June 3, 2009 • 18 mins
An objective measure of happiness is difficult to come by, but researchers say there are definite trends. Sometimes men are happier, and sometimes women are. Explore the science of happiness in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From House Towards dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristin and Kristin they we're
(00:21):
gonna talk about happiness. So I wanted to stay in
a good mood. But I do have a small confession
to make to you. Okay, sometimes when I am in
the vicinity of your home, which I know where it is,
but I won't stay on the podcast. Thank you, Molly.
I'm compelled to like Robert, to like Robert and to
rob your house. There's one thing that I would want
to take from your house if I could. I think
(00:43):
I know what that is, Molly, because the last time
you were at my house you tried to steal it. Yeah.
It's this year book picture of Kristen. It's the most
adorable photo ever because I was an adorable child. But
she's wasn't third grade, no, Molly, that was thin. That
was um K four. Okay, so she's around that age.
(01:03):
She's young and cute, and she just got the biggest
screen you could possibly imagine. Yeah, I was really proud
of myself at that phase because I just lost both
my front teeth, and I had a rock and mullet,
and I was wearing my favorite T shirt dress if
my mom had made me with matching bow, and that
picture was taken right after playtime as well, so I
(01:28):
I was just as happy as it could be. A
rainy to go. Yeah, it's it's the kind of photo
that I would want to, like try and sell to
an photo agency because they could use it as the
stereotypical happy child. Whereas my yearbook photos, the smiles a
little bit more forced. I'm usually caught off guard by
the photographer. It's doesn't capture my true happy essence. Well, Molly, um,
(01:50):
researchers have been doing a lot of investigation into how
much your smile reflects authentic happiness. Did you know, because
right now the science of happiness is exploding. It started
back in the nineteen nineties with a guy named Martin Seligmann,
who is the former president of the American Psychological Association,
(02:11):
and he decided that instead of figuring out why people
become depressed and looking so much at these negative emotions,
why not find out more about happiness and what makes
us happy and what are the what are the characteristics
shared among the happiest people. So we have this new branch,
relatively new branch of psychology called positive psychology that really
(02:33):
focuses on the science of happiness. Um. And they pay
a lot of attention to smiles. You've run across some
of these studies, right, Molly. Yeah. I found this study
recently about you know, they basically go back to these
yearbook They're going to go back and look at adorable
little Kristen and semi for smiling little Molly, and they
might look at us in like twenty years and see
if we're still married. They're saying that, you know, your
(02:54):
marriage can predict your I mean, your smile can predict
your marital success, which is a lot of eight to
put on like a five year old child. I really
hope one day to say to my kid, better smile
or you're getting divorced. That's life lesson there, Molly, that
you'll impart to your children. Um. Yeah. Speaking of these
smile studies, there was there was one that I found
(03:15):
that tracked a hundred and forty one high school seniors
into middle age. And I think these were all uh,
female students, and they characterized the smiles and the photographs
is either do Shane smiles which are caused by more
muscle contractions and reflect authentic joy supposedly like Kristen's photo,
like my photo, I was just a Douchhane child, um,
(03:38):
whereas Molly probably had more of a Pan American smile,
which is a little more rigid and pose, not little forced,
little forced Molly so um. In the study they found
that down the road, the study found that the dou
Shane smilers reported more of life satisfaction and had more
marital relationship success than the Pan American smiles, which I say,
(04:01):
take it or leave it. I mean, you know that's
you can read your book. Photo really really predict that much. Well,
that's the thing about studying happiness in general is it's
so subjective. You know. The best they can say is that,
you know, if you smile authentically when you're a child,
it just means that you might be a happier person overall,
which means that once you get married, you might be
more willing to work it out, have a positive outlook
(04:24):
on your marriage. So it's it's a lot of sort
of gross generalizations. In my opinion. But you can't deny
that everyone's studying happiness. Who can get a grant to
do so. They're studying whether certain cultures are happier, whether
you know, certain ages are happier. And of course this
comes down to one of the biggest differences of all
and that's why we're going to discuss it today. Are
men or women happier? And Uh, there were a lot
(04:47):
of large scale happiness studies that have been going on,
like you mentioned global studies. UH. For instance, Um, there's
this thing called the UH I think it's the World
Happiness Map that has mapped out happiest places in the world.
