can't happen: women are too convinced of their superiority and victimhood... we all know women are perfect and the only imperfection in their lives is the men in them...
Painfully accurate. The War on Men has made both sexes miserable as sin, but you'll never hear the feminists admit it. Instead they'll just keep on blaming men for everything under the sun, rather than admit they are now rotting in a state of misery entirely of their own creation.
This isn't about "neurotically clean[ing] everything" and "demand[ing] perfection." It's about doing the basic household tasks that need to be done to survive. You know...meal preparation so you have something to eat? Washing laundry so you have something to wear? Yeah. Those tasks take time. A lot of time. And it's women who do the lion's share of those tasks.
All these modern conveniences and women still gripe. Meanwhile they think life is just a bowl of skittles for men who do most of the long, tiring, and dangerous jobs. And then in "Why Great Husbands Are Being Abandoned", written by a woman I might add, many women are bagging their dream guys, getting the kind new age guy willing to help out with the chores and be attentive, the kind of guy feminism has asked us to become, and the women are STILL unhappy, divorcing these men at alarming rates.
I'm sorry but has any man ever demanded that you do the laundry or cook for them? You took on the lion share of the task's because you chose to. Not because someone forced you to.
" It's about doing the basic household tasks that need to be done to survive."
If your partner isn't pulling the weight around the house then there are only 2 courses of action to take logically.
-Leave the relationship
-Stop enabling the behavior.
Your partner took care of himself before he met you, it just may not have been to the standard you hold yourself too. What you are experiencing is 2 completely different set of expectations from two different people. He's more lax obviously. Why not try cooking your own meals for yourself alone? Doing your own laundry and excluding his? Guess what will happen? He will do it.
If you have children together then obviously this complicates everything i just said. And maybe you should of been more careful about who you chose to reproduce with. Not everyone is cut out for domestic life. Not everyone can spend the rest of there lives chasing around someone else's expectations either. That's a prison sentence in itself. You both own that now if you have children.
Honestly there is a ton of meaningless shit people do everyday that over complicates there lives that has absolutely nothing to do with "survival" chucking your socks in the corner and leaving them there for a couple days isn't going to kill anybody. Some people get tired of trivial mundane everyday bullshit. Men can get burnt out to. Were not super heroes were human beings. And the expectations we are constantly held too are about as exhausting as your insatiable appetite for a man to be "better"
Anonymous wrote:I'm sorry but . . . "
A useful rule is never apologize for
(1) insisting complainers first take personal responsibility, and
(2) illuminating the obvious ipso facto truth of a situation.
The drive towards victimhood will not change; but we do not have to play along.
Something else. There are many indicators that Narcissism is on the rise in western culture ("it's all about ME!"). And narcissistic people don't handle attachment and close emotional relationships very well, which is a habit that tends to reach "diminishing returns" in our 40's..... along with declining physical attractiveness, especially for women who are also much more "biologically-driven" than men to begin with. And who's more narcissistic than a "I must have it all" woman? Male narcissists don't experience those same limitations, and they're often later anyway.
The content of this article only talks about married working women and the burden they face with having responsibility for chores, children in addition to work.
This is old news. Of course marriage serves men more than it does women. Hello? Of course the men who have a wife who works part-time are happiest - it means that they really don't need to worry about taking care of the house, the kids, the laundry, the cooking, and the shopping.
Your article says ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about single working women - who according to a study done some time ago, were shown to be the happiest in the population. Do your research properly!!!
Can't speak for doctors, but for those who've commented that it's hard to imagine a middle-aged lawyer making under $100,000, ever heard of public defenders? State attorneys? And in this never ending bad news economy, I can tell you that most private lawyers aren't raking in the dough either.
As far as the survey, a survey is a survey. Bunk, debunk, whatever. But don't throw the baby out with the bath water. I think women are held to a different standard and it's pretty stressful. So I'm not surprised to hear that many women are unhappy. I see it every day. I work in the legal field and I see a lot of stressed out women - single and married.
The ones who are married, most of them are pulled in all different kinds of directions. I honestly don't know how some of them do it. But for us who are single, don't think for a minute that we escape the pressure. It's just a different kind. When are you going to settle down and get married? Don't you want kids? You're getting up there in years ... better find Mr. Right soon. Old maid innuendos around every corner.
