The "happiness poll " ,,why women are not as happy as they "should" be. [View All]

Apparently this poll says that women in 1970 were happier, and newsies today are flabbergasted about the fact that women have come so far, and are not happy..

I think there are many reasons for this

in 1970, if a woman worked outside the house, it was most likely an optional,very part time job and she knew she could quit it any time she needed to or wanted to.

Women back then (married, not sole support) had the run of the house, kids, neighborhood with little or no "interference" from their husbands.. They had TIME to get things done

(I know from personal experience that MY friends and I would often spend the day with the kids, or without them ..having put them in babysitting co-op care.. lunching, playing bridge, shopping, & goofing..and then , if our husbands were not out of town, we would get very "serious" about 3PM, and race back home to make dinner, tidy up..etc..)

Weekends were truly family fun time, since there was not a weeks-worth of undone chores to be done.

Men were not expected to do "housework", and most didn't, but the women I knew never held it against them.

As times changed, women went into the workforce in large numbers, but those household things remained..and then there was the additional guilt about the kids..

Pressuring recalcitrant guys into suddenly shouldering more housework duties has never been all that effective for many families ,and only added another "child" for the women to ride herd on..

Women these days have to please many more people than ever.. They have work worries, home worries, kid worries, childcare worries, and even financial worries (make more spend more).

As women have gained more freedom, they have also discovered that freedom has many strings attached.. As women earned more, their income became more and more vital to the family, and the things bought with payments required more and more income.


As houses got bigger and more expensive, the luxury of staying home evaporated...

Job security has gone the way of the Dodo bird, so no one feels secure, and women with jobs often find themselves supporting the family when dad gets downsized or laid off.

The pressures of modern living hit hard, but I think women have always been the designated worriers in families, so maybe they feel the pressure more intensely.

There are also more women in the workforce doing crappy jobs.. It's hard to be "happy" to know that your baby will be with strangers for several hours, and your older kids will be on-their-own, doing god knows what for several hours, while you go to walmart or k-mart or to a dreary office somewhere... and when you get home you will still have laundry to do, meals to prepare & other household stuff to tend to.

There are surely women with challenging careers, who have enough resources to "do it all", but I'm betting that most women do NOT love their jobs, and wish there were a way out of the trap they find themselves in..