Denmark is is number one. I don't know why, but
they are. So maybe I'm gonna go to Denmark for
my next vacation. Um. And they've broken down these all
(05:10):
this data into male and female trends. And overall, in
a lot of these large scale surveys, as a group,
women come out on top a little bit, a little
bit more happy. Yeah. Um. And this is based on
the Pew Global Attitudes Project that surveyed thousand men and
(05:30):
women across forty four countries and the Nielsen Happiness Survey
that was conducted in fifty one countries, but mollly once
we start breaking those groups down into different age groups
and different nationalities, some differences do emerge. Correct right, women
from certain countries, including kind of surprisingly to US, Pakistan, Japan,
(05:52):
and Argentina are much much happier than the men living there.
It seems like the women in these surveys tended to
focus more on personal and domestic issues that they might
have more control over. Right where they're saying, the men
are just burdened by the weight of the world, and
they look out and there's you know, their a wars,
(06:14):
there's a recession, and that weighs more heavily on the men,
whereas women are just worried about grocery shopping. But see then,
once you kind of flip that and take these sort
of ideas about what men and women are preoccupied with
and take it to the United States, that's where the
women don't hold up quite as well. University of Pennsylvania
researchers in two thousand and eight found that American women
(06:35):
today aren't as happy as they were thirty years ago.
And this is kind of surprising when you look at
happiness data for Americans in general, because We've been doing
these kind of surveys since about nineteen seventy nineteen seventy two,
and Americans happiness level has been just pretty much flat line.
We haven't We're about as happy as we were thirty
(06:56):
years ago, supposedly, but women aren't as doing quite as well.
And like you said, it's it's pretty surprising because think
of all the things that women have accomplished in the
past thirty years. You know, we've got a lot more
women in the workplace, which seems to indicate that women
have more license to sort of follow their dreams, have
a career beyond equal footing with men that you know,
they're not just sitting at home raising children. Uh. And
(07:18):
so some you know, in my mind kind of snotty
researchers are saying, you know, those fifty stereotypical housewives didn't
know what they're missing. They were kind of blindly happy,
and now that women are getting out in the workforce
and having dreams come true or not come true, they're
they're less happy. Basically, Yeah, the horizons are broadened, so
you have more of an idea of what you don't
have right than you know, a more limited sphere of
(07:40):
things that you can control. The University of Pennsylvania researchers
equated this shift in mood or happiness of women American
women UM to a nation that has gone from a
four percent to twelve point five percent unemployment rate. It's
that same kind of drop morale, and it's not just
(08:01):
you know, the University of Pennsylvania. Maybe they're just you know, unhappy,
But they found the same thing at Princeton, so maybe
the whole Northeast is unhappy. But basically, what Princeton did
was they looked at common activities like gardening and watching television,
things that should make you happy, um, versus things that
you just sort of have to do, like paying bills,
(08:22):
household chores, and it seemed that women were spending more
time on the ungratifying task, about ninety more minutes than
men on average. So some researchers say that this might
reflect more still, the second shift idea that women have
to work that's very gratifying to them. They go off
to work, they might be happy with that, but then
they've got to come home and have this second job
taking care of the house, whereas men have been able
(08:44):
to sort of just stay with the same level of housework, job,
sitting in from the television, and mollly if you if
you look at this research broken out into the different
activities that men and women are doing. I think it
also reflects the impact of the aging humor population. A
lot of these women are now having to not only
come home and possibly care for children, but they're also
(09:06):
having to care for aging parents. There is a pretty
stark contrast between the enjoyment level of from between men
and women of having spending time with their parents. Percent
of women found time with parents as being more burdensome
and more of a chore, whereas when the seven percent
of men found it to be enjoyable. Unenjoyable in this
(09:27):
in this survey because they're less likely to be the
main caregiver so they can go over watch television, hang out,
Whereas if a woman goes over, she might be more
likely to be paying all their bills, um, you know,
arranging medications for the week. And so what this research
really kind of indicates is that women have a lot
more staff to juggle, a lot more like, yes, they
have this new career that might be fulfilling, but it's
(09:48):
a ball in the air with all these other balls
exactly um, and when you break down specific age groups
of women, there is yet another interesting trend that emerges
because at for ears, when we're younger and Molly, you
and I are in our mid twenties right now, if
we average it all out, we are going to be
probably happier than men at this age. And hooray, hooray, yeah,
(10:12):
which I mean it's a pretty generalized statement, but the
thinking behind that is women are more apt in their
younger years to get things that they'll find more fulfilling,
such as, you know, finding mate and settling down, starting
a family, building a home, whereas men are at the
bottom of their career ladders and having to slowly, painfully
(10:33):
climb up it and try to make more and more money.
