This past weekend one of the Op-Ed pieces in The NY Times caught my eye. Maureen Dowd’s column, entitled “Blue Is the New Black”, focused on the trend that women have grown unhappier since the 1970s. She cites “the General Social Survey, which has tracked Americans’ mood since 1972, and five other major studies around the world, [which show] women are getting gloomier and men are getting happier.”
What I found most interesting was the general conclusion about why this is happening. Women have more choice than ever before and, as a result, are now subject to more potential “law”. Dowd writes:
Marcus Buckingham, a former Gallup researcher who has a new book out called “Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently,” writes in his new blog on The Huffington Post, “Though women begin their lives more fulfilled than men, as they age, they gradually become less happy,” pointing out that this darker view covers feelings about marriage, money and material goods.
Buckingham and other experts dispute the idea that the variance in happiness is caused by women carrying a bigger burden of work at home, the “second shift.” They say that while women still do more cooking, cleaning and child-caring, the trend lines are moving toward more parity, which should make them less stressed.
Dowd sums up her column by citing Betsey Stevenson, an assistant professor at Wharton who co-wrote a paper called “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness.”
Stevenson looks on the bright side of the dark trend, suggesting that happiness is beside the point. We’re happy to have our newfound abundance of choices, she said, even if those choices end up making us unhappier.
When women stepped into male- dominated realms, they put more demands — and stress — on themselves. If they once judged themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens and dinner parties, now they judge themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens, dinner parties — and grad school, work, office deadlines and meshing a two-career marriage.
“Choice is inherently stressful,” Buckingham said in an interview. “And women are being driven to distraction.”
via Orin Zebest @ flickr
The irony of this is that we humans will claw tooth and nail to defend our ability to choose, believing that having a choice is the key to our freedom. But the evidence presented in this column argues the opposite. Choice does not make one free (or at least happy), especially choice that exists under a world of standards. For our choices to be free they have to be made outside of the realm of judgment, outside of the Law, but as women are apparently discovering more than ever, they are not. Our choices, because we live under the Law, only increase the potential for comparison, judgment, and condemnation. More choice creates more burden.
A paradox, indeed.
Is there hope? Thankfully, Christianity is not about setting us free from not having choices, but rather about setting us free from the sin that binds all of our choices under the judgment of the Law. For sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. – Romans 7:11
But because of the cross of Christ we have this promise: For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. – Romans 6:14
Oh, and in case you think I am saying that only women are suffering under the burden of choice:
COMMENTS
17 responses to “More Choices = Unhappiness?”
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Great post Sean… coincidentally, I just read this: "Must not the human person will to do what he can do?…the potential to will something renders it an obligation"
I'm so glad you posted this, Sean. I read the article but had a hard time making sense of it b/c I wasn't thinking of it in terms of being under the law. It made a lot of my questions insignificant and helped me see the bigger picture. Thanks!
That's heavy, Todd! Essentially, it's saying "if you can, you must", right? I am sure a lot of folks would argue that they don't have to do anything even if they can will it. BUT if you look at last week's TIME magazine (with Jay Leno on the cover) you'll see that "responsibility" is the new thing. Almost every article is focused on how we have the responsibility to do all we can to make this world "a better place for you and for me and the entire human race" – Michael Jackson;)
I don't think a person would be able to stand the guilt associated with NOT doing "whatever they could" in any given situation, which says to me that your quote is extremely accurate. That's the Law for ya!…no compromise.
Thanks, Andrea:)
There were 4 or 5 Letters to the Editor in todays New York Times re: Maureen Dowd's article. All from women, and all cited unhappiness in some way connected to leaving nurturing/motherly/family behind for materialistic glory.
There's a really interesting and good book out there called The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. It's written by a psychology professor and expounds on Dowd's point (not just for women but men too) that too many choices restrict us rather than free us and in the end become detrimental to our psychological health.
this is interesting, Sean. thanks for posting it. this has given me somethings to ponder…not about your conclusion (which I think is stellar and with which I agree) but about some other related things–subsets if you will but that are beyond the scope of your post.
hmmmm….
The greatest cause of unhappiness may be the expectation of happiness, and the idea that the "choices" we make, of whatever stripe, is the road to that expected destination. This is why multiple available choices lead to "unhappiness": we are made miserable by the idea that if we just make the "right" choices, happiness will result, but that if we make the "wrong" choices, well, we've only ourselves to blame. I think that the link between "choice" and "unhappiness" have more to do with the misery-causing idea of "free will" than to "the law" but the two are related, if we see the "expectation of happiness" as a form of "law". This is why very,very poor people are rarely "unhappy". They may be hungry, and physically miserable, but not "unhappy". That is much more common in the upper middle classes, who have the luxury of "expectations" and the curse of an unshakable faith in "free will".
