Could inflated egos coupled with old cultural expectations be the cause of womens increasing unhappiness?
Judy Berman Jul. 27, 2009 | As studies about women’s happiness (or, it turns out, lack thereof) keep rolling in, journalists continue to ask themselves the same question: Why, as we inch ever closer to equality of the sexes, are ladies more dissatisfied than ever? This week’s attempt at an answer comes from the Guardian’s Madeleine Bunting, who pegs a cultural epidemic of narcissism as the cause. Bunting runs through a list of studies that have, by now, become familiar to those of us covering the lady beat: There is, of course, Stevenson and Wolfers’ “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness” (PDF), the document that provided proof that while, in the ’70s, women were happier than men, men are now happier than women. (This is also the study that prompted token New York Times conservative Ross Douthat to reach the bizarre conclusion that since “the steady advance of single motherhood threatens the interests and happiness of women … some kind of social stigma is a necessity.”) Bunting