Which I don't know that I buy that completely, but
that is the general logic behind it. But there's a
study in the Journal of Happiness Studies that established forty
eight at the age of forty eight when men's happiness
actually starts to overtake women's happiness. And so while women
(10:53):
are on this downward slope, the men and then the
meantime have gotten into management positions. Life is just gonna
long And then to even add to their happiness at
age sixty four, men appreciate their families even more than women. Yeah,
it's like they're finally at the top of their careers.
They can kind of kick back. Hopefully they've saved up
for retirement and now they can really start looking around
(11:15):
them and saying, hey, look at my beautiful family, look
at maybe my young, adorable grandchildren. This is so great.
And women are still supposedly grappling with uh you know, identity. Yeah,
unfulfilled dreams and identity. Uh thanks researchers. Yeah, but but Molly,
(11:35):
it's not all bad. Tell me why. Well, okay, first
of all, all these happiness surveys, I mean, it's just
you're gonna find conflicting results in them, such as a
two thousand eight University College of London survey found that
women over fifty years old we're more optimistic than their
male counterparts. So it might depend where you live. Yeah,
(11:55):
it could be geography. Maybe it's just the American dream
ain't so cheerful after all for the ladies. Dark Kristen,
But I know you like darkness because you like the
idea of anti happiness, right, I do a little bit.
There's this whole idea of positive, positive psychology and searching
for the new science of happiness has kind of been
overblown so much that there's now this kind of backlash
(12:19):
of anti happiness literature that's coming out and saying, hey, Okay,
we all want to be happy, and that's fine, well
and good, but let's not forget that sometimes the best
times in life are met because you've overcome a struggle,
and like, there can be definite value in having to
overcome hardships in life that make things really worth living
(12:41):
and really genuinely joyful. So but I mean, we'll go
ahead and buy into this happiness idea, and I know
that you are very much in love with the Grant Study. Yeah,
there's this uh awesome study And yes, I just said
awesome study. Um it's a seven me two years study
that's taken place at Harvard University that tracked over two
(13:04):
hundred male students since they were freshmen at Harvard. And now,
I mean a lot of these guys have actually gone
and they died. A lot of them are, you know,
an old age in their eighties, and it has tracked
their happiness throughout life to try to find out what
what makes a happy man. And one of the biggest
(13:27):
findings that's come out of this research, because you know,
these are Harvard graduates. They had some of them, didn't
all have you know, uh, wealthy upbrings, but they leaving Harvard,
you would think that they were all kind of on
the equal footing to succeed at the end of the
day seventy two years later, the biggest finding from the
study is that it's not social aptitude or intelligence or
(13:50):
social class that leads to happy aging relationships Molly relationship
matter more than anything else. And this is something that
I've seen in all of these happiness articles that have
come out. At the end of the day, the biggest
predictor of happiness isn't male or female, or smart or
unintelligent or what have you. It's the social networks that
(14:13):
you build. It's when things go wrong, are you going
to have a network there to help you recover? Sounds good.