And then while you're trying to maintain this social life that everyone seems to expect you to have, you hear things that make it seem like you're just lazy like, When are you going to climb the ladder and get to the top? or You spent all that time in school to work as a lowly public defender? They may not say it directly, but believe me, the messages are loud and clear.
Well I am mid 40's, in a professional career, single and childless. And I am pretty much as happy if not happier than most of my friends who are married with kids. In fact many say the honest truth is, as much as they love their kids, if they had their time again they wouldn't have children. Neither would many marry if they had their time again. In fact they tell me to stop wanting a partner and enjoy my money and freedom! Hindsight is a wonderful thing!
Married people with kids would not share the details you claim they did under the circumstances you claim exist. If you understood the partnership that is marriage you would get that your assertions here don't generally jibe with the bonds of trust at play here.
Truly happy people (I am one, married father of 3 sons...and 3 Labradors) don't critique others happiness - - rather they accept it for what it is and rejoice! What they do not do is pull a holier than thou card claiming that those shiny happy people are really a myth. I hope you're happy but I your focus on dragging others back rather than propel your own self forward are worrisome.
"Truly happy people don't critique others[sic] happiness"?
Then why are you critiquing hers? If you're one of the "truly happy people," then you should "accept it for what it is and rejoice" and leave this person alone to enjoy her own happiness.
Yes, but the difference is that nobody cares if you're happy or not.
Wow----you must be the Amazing Kreskin's sister!
You can read minds!
(sounds like you're trying to convince yourself, more than us).
If you're so happy, why do your married friends tell you to "stop wanting a partner" ?
And you believed them? They are deceiving you. if they so much envy you why don't they divorce all their husbands and join you in the single life (if it is so sweet as they claimed)?
Oh, I dunno. Maybe because the legal and financial hassles of divorce make it an exceptionally long, painful process? Easier just to stay married even if you think the better choice might've been to stay single.
Do you think or feel that you have any responsibilities to transmit or inform or to be inspired by the next generation? Who will care for you as you age? Who will carry on your values and dreams ?Do you attach any or even some significance to the family as a source of social stability?
Your article really hit home for me. This is exactly the way that things are in my home. I work more hours than my husband, make more money, and still do most of the housework. I don't think that a lot of men really understand how much times have changed and that they need to get more involved in family activities and chores. Your columns are always very informative and I appreciate your unique perspective.
Do you let him do the work the way he sees fit to do it? In my household, the standard joke is you can tell me what, how and when but have to choose no more than 2.
I have noticed that some women refuse to let go of the household chores (vs. uncaring men not stepping up) for control reasons. I secretly believe they worry their households would survive without their immediate and direct stewardship.
This was my experience as well. I wash clothes the way I see fit. I don't separate, I don't do a delicate cycle. Since my wife has decided that this method is wrong, she gets to do the wash. Same was true for cleaning, I clean to my standard, which my wife has determined is not to her standard, ergo, she cleans. I will cook, wash, and clean, and did for many years before marriage. I would continue to do them if my wife chose to accept it. If she completed the tasks to a level I found unsatisfactory, then I would redo them to a level I was comfortable with, but I am currently satisfied with her work.
Sounds like you've got a smart husband.
You are basically asking husbands to also have a male revolution. well you women sexual revolution brought it upon yourselves. Women want a revolution and got it. Men do not at any time want a male revolution.
You gals wanted to share in our burden, and congrats you got it.
Sorry we men, don't want to share in your own burden, life is too short for that.
Husbands will not riot to share in domestic duties any time soon, not in the foreseeable future
I'm a bit confused because the person you profile as unhappy is single, but then you promote the solution of sharing household chores between husband and wife.
Making more money would certainly make someone who invested a large sum of money in an education happier. Yes, there are doctors and lawyers who make less than $100,000. Why did you not mention wage parity as a solution to the unhappiness problem?
I will say that I think many unmarried women in their 40s are unhappy in large part because they believe they need a man to be happy. They then attach themselves to a man who won't make them happy because they believe any man is better than none. Getting rid of this myth would also be part of the solution to the problem you describe.
tired old attack on men...
Reality is that these single, 42 year unhappy harpies listened to attractiveness-challenged, horrible personality feminists who directed them to hate men and reject real relationships along with their own human nature for their man-hating lifestyle....now they find out that they chose poorly and are stuck.
So this writers tries a misdirection again by dog-whistling again about how men are bad, bad, bad.
You chose poorly, ladies and LOST.
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