I‘ve been a money-chasing crazy woman for the last two days as I work to collect on stale invoices from clients who are 60-90 past due. I’m frazzled, tired and frustrated. And yea…I’m not happy.
So, it was timely to see Marcus Buckingham’s recent post, “What’s Happening To Women’s Happiness?“ (I’ll tell ya what’s happening Marcus. I’m not getting paid!)
But in seriousness, I found Marcus’ article to be thoughtful and insightful as I pondered the root cause of women’s declining happiness since 1972, which happens to be the year I was born, but I’m not taking it personally!
Here are two additional trends that challenged my perception, but also caused me to unconsciously nod in agreement:
- Greater educational, political, and employment opportunities have corresponded to decreases in life happiness for women, as compared to men;
- Women begin their life more satisfied than men, and wind up less satisfied;
As I read the details of the research, my mind exploded with the reasons women are increasingly unhappy. Marcus raises some commons ideas: long work hours, gender stereo-types and the burden of the “second shift” (the one that happens after we get off work and must attend to household/family responsibilities). Yet, these are only the external markers of our unhappiness; they fail to fully address the core cause of our unhappiness, which I believe to be much deeper. Marcus must agree, since he closes his article with an enticement to read his follow-up article next week.
But I’ll share my perspective on our collective unhappiness right now. For those of you who have been following The Integrated Mother for some time, you’ll recognize these ideas. I haven’t changed my point of view on managing work and life too much in the last five years:
- Unhappy moms shoot for balance; happy moms go for integration. The traditional view of balance where every aspect of your life is equally distributed and perfectly teetering on a thread is not only impossible, but unhealthy. Like water, life is fluid and prefers to follow the path of least resistance. Stop trying to compartmentalize your life into neat, shiny boxes and seek to integrate your life into a cohesive whole.
- Unhappy moms are nosy; happy moms mind their own business. Comparison ruins moms. Even worse, it ruins a rich community that we can all benefit from. For example, the whole “mommy wars” drama is rooted in comparison between stay-at-home mothers and working mothers. For heaven’s sake, mind your own business!
- Unhappy moms are spread thin; happy moms are focused. There’s a lie that moms are buying into and it’s telling you that multi-tasking makes you more effective and productive. It’s says that looking busy, means you must be important. Sadly, the opposite is true. Multi-tasking moms are frazzled and are in danger of living a life of mediocrity. On the other hand, a happy (or “integrated”) mom focuses her time and energy in a few areas that give her the greatest fulfillment and leverage her unique strengths.
I’d love to hear your take on all this, so do tell.
By the way, you might be interested in reading my post Finding Balance in the Backseat where I offer a reason not to pursue happiness at all.
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I read this and felt as if you were holding up a mirror for me. I fall into many of the categories (except the “nosy” one because I really don’t care what mom A/blogger A is doing. LOL). But I agree that as the opportunities for women increase the more I feel like I have to accomplish. Multi-tasking keeps me unfocused and I always feel like I have to be doing something…
Oh, this hit home!
It seems that there is so much to be done in any given day. The pressure to get it all done with a smile on our faces can be so overwhelming. Plus, as women, it seems our value and worth in society is tied to so many external things: how clean our houses are, how well our kids behave, how nutrition our meals are, etc. etc. It’s a lot to live up to whether it’s internal or external pressure we’re feeling. That’s MHO.
Great post and I can so relate. The pressure to be supermom is huge and I haven’t had a “me” moment in years. I know I’m spreading myself thin while trying to balance it all. But it’s like I can’t stop, part of me says throw in the towel, the other is saying you’re almost there!
I totally agree about minding your business. The “high school” behavior needs to stop. Fortunately I’ve been at work during most of the drama so I usually miss it all.