So if I could sum up everything I've learned so
far in this podcast, you can just smile big for
your yearbook photo, and then when you order the prints,
you give them to as many people as possible to
start building your social networks. Right there, you go and
pass your yearbook around to get them to sign them
(14:34):
so you build, yeah, make more friends. And Molly, we
do have one more silver lining for all of this
happiness research. By and large, when we get older, people
are just happy people. Older people, male or female, are
happier than younger people. And that's because, you know, despite
(14:56):
maybe unfulfilled career dreams or hardships along the way. Hopefully
by the time we're in our seventies, we can sit
back and look at all the things that have happened
and say, well, I made it this far. That's something
to be happy about. And if all else fails, just
look at cute pictures of kittens on the internet. Kittens.
(15:18):
That's happy. That's very happy. Hey, you know what makes
me happy talking at the same time, um, listener mail.
Listener mail is very happy. Making Yeah, listener mail will nice.
Listener mail at least makes Molly and me happier than
a lot of other things at work, it seems. So
let's read some mail. So, uh, first mail I wanted
(15:42):
to read came as a response to our is Roller
Derby Sport or Spectacle podcast. It's from Monica, who writes,
thanks so much for doing an episode on Roller Derby
and explaining what the current sport is like today. Um,
people still have so many misconceptions as to what Derby
is and she thinks that we are for after when
we said it is sport and spectacle. She says, it's
(16:03):
insanely hard work, it's athletic, it's sexy, it's empowering. And
then Christian special message to you, since you were talking
about your roller Derby dreams, she told you don't give
up on skating. Monica just started skating for the first
time last November. She was all over the rank, falling
and being latched by five year olds and she assumed
she was crazy for you've been trying. But just a
couple of months later, she's a skater. She can pick
(16:24):
it up, So do not give up. I would say,
if you want to see kristin roller Derby, let's write in.
Let's make it a rite in campaign. Thank you Monica
for those encouraging words. We had another former roller girl
rock Still a rampage of the Jet City roller Girls
right in and she said, I've listened to your podcast
about roller Derby, and one important thing that was not
mentioned was the amount of time that these women dedicate
(16:46):
to the sport. As a former roller girl, I would
spend a minimum of six hours each week for practice
and or bouts, and that was at the low end
of time dedicated to the sport. This is not the
type of hobby for people who are just looking to
be a weekend warrior. And I will say that when
I talked to Tania Hyde with the Atlanta roller Girls,
that was one thing we talked about was that girls
(17:07):
are out there skating probably five times a week, so
I mean, and that's I'm sure that's at least six hours.
So these these women are always out there skating, getting
better and then competing in bouts. So something for you
to keep in mind. Christen, Yes, time management. And then
one last email. We do not have this person's name,
but we loved the email. She listened to the podcast
(17:27):
What does a Feminist look Like and she quite agreed
with a lot of what we talked about, particularly about
how modern day women do not want to be labeled
as feminist because of the negativity surrounding the word, especially teenagers.
She wrote, I usually do not like labels and especially stereotypes,
but I am proud to call myself a feminist. I
am Mexican, which is very male dominated culture, and that
(17:47):
has influenced my beliefs, especially I do not shave my legs,
but I don't mind wearing a little black dress now
and then I am fifteen that I've been voicing my
opinions on the subject ever since I was young and
at times naive ten year old, and the podcast inspired
her to go out and buy a this is what
a feminist looks like t shirts? So fifteen year old
ready to put the feminist label on her, even with
(18:09):
the negative stereotypes. And I'm sure she was not that
naive at ten year old. Yes, sounds verymature, awesome. So
if you guys want to write us, I've got an
email address. It's Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com.
And if you want to read more about happiness and
how to get happy, you should head on over to
(18:31):
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com?
