Age, Women, and Happiness

This new study is sure to be con­tro­ver­sial:

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.

The entire jour­nal arti­cle is avail­able here (for a price).

The study’s find­ings are obvi­ous when one looks at how Amer­i­can soci­ety oper­ates today. In the dat­ing world, the value of a woman gen­er­ally declines as she ages and loses her youth­ful appear­ance, but the value of a man increases as he becomes older and gains more matu­rity, accom­plish­ments, and resources. (See “Dat­ing Market-Value.”) Of course, this is unfair to women, but unfor­tu­nately, this is human nature.

Older men and younger girls tend to date and marry each other. Remem­ber high school and col­lege? Fresh­men guys in each set­ting have a harder time dat­ing because the girls their age usu­ally want to date older men, and the fresh­men in high school and col­lege can­not date girls in junior high school and high school respec­tively, for obvi­ous rea­sons. Even in the twen­tysome­thing dating-scene, many girls who are that age choose to date older men. So, as the study finds, younger men are gen­er­ally less ful­filled in dat­ing and relationships.

Women, on the other hand, have the time of their lives when they are young. They know that nearly every guy around them wants to be with them. Pop cul­ture cel­e­brates female beauty and idol­izes youth, and this feel­ing trick­les down to women. Here in Israel, I’ve seen girls just out of high school (and cur­rently in the army) danc­ing on top of bars while every guy stares at them, com­pletely unable to hide their excite­ment. I’m sure the girls know the effect they have on men. While read­ing the arti­cle on the study, I remem­bered an old “Sein­feld” episode where Jerry dates a young, beau­ti­ful woman who can get any­one to do what­ever she wants — sim­ply because of her appearance.

But every­thing changes.

After years of hard work, most men have some degree of finan­cial suc­cess and sta­bil­ity by their thir­ties, and they become attrac­tive to the cute girls who dance on bars. And by this time, the cute girls who used to dance on bars, tease all of the men who wanted them, and think that they would be gor­geous for­ever have now lost much of the male atten­tion they used to receive. When I see young girls danc­ing on bars, I also notice the sub­tle looks of envy-disguised-as-disgust from older women in the estab­lish­ments. As I wrote in part of a lengthy essay, this sce­nario is one rea­son for the per­va­sive sin­gle­ness that is cur­rently present in the Amer­i­can dating-scene.

How­ever, there is another rea­son for the dif­fer­ences in lev­els of hap­pi­ness: the unin­tended con­se­quences of fem­i­nism. For decades, women have been told that they should “have it all” – higher edu­ca­tion, a good job, a happy fam­ily, and a lov­ing mar­riage. Of course, it is pos­si­ble to have all of these things, but many women have come to expect per­fec­tion. They believe that it is pos­si­ble to have an immac­u­lately clean house, per­fect chil­dren, and ful­fill­ing job that also allows them to have enough time to cook deli­cious meals, chat with friends over glasses of wine, and relax in a bub­ble bath every night. (Did I miss anything?)

Well, noth­ing is ever per­fect. As men have known since, well, the first day that some­one left his cave to hunt woolly mam­moths, life is about com­pro­mise and sac­ri­fice. Peo­ple need to set pri­or­i­ties because no one has the abil­ity to do every­thing per­fectly all of the time. But fem­i­nism has sold women a false bill of goods because it is impos­si­ble to have it all. If a woman gives 110% every­day in every area of her life, that is only a recipe for mad­ness, burnout, and unful­filled expec­ta­tions by mid­dle age, as the study suggests.

The per­fect descrip­tion of this atti­tude is Tea Leoni’s char­ac­ter in the film “Spang­lish” — she is the embod­i­ment of many of the fears that men have in regards to what their girl­friends will even­tu­ally become after mar­riage. We would rather remain sin­gle and alone than marry some­one who will turn into her. We out­right fear her.

Still, there are also many other rea­sons for the lack­lus­ter dat­ing scene in the United States. I invite you to read a prior essay for more.

Related: Cri­tiques of Fem­i­nism: Argu­ments Against Fem­i­nism Essay