“We may have suspected it already, but now the science backs it up: unmarried and childless women are the happiest subgroup in the population. And they are more likely to live longer than their married and child-rearing peers, according to a leading expert in happiness….the latest evidence showed that the traditional markers used to measure success did not correlate with happiness – particularly marriage and raising children.”
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/may/25/women-happier-without-children-or-a-spouse-happiness-expert
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Jonathan Erdman
Writer. In the summers, I live and work in the incredible state of Alaska, in the bush community of McCarthy, as the Executive Director of the Wrangell Mountain Center. When not in McCarthy, you'll typically find me in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California, writing and working with local activists. My primary writing project right now is a novel set in remote bush Alaska, of the magical realism genre wherein an earnest and independent young woman finds a mysterious radio belonging to her grandmother, a device that has paranormal bandwidth and a disturbing ability to mess with one's mental stability.
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Fact-checking has debunked several key claims made in this book, and the author has retracted in part. Here’s an article.
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Part of the original article you linked to has been amended since you posted it. Originally the author stated that married women say they’re happy but only when their spouse is in the room while they’re filling out the survey. That was a gross misinterpretation of the original study. “Spouse absent” didn’t mean that hubby had gone out for a pee break during the questionnaire; it meant that the husband was gone from the household — dead, divorced, etc. I.e., married women who are still together with their spouse are happier than divorcees and widows. Egregious.
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Interesting how the turn of a phrase can misrepresent the data in such an egregious manner. My interest in the topic had to do with my general interest in alternative approaches to romance specifically and to happiness more generally. In this culture I tend to agree with John Lennon, Whatever gets you through the night is alright…
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I don’t think so. I love kids and I love being married. It gets sweeter as the years go by.
Take a minute to be thankful — You wouldn’t be here if I had decided not to marry or have children. =)
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