Want more how stuff works? Check out our blogs on
the house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to
you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready,
(18:53):
are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From House Towards dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Molly and I'm Kristin and Kristin they we're
(00:21):
gonna talk about happiness. So I wanted to stay in
a good mood. But I do have a small confession
to make to you. Okay, sometimes when I am in
the vicinity of your home, which I know where it is,
but I won't stay on the podcast. Thank you, Molly.
I'm compelled to like Robert, to like Robert and to
rob your house. There's one thing that I would want
to take from your house if I could. I think
(00:43):
I know what that is, Molly, because the last time
you were at my house you tried to steal it. Yeah.
It's this year book picture of Kristen. It's the most
adorable photo ever because I was an adorable child. But
she's wasn't third grade, no, Molly, that was thin. That
was um K four. Okay, so she's around that age.
(01:03):
She's young and cute, and she just got the biggest
screen you could possibly imagine. Yeah, I was really proud
of myself at that phase because I just lost both
my front teeth, and I had a rock and mullet,
and I was wearing my favorite T shirt dress if
my mom had made me with matching bow, and that
picture was taken right after playtime as well, so I
(01:28):
I was just as happy as it could be. A
rainy to go. Yeah, it's it's the kind of photo
that I would want to, like try and sell to
an photo agency because they could use it as the
stereotypical happy child. Whereas my yearbook photos, the smiles a
little bit more forced. I'm usually caught off guard by
the photographer. It's doesn't capture my true happy essence. Well, Molly, um,
(01:50):
researchers have been doing a lot of investigation into how
much your smile reflects authentic happiness. Did you know, because
right now the science of happiness is exploding. It started
back in the nineteen nineties with a guy named Martin Seligmann,
who is the former president of the American Psychological Association,
(02:11):
and he decided that instead of figuring out why people
become depressed and looking so much at these negative emotions,
why not find out more about happiness and what makes
us happy and what are the what are the characteristics
shared among the happiest people. So we have this new branch,
relatively new branch of psychology called positive psychology that really
(02:33):
focuses on the science of happiness. Um. And they pay
a lot of attention to smiles. You've run across some
of these studies, right, Molly. Yeah. I found this study
recently about you know, they basically go back to these
yearbook They're going to go back and look at adorable
little Kristen and semi for smiling little Molly, and they
might look at us in like twenty years and see
if we're still married. They're saying that, you know, your
(02:54):
marriage can predict your I mean, your smile can predict
your marital success, which is a lot of eight to
put on like a five year old child. I really
hope one day to say to my kid, better smile
or you're getting divorced. That's life lesson there, Molly, that
you'll impart to your children. Um. Yeah. Speaking of these
smile studies, there was there was one that I found
(03:15):
that tracked a hundred and forty one high school seniors
into middle age. And I think these were all uh,
female students, and they characterized the smiles and the photographs
is either do Shane smiles which are caused by more
muscle contractions and reflect authentic joy supposedly like Kristen's photo,
like my photo, I was just a Douchhane child, um,
(03:38):
whereas Molly probably had more of a Pan American smile,
which is a little more rigid and pose, not little forced,
little forced Molly so um. In the study they found
that down the road, the study found that the dou
Shane smilers reported more of life satisfaction and had more
marital relationship success than the Pan American smiles, which I say,
(04:01):
take it or leave it. I mean, you know that's
you can read your book. Photo really really predict that much. Well,
that's the thing about studying happiness in general is it's
so subjective. You know. The best they can say is that,
you know, if you smile authentically when you're a child,
it just means that you might be a happier person overall,
which means that once you get married, you might be
more willing to work it out, have a positive outlook
(04:24):
on your marriage. So it's it's a lot of sort
of gross generalizations. In my opinion. But you can't deny
that everyone's studying happiness. Who can get a grant to
do so. They're studying whether certain cultures are happier, whether
you know, certain ages are happier. And of course this
comes down to one of the biggest differences of all
and that's why we're going to discuss it today. Are
men or women happier? And Uh, there were a lot
(04:47):
of large scale happiness studies that have been going on,
like you mentioned global studies. UH. For instance, Um, there's
this thing called the UH I think it's the World
Happiness Map that has mapped out happiest places in the world.
