Mini-Brooks Minds The Happiness Gap

There’s a good post and thread over at Language Log today about Ross Douthat’s latest New York Times column, “Liberated and Unhappy”. In this column, Douthat takes Stevenson and Wolfers’s "happiness gap" working paper (“The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness”) at face value and concludes that what we need in this country is some good old "sexual stigma".

Mark Liberman points out that Douthat

seems to have decided to follow David Brooks' example in crafting columns that turn small statistical differences into generic statements about groups, accompanied by meditations on the cultural and political implications.

I couldn’t agree more. Why the NYT wants two David Brookses is a mystery of the especially annoying sort.

The point of Liberman’s post is mostly to question the validity of the data that Douthat accepts uncritically. So please, go read the whole thing. It's short and the discussion is good.

What I want to do here is take a closer look at Douthat's language and the assumptions behind it. Douthat begins by accepting the premise that women's happiness is falling worldwide. He then moves on to speculate about why that might be. First, he whips out the old high school debate tactic of bringing up the explanation he does not believe in order to shoot it down:

Again, maybe the happiness numbers are being tipped downward by a mounting female workload — the famous “second shift,” in which women continue to do the lion’s share of household chores even as they’re handed more and more workplace responsibility. It’s certainly possible — but as Wolfers and Stevenson point out, recent surveys actually show similar workload patterns for men and women over all.

I have not paid $5 to download the working paper, so I do not know if Wolfers and Stevenson do in fact claim that workloads are equal for men and women, or if their data are convincing. But notice that Douthat breezily dismisses the very concept of a second shift, without feeling the need to argue his point.

Douthat then evokes stereotypes — "female"s are anxious and afraid of risk; the EU is a nurturing cluster of nanny-states— in a phony attempt at presenting a balanced consideration of the evidence:

Or perhaps the problem is political — maybe women prefer egalitarian, low-risk societies, and the cowboy capitalism of the Reagan era had an anxiety-inducing effect on the American female. But even in the warm, nurturing, egalitarian European Union, female happiness has fallen relative to men’s across the last three decades.

All this ambiguity lends itself to broad-brush readings.

Please note that the "ambiguity" to which Douthat refers is that surrounding the explanation for the happiness gap, not to the the ambiguity of the data for the happiness gap's existence. I will return to this point later.

Let's skip to Douthat's conclusion:

[Conservatives and Liberals] should also be able to agree that the steady advance of single motherhood threatens the interests and happiness of women. Here the public-policy options are limited; some kind of social stigma is a necessity. But a new-model stigma shouldn’t (and couldn’t) look like the old sexism. There’s no necessary reason why feminists and cultural conservatives can’t join forces — in the same way that they made common cause during the pornography wars of the 1980s — behind a social revolution that ostracizes serial baby-daddies and trophy-wife collectors as thoroughly as the “fallen women” of a more patriarchal age.

No reason, of course, save the fact that contemporary America doesn’t seem willing to accept sexual stigma, period. We simply don’t have the stomach for permanently ostracizing the sexually irresponsible — be they a pregnant starlet, a thrice-divorced tycoon, or even a prostitute-hiring politician.

In this sense, ours is a kinder, gentler, more forgiving country than it was 40 years ago. But for half the public, it’s an unhappier country as well. (emphasis by SKM)

Here is a quick summary of the top 10 unsubstantiated assumptions just in Douthat's final three paragraphs:

1. Social control by stigma is necessary
2. The "old sexism" is over and done with, to the degree that today's social stigmas "couldn't" even resemble it.
3. Parenthood is motherhood/parenting is women's work and will always be so
4. Mothers without husbands are necessarily less happy than married mothers
5. The pornography question is all settled
6. Various class and race assumptions surrounding use of the phrases "serial baby daddies" and "trophy-wife collectors"
7. The narrative of the "fallen woman" has vanished, now that the patriarchy is mostly over!
8. There is no sexual stigma in America
9. America is kinder and gentler due to this lack of sexual stigma
10. To reiterate the foregone conclusion: women are less happy than men

What is my point? Let's return to the Language Log thread for a second. I agree with Language Log commenter Tlönista, who writes,

Say Douthat really wanted to make a go of it, rather than grabbing at the nearest study to justify his pre-existing beliefs. It's probably better to examine our progress on particular things women's rights activists are pushing for, like gay marriage, parental leave, better health care, equal pay, and more humane policies for immigrants and sex workers. But that would be a terrible lot of work, more than you could demand of a humble NYT op-ed columnist who doesn't even know that feminism is still a going concern.

Commenter Dan Lufkin then responds, in part to Tlönista,

I just finished reading Douthat's piece for myself and I think that he carries the argument much better than LL has given him credit for. He notes that the data's not overwhelming and that the ambiguity lends itself to a broad-brush treatment, which he then proceeds to dish up. He outlines the arguments for both the traditionalist and the feminist views, erects and knocks down a few straw men on both sides, and points to one aspect — balance of work and family — where both sides have a common interest.

I find it hard to tease out any of Douthat's pre-existing personal beliefs here. He's produced a workmanlike essay that brings an interesting observation to our attention, given it some context and invited us to think about it. I don't see any evidence that he doesn't know that feminism is still a going concern. He specifically says that American society doesn't make enough accommodation to the specific challenges of motherhood. The poor guy has just a few column-inches to make his case and I think he's done a good job of it.

I disagree.

First, Douthat's "ambiguity" refers not to "the data" for the happiness gap but to the social explanations for those data. Douthat certainly lines up feminist and social-conservative straw men, but I don't see where he knocks any down. Rather, he waves his hands about how "There’s evidence to fit each of these narratives. But there’s also room for both."

My numbered list above makes it clear why I don't "find it hard to tease out any of Douthat's pre-existing personal beliefs" and why I do see "evidence that [Douthat] doesn't know that feminism is still a going concern" (see especially numbers 2,3,5,7, and 8).

In pondering the annoying mystery of why Douthat has a job at the NYT, it occurs to me that Dan Lufkin’s comment presents a possible explanation. I think Lufkin's well-written and apparently thoughtful response is the majority view. In other words, most people just aren't reading Douthat all that closely, probably due to Douthat's deployment of commonly accepted stereotypes and his superficial attempts to present both sides of the issue in a sympathetic yet dispassionate tone (he's sort of a master concern troll).

Perhaps Douthat has the capacity to think beyond stereotypes, but he has no motivation to do so, and so he does not.

A note about comments: it is not my purpose to hold Language Log commenter Lufkin up for ridicule, so please follow my lead on that. I think Lufkin’s point of view is likely the majority one, so I was using his clearly-expressed comment as a call to my response.

Finally, let’s have some compassion for poor Mr. Douthat. Life is tough when your surname is a portmanteau of “douchebag” and “asshat”.