Unmarried and child-free women are the happiest people. Or so says Paul Dolan, a professor of behavioral science at the London School of Economics.
Married people are happier than other population subgroups, but only when their spouse is in the room when they’re asked how happy they are. When the spouse is not present: fucking miserable. We do have some good longitudinal data following the same people over time, but I am going to do a massive disservice to that science and just say: if you’re a man, you should probably get married; if you’re a woman, don’t bother.”
He’s not kidding about a spouse being in a room; he’s gleaned that from the American Time Use Survey. We’re not always 100 percent honest answering questions about our relationship, partner, sex life, etc., when our partner is listening in.
It’s not exactly new news that marriage has generally been a much better arrangement for men than women. Although more women typically have still wanted marriage (since the days when we had to wed in order to survive), who overwhelmingly wants out of it? Right, women.
What’s interesting about what Dolan explores in his book, Happy Ever After: Escaping the Myth of the Perfect Life, is that the narrative for women — that we need a man, a ring on it and kids to be happy — can lead to women who actually don’t want those things to feel like something’s wrong with them, which will likely make they feel unhappy.
In other words, being unmarried or child-free isn’t the source of any unhappiness per se — it’s more about how they are being judged for those choices that causes problems:
An overwhelming majority of us report considering marriage as part of our ideal lifestyle and we often project this preference on to others, too. An unmarried 40-year-old is “unlucky” or has yet to meet “the one”: as if being married is something for all of us, and that there is some one — one person out there for every one of us. This is willfully overoptimistic. Any given relationship is much more likely to end than it is to result in living happily ever after.
Of course most relationships end, otherwise we’d still be with the very first person we fell in love with — and, yes, there are some people who are but not the majority of us. We need to acknowledge that!
Bye-bye ‘fairy-tale’ narrative
So what does Dolan suggest?
First, parents can “warn their children about the dangerous fairy-tale narrative that love always means living happily ever after. This would then result in less psychological, financial and health-related support being required for the eventual fallout from a less-than-perfect marriage.”
That may work but anyone who’s raised kids knows that they don’t always listen to their parents. And while they may ask you about how the two of you met and become enthralled with your love story, they’re going to gather a lot more information from TV, books, movies, their peers and the world at large.
Schools could address it, too, he says, providing teens with “the basic facts on love.” Since we can’t even do a good job with sex-ed, as this government pushes for more abstinence-only training (including laws that say homosexuality are not an “acceptable lifestyle”), I don’t feel too confident.
But he also suggests that society needs to rethink the way we privilege a couple’s romantic/sexual life over other ways of living. Bingo!
It can, instead, allow for a range of different contracts between two or more individuals, so that people can specify the rights and responsibilities in the relationship that best suit their unique set of circumstances. Where the state does intervene in family matters, it should focus directly on strengthening the relationships that each parent has with their children. In this way, governments can focus on what really matters — strong parenthood to the benefit of children — without having to interfere in the relationship between the parents.
Does that sound familiar? It does to me. It’s exactly what my co-author and I present in The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels — individualized contracts that speak to the values and goals of the couple, no one else, and that may or may not require “ever after” (although “happily” most certainly is an essential part of the equation). And that includes parenting prenups, which ensure that a couple’s children will get all the love, time and attention from each parent no matter the parents’ marital or romantic/sexual status.
What does happiness have to do with it?
But here’s another thing — Dolan is considered an expert on human behavior and happiness. So why would an expert on happiness want to basically tear apart our concept of happily-ever-after marriage and reimagine it as contracts, which many see as too formal, businesslike and, well, not romantic? Why would he suggest that women not seek marriage or kids if they want to have a happy life?
What exactly does the good professor have against marriage and kids?
Nothing. He just wants us to think about what’s driving our desire to marry and have children, and if there are other ways to have a happy life that don’t involve such a narrow view of what will truly make us happy (I’d actually prefer to see it as what will give us meaning and joy, as happiness isn’t static; it comes and goes). He’s asking that we forget about the societal narrative we’ve internalized and the judgment if we stray from it and, instead, think for ourselves what would be our most authentic life. And then go out and live it.
That’s exactly why Susan and I wrote The New I Do.
There’s no right or wrong way to be. Relationships, romantic or not, don’t have to look a certain way. A fulfilling life doesn’t have to follow the romantic fairy-tale script. But it can — if that’s what you want. And that’s OK, too.
Want to individualize your marriage? (Of course you do!) Then read The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels (Seal Press). You can support your local indie bookstore (please do) or order it on Amazon.
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