Denmark is is number one. I don't know why, but
they are. So maybe I'm gonna go to Denmark for
my next vacation. Um. And they've broken down these all
(05:10):
this data into male and female trends. And overall, in
a lot of these large scale surveys, as a group,
women come out on top a little bit, a little
bit more happy. Yeah. Um. And this is based on
the Pew Global Attitudes Project that surveyed thousand men and
(05:30):
women across forty four countries and the Nielsen Happiness Survey
that was conducted in fifty one countries, but mollly once
we start breaking those groups down into different age groups
and different nationalities, some differences do emerge. Correct right, women
from certain countries, including kind of surprisingly to US, Pakistan, Japan,
(05:52):
and Argentina are much much happier than the men living there.
It seems like the women in these surveys tended to
focus more on personal and domestic issues that they might
have more control over. Right where they're saying, the men
are just burdened by the weight of the world, and
they look out and there's you know, their a wars,
(06:14):
there's a recession, and that weighs more heavily on the men,
whereas women are just worried about grocery shopping. But see then,
once you kind of flip that and take these sort
of ideas about what men and women are preoccupied with
and take it to the United States, that's where the
women don't hold up quite as well. University of Pennsylvania
researchers in two thousand and eight found that American women
(06:35):
today aren't as happy as they were thirty years ago.
And this is kind of surprising when you look at
happiness data for Americans in general, because We've been doing
these kind of surveys since about nineteen seventy nineteen seventy two,
and Americans happiness level has been just pretty much flat line.
We haven't We're about as happy as we were thirty
(06:56):
years ago, supposedly, but women aren't as doing quite as well.
And like you said, it's it's pretty surprising because think
of all the things that women have accomplished in the
past thirty years. You know, we've got a lot more
women in the workplace, which seems to indicate that women
have more license to sort of follow their dreams, have
a career beyond equal footing with men that you know,
they're not just sitting at home raising children. Uh. And
(07:18):
so some you know, in my mind kind of snotty
researchers are saying, you know, those fifty stereotypical housewives didn't
know what they're missing. They were kind of blindly happy,
and now that women are getting out in the workforce
and having dreams come true or not come true, they're
they're less happy. Basically, Yeah, the horizons are broadened, so
you have more of an idea of what you don't
have right than you know, a more limited sphere of
(07:40):
things that you can control. The University of Pennsylvania researchers
equated this shift in mood or happiness of women American
women UM to a nation that has gone from a
four percent to twelve point five percent unemployment rate. It's
that same kind of drop morale, and it's not just
(08:01):
you know, the University of Pennsylvania. Maybe they're just you know, unhappy,
But they found the same thing at Princeton, so maybe
the whole Northeast is unhappy. But basically, what Princeton did
was they looked at common activities like gardening and watching television,
things that should make you happy, um, versus things that
you just sort of have to do, like paying bills,
(08:22):
household chores, and it seemed that women were spending more
time on the ungratifying task, about ninety more minutes than
men on average. So some researchers say that this might
reflect more still, the second shift idea that women have
to work that's very gratifying to them. They go off
to work, they might be happy with that, but then
they've got to come home and have this second job
taking care of the house, whereas men have been able
(08:44):
to sort of just stay with the same level of housework, job,
sitting in from the television, and mollly if you if
you look at this research broken out into the different
activities that men and women are doing. I think it
also reflects the impact of the aging humor population. A
lot of these women are now having to not only
come home and possibly care for children, but they're also
(09:06):
having to care for aging parents. There is a pretty
stark contrast between the enjoyment level of from between men
and women of having spending time with their parents. Percent
of women found time with parents as being more burdensome
and more of a chore, whereas when the seven percent
of men found it to be enjoyable. Unenjoyable in this
(09:27):
in this survey because they're less likely to be the
main caregiver so they can go over watch television, hang out,
Whereas if a woman goes over, she might be more
likely to be paying all their bills, um, you know,
arranging medications for the week. And so what this research
really kind of indicates is that women have a lot
more staff to juggle, a lot more like, yes, they
have this new career that might be fulfilling, but it's
(09:48):
a ball in the air with all these other balls
exactly um, and when you break down specific age groups
of women, there is yet another interesting trend that emerges
because at for ears, when we're younger and Molly, you
and I are in our mid twenties right now, if
we average it all out, we are going to be
probably happier than men at this age. And hooray, hooray, yeah,
(10:12):
which I mean it's a pretty generalized statement, but the
thinking behind that is women are more apt in their
younger years to get things that they'll find more fulfilling,
such as, you know, finding mate and settling down, starting
a family, building a home, whereas men are at the
bottom of their career ladders and having to slowly, painfully
(10:33):
climb up it and try to make more and more money.
