Is my mum happier than me?

I came across an interesting article, What Women Want Now in the October 26 edition TIME magazine. It caught my interest and I downloaded a paper titled The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness cited in the article.

Here’s the abstract the paper, authored by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers of The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania:

“By many objective measures, the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. The paradox of women’s declining relative well-being is found across various datasets, measures of subjective well-being, and is pervasive across demographic groups and industrialized countries. Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men. These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging–one with higher subjective well-being for men.”

As a female, it hit me that it may be true that as we got more education, freedom and money, our lives have become more complicated. It also reminds of the Marslow’s hierarchy of needs which we learnt in school. As we get our lower-level needs (Physiological, Safety, Love/Belonging, Esteem) satisfied, we move up to the highest level of self-actualisation needs which are undoubtedly harder to attain.

Take my mum as an example, she received only primary school education and is financially dependent (first on the man who brought her up then the man she married). For most of her life, her goal was to bring up her four kids. She did some casual work after her kids were more independent and any income earned was her pocket money. As a grandmother of four now, she is the primary caregiver of one. Is she happier than me?

I’m not sure, really. She is happy, no doubt. But she may have some regrets too. As we prepare M for half-day childcare next month, I’ve been thinking about what lies ahead for me. I believe I will not find as much meaning staying home going forward as M starts to spend more time away from home. Well, unless we have another child.

Interestingly, the results of the study above suggested that level of subjective happiness was no different between women who were young or old, educated or not educated, married or divorced, kids or no kids, working mums or stay-at-home mums… Mind boggling indeed….

Perhaps we have all gotten out of sync with reality? Expecting to stay happily married, have wonderful kids, excel in our careers, be a fashionista etc… all at the same time. Sure, there’re a few superwomen out there who are constantly featured in the media. But don’t they just make the rest of us less happy?

Sometimes, societal pressures, government propaganda and clever consumer marketing can mislead us into thinking what makes us happy. I recall the many times people around me have commented “What a waste!” when they find out I’m a stay-at-home mum. This led to a rather heated argument once. And ever since then, I’ve learnt to just acknowledge and pass it off.

But what I really want to say is “Doing what you enjoy cannot be a waste!”