But that's just my totally unresearched and unsupportable speculation 🙂
Michael: I really think you are hitting on some important things that are part of what I'm pondering…Thanks so much for sharing. In connection to this, I've been thinking about the departure from community to isolated selves (we see this happening in and through the progression of modern thought starting with Descartes). I wonder, too, if the lack of community has something to do with the level of unhappiness in choices. Let me see if I can make sense of this: i am a stay at home mom and i attend school. both choices have made me happy (Very..esp. the addition of school which I love). The stress, and the unhappiness lies more in my inability to ask for help because of my isolation as a self… because of my own pride i force myself into a corner of doing everything. There's something I'm trying to hang my identity on here..and I think Michael is really hitting on something pertinent. I think this is part of the tension I'm having with the article. Is it my choices or is it my pride that makes me most unhappy?
Also, I think the natural conclusion would be to say to great rid of choices. but, again…a woman who chooses to stay home is much happier than a woman who is forced to. And, to their credit, women who choose not to stay home because they really don't want to or believe they are not equipped to do so, can feel like they are happy and are better moms–i have had conversations with these women (on some level I really agree with them). I just think it would be hard to offer a blanket statement on what makes everyone happy. I think the biggest problem is, as I've said before, due to our inability to not do everything yet our inability to ask for help.
To reiterate my previous post, Sean I love your conclusions and my comments here are not directed as a critique of your post or your conclusions…but just thoughts that I've been having because of your post.
"Setting us free from the sin that binds our choices": what we are yearning for is not happiness, but freedom. One can live in a prison and be free, or a person can have limitless choices and the burden of them doubles whatever suffering comes our way, for it will certainly come, and believing we could have gotten it right and therefore avoided the pain only makes everything worse. In either case, or in between, happiness comes and goes, but in receiving this freedom we get something infinitely better. In War and Peace Pierre Bezuhov is taken prisoner by Napoleon's army, forced to retreat with them across frozen Russia, and is befriended by another prisoner who has nothing, is dying, yet because he knows who he is, and to whom he belongs, he is able to enjoy the peace and happiness that Pierre had spent his life searching for. The prisoner takes in every detail of every moment, yearns for nothing, is burdened by nothing, he accepts pain and misery, delights in the love of a friend, and Pierre's life is transformed. Pierre doesn't lose his wealth and therefore continues to live with choices, but the consequences no longer define who he is, he has been freed from being his own god.
Thank you Robin, that was powerful and well-put. Great post and discussion!
Robin–Beautiful, perfect illustration from _War and Peace_ , and so well put.
Robin, that was wonderful.
Robin,
Your comment is amazing! Thank you!
Cliff,
I see your point, but this post in no way supports a prosperity view of the Gospel. Rather, it is about the idea that humans think the ability to choose leads to freedom, which I am pointing out is an impossibility because of the fact that our choices are bound by our sin, which we only know because of the giving of the Law (hence the reference to Romans 7 where St. Paul explicitly lays this out). This article is an everyday example of how that is true. Our choices are bound because we are sinners living under the law.
So, I argue the only way to true freedom is not through more choices but rather by being liberated from sin which holds us in bondage under the Law. Because of the cross of Christ we are no longer under the law but under grace. Therefore the cross is not simply a means to an end. Rather, the cross is the end. It is the end of the Law. It is the end of worrying about our choices. It is the end of comparing ourselves to each other. It is the end of living for this world. It is the end of our sin, and that is why we cling to it and nothing else.
If I may, I think this illustration is to point out that people, these women and all of us included, seek to justify themselves by works against these worldly "laws" (about being thin, eating organic, etc). These fears of being found lacking in the face of worldly "laws" are echoes of the real, universal fear that we will not match up to God's holy Law. The fear of condemnation, judgment, alienation, that the world seeks to solve by more/better choices is a shadow of our universal "real" fear of failure before God. Conversely, the true answer to our fears is not more choices (as Sean's article conveyed) for that only illuminates our imprisonment to selfishness, but rather absolution from our Father in Heaven through Christ's atonement on the cross. The final answer to our fear is that Christ forgave and rescued. The grace we find in that universally true answer then affects all the other worldly laws we encounter as by-products of our nature. His grace, as Robin pointed out, frees.
sean and kate:
i really enjoyed reading your comments. thanks so much for taking the time to add them.
Hello there, I’m the photographer of the shoes photo used in this article. My photo has Creative Commons Attribution license, which means you MUST give credit when using my image. The original is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/orinrobertjohn/114430223/
Please either add a link to that or add my name, Orin Zebest.