Which I don't know that I buy that completely, but
that is the general logic behind it. But there's a
study in the Journal of Happiness Studies that established forty
eight at the age of forty eight when men's happiness
actually starts to overtake women's happiness. And so while women
(10:53):
are on this downward slope, the men and then the
meantime have gotten into management positions. Life is just gonna
long And then to even add to their happiness at
age sixty four, men appreciate their families even more than women. Yeah,
it's like they're finally at the top of their careers.
They can kind of kick back. Hopefully they've saved up
for retirement and now they can really start looking around
(11:15):
them and saying, hey, look at my beautiful family, look
at maybe my young, adorable grandchildren. This is so great.
And women are still supposedly grappling with uh you know, identity. Yeah,
unfulfilled dreams and identity. Uh thanks researchers. Yeah, but but Molly,
(11:35):
it's not all bad. Tell me why. Well, okay, first
of all, all these happiness surveys, I mean, it's just
you're gonna find conflicting results in them, such as a
two thousand eight University College of London survey found that
women over fifty years old we're more optimistic than their
male counterparts. So it might depend where you live. Yeah,
(11:55):
it could be geography. Maybe it's just the American dream
ain't so cheerful after all for the ladies. Dark Kristen,
But I know you like darkness because you like the
idea of anti happiness, right, I do a little bit.
There's this whole idea of positive, positive psychology and searching
for the new science of happiness has kind of been
overblown so much that there's now this kind of backlash
(12:19):
of anti happiness literature that's coming out and saying, hey, Okay,
we all want to be happy, and that's fine, well
and good, but let's not forget that sometimes the best
times in life are met because you've overcome a struggle,
and like, there can be definite value in having to
overcome hardships in life that make things really worth living
(12:41):
and really genuinely joyful. So but I mean, we'll go
ahead and buy into this happiness idea, and I know
that you are very much in love with the Grant Study. Yeah,
there's this uh awesome study And yes, I just said
awesome study. Um it's a seven me two years study
that's taken place at Harvard University that tracked over two
(13:04):
hundred male students since they were freshmen at Harvard. And now,
I mean a lot of these guys have actually gone
and they died. A lot of them are, you know,
an old age in their eighties, and it has tracked
their happiness throughout life to try to find out what
what makes a happy man. And one of the biggest
(13:27):
findings that's come out of this research, because you know,
these are Harvard graduates. They had some of them, didn't
all have you know, uh, wealthy upbrings, but they leaving Harvard,
you would think that they were all kind of on
the equal footing to succeed at the end of the
day seventy two years later, the biggest finding from the
study is that it's not social aptitude or intelligence or
(13:50):
social class that leads to happy aging relationships Molly relationship
matter more than anything else. And this is something that
I've seen in all of these happiness articles that have
come out. At the end of the day, the biggest
predictor of happiness isn't male or female, or smart or
unintelligent or what have you. It's the social networks that
(14:13):
you build. It's when things go wrong, are you going
to have a network there to help you recover? Sounds good.
