The argument this guy attempts to make is just all over the place.
CNN Video
First, he starts off by saying the "happy" women are those that have no structure in their lives...the ones that don't attempt to juggle the five millions things they have to do that day. They live for the moment. I'm all about living for the moment...but let's be practical here, if all American women decided to just live for the moment, I'm pretty sure families across the nation would implode.
Toward the end of the interview, Buckingham then starts to say that women have too many choices, and these choices lead to stress. Really though, women don't have THAT many choices. And the choices we do have, all come with strings attached. We "decide" to be homemakers--and we can't pay the rent. We "decide" to go to work--and our children go where...into daycare--and then we can't afford to pay the daycare and our rent.
Side note: I put "decide" it quotes because who really knows if it's an actual choice.
However, I think what angered me the most was that the whole time, Buckingham was making it seem like it's the fault of women that we are so unhappy! We try to do too much and stress ourselves out. We should just relax. We try to work AND raise a family. Too many choices!!!!!! I like what Sharon Lerner was touching on though...yes, women have choices (if you call "go to work or lose your home" a choice), but we have NO SUPPORT from society. Maybe this is why we are unhappy?! Thank you, Sharon.
So, yeah,...I can see why women would be unhappy.
I didn't see the video, they've switched it out with something else, but based on what you've wrote this reminds me of Carol Gilligan's critique of (the male-dominated) research on morality development. My memory's a little fuzzy, but I think Piaget and/or Kohlberg had tested "scientifically" the morality of young children and found that boys were more morally sound than girls, or something ridiculous like that. Gilligan pointed out that this proved nothing, just that young girls didn't tend to subscribe to Piaget's/Kohlberg's beliefs on morality. I guess my point is that until someone comes up with an objective, non-gender biased, measure of happiness, any such study is unscientific at best.
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