So if I could sum up everything I've learned so
far in this podcast, you can just smile big for
your yearbook photo, and then when you order the prints,
you give them to as many people as possible to
start building your social networks. Right there, you go and
pass your yearbook around to get them to sign them
(14:34):
so you build, yeah, make more friends. And Molly, we
do have one more silver lining for all of this
happiness research. By and large, when we get older, people
are just happy people. Older people, male or female, are
happier than younger people. And that's because, you know, despite
(14:56):
maybe unfulfilled career dreams or hardships along the way. Hopefully
by the time we're in our seventies, we can sit
back and look at all the things that have happened
and say, well, I made it this far. That's something
to be happy about. And if all else fails, just
look at cute pictures of kittens on the internet. Kittens.
(15:18):
That's happy. That's very happy. Hey, you know what makes
me happy talking at the same time, um, listener mail.
Listener mail is very happy. Making Yeah, listener mail will nice.
Listener mail at least makes Molly and me happier than
a lot of other things at work, it seems. So
let's read some mail. So, uh, first mail I wanted
(15:42):
to read came as a response to our is Roller
Derby Sport or Spectacle podcast. It's from Monica, who writes,
thanks so much for doing an episode on Roller Derby
and explaining what the current sport is like today. Um,
people still have so many misconceptions as to what Derby
is and she thinks that we are for after when
we said it is sport and spectacle. She says, it's
(16:03):
insanely hard work, it's athletic, it's sexy, it's empowering. And
then Christian special message to you, since you were talking
about your roller Derby dreams, she told you don't give
up on skating. Monica just started skating for the first
time last November. She was all over the rank, falling
and being latched by five year olds and she assumed
she was crazy for you've been trying. But just a
couple of months later, she's a skater. She can pick
(16:24):
it up, So do not give up. I would say,
if you want to see kristin roller Derby, let's write in.
Let's make it a rite in campaign. Thank you Monica
for those encouraging words. We had another former roller girl
rock Still a rampage of the Jet City roller Girls
right in and she said, I've listened to your podcast
about roller Derby, and one important thing that was not
mentioned was the amount of time that these women dedicate
(16:46):
to the sport. As a former roller girl, I would
spend a minimum of six hours each week for practice
and or bouts, and that was at the low end
of time dedicated to the sport. This is not the
type of hobby for people who are just looking to
be a weekend warrior. And I will say that when
I talked to Tania Hyde with the Atlanta roller Girls,
that was one thing we talked about was that girls
(17:07):
are out there skating probably five times a week, so
I mean, and that's I'm sure that's at least six hours.
So these these women are always out there skating, getting
better and then competing in bouts. So something for you
to keep in mind. Christen, Yes, time management. And then
one last email. We do not have this person's name,
but we loved the email. She listened to the podcast
(17:27):
What does a Feminist look Like and she quite agreed
with a lot of what we talked about, particularly about
how modern day women do not want to be labeled
as feminist because of the negativity surrounding the word, especially teenagers.
She wrote, I usually do not like labels and especially stereotypes,
but I am proud to call myself a feminist. I
am Mexican, which is very male dominated culture, and that
(17:47):
has influenced my beliefs, especially I do not shave my legs,
but I don't mind wearing a little black dress now
and then I am fifteen that I've been voicing my
opinions on the subject ever since I was young and
at times naive ten year old, and the podcast inspired
her to go out and buy a this is what
a feminist looks like t shirts? So fifteen year old
ready to put the feminist label on her, even with
(18:09):
the negative stereotypes. And I'm sure she was not that
naive at ten year old. Yes, sounds verymature, awesome. So
if you guys want to write us, I've got an
email address. It's Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com.
And if you want to read more about happiness and
how to get happy, you should head on over to
(18:31):
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com?
Want more how stuff works? Check out our blogs on
the house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to
you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready,
(18:53):
are you
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.