Who are happier: liberal or conservative women?
New York Times best-selling author, psychologist, and doctor, Leonard Sax, spoke at the first annual Forge Conference last Saturday in downtown Des Moines. He presented a sobering picture of the unhappy state of girls and young women in the U.S., as well as practical ways to do something about it.
Dr. Sax plunges the depths of the subject in the revised second edition of his book, “Girls on the Edge;” the second edition of “Why Gender Matters;” and “The Collapse of Parenting.”
He highlighted the issues at the conference, beginning with something most of us have observed: compared to previous generations, teenage girls are more anxious today. They are more likely to suffer from eating disorders and abuse alcohol. They are more likely to cut themselves, a practice know as non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). Overall, they are depressed.
Dr. Sax provided links to scholarly research, such as the Teen Mental Health Review, which shows these depressive pathologies began to skyrocket around 2011.
What changed?
The big question is why? Clearly, something changed fourteen years ago. What was it that led to this unhappy state of girls?
Instagram. The app launched in 2010, and data shows rapid upticks in the pathologies described above within a few years. Smart phones expanded the reach of Instagram to vulnerable teenage girls, who were increasingly sexualized by social media influences.
Dr. Sax referred to scholars on this subject, Susan Herring and Sanja Kapidzic, who concluded:
“In their visual presentations girls most often choose pictures that indicate a desire to appear attractive and sexually appealing.”
What can go wrong with too much social media and sexualized content?
- Lack of parental control
- Risky behavior, such as sexting and cyberbullying
- Exposure to inappropriate content
- Lack of privacy
The question is: how much social media time should parents allow their daughters each day? Dr. Sax said the answer USED to be 30 minutes or less per day. Bad outcomes kick in at about 40 minutes per day, according to research published in the Psychiatric Quarterly in June 2019.
In the intervening six years since that research was published, TikTok entered the social media milieu with profound impact.
In a piece published with the Institute for Family Studies, Dr. Sax explains that the TikTok algorithm is so intuitive that young people say it’s as if “TikTok can read my mind.” Or … “Tik Tok knew I was bisexual before I did.”
In other words, as the headline suggests, TikTok influences behavior in ways that aren’t always healthy, as Dr. Sax points out.
So what should parents do?
Dr. Sax suggests:
- Take time to have frank conversations with your daughters about the dangers of TikTok (and all social media). These platforms are not necessarily good authorities.
- Do not allow children under thirteen to use social media.
- Limit exposure to 30 minutes per or less for Instagram, and ten to fifteen minutes per day for TikTok.
- Install monitoring apps. Click some of the links above for more detail on various apps. Be aware that kids are smart. Some set up two TikTok accounts: one that their parents monitor, and another without parental oversight. Can parental oversight be a lot of work? Yes, but the health of your children is worth it.
Ultimately, Dr. Sax says that strong bonds across generations are priceless to raising healthy, happy children. Boys need a community of men just as girls need a community of women: moms, grandmas, great grandmas, aunts, family friends. We live in a culture of disrespect and intergenerational bonds help to cultivate respect. They help to avoid and overcome the unhappy state of girls.
Why some women are happier than others
In writing this piece, we ran across a recent study, also reported on in the Institute of Family Studies, which shows a happiness gap based on ideological difference in women. The study says:
“We found that 37% of conservative women reported being “completely satisfied” with life, whereas only 12% of liberal women did. Young conservative women are three times as likely to report being very satisfied with life compared to young liberal women. Moreover, liberal women are two to three times more likely to report they are “not satisfied” with their lives, compared to conservative women. And consistent with previous research, the effect of ideology on young women’s happiness held up to controls for age, education, race, and income.”
Social psychologists like Jonathan Haidt blame the divide on “technologically-induced negative thinking.” We’ve written on the devastating impact that climate hysteria has had on young women, which affects liberal women more than conservative ones.
Another difference
The Institute of Family Studies found another difference which explains half the happiness gap between liberal and conservative women. Conservative women are more likely to be married and attend church services.
This blog has written on the physical and mental health advantages of marriage, so the Institute’s interpretation makes sense.
But there’s more to the story
What defines the ideological difference between liberal and conservative women? Gratitude vs ingratitude.
Liberal American women are likely to be believe that their country is systemically racist and broken, one that should be thrown out and rebuilt in their image. They are ungrateful for the prosperity they enjoy, when compared to other countries.
Conservative women are more likely to be grateful for their freedoms, their prosperity, and their security. They’re more likely embrace the national creed of God-given fundamental rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Liberal women are more likely to embrace a secular creed of Choice, Equality, and Pursuit of Lifestyle Choice, a value system often at odds with the Judeo-Christian values from which happiness flows.
Conservative radio talk show host, Dennis Prager, wrote a delightful little book in 1998 titled, “Happiness is a Serious Problem.” He wrote:
“Yes, there is a secret to happiness, and it is gratitude. All happy people are grateful, and ungrateful people cannot be happy. We tend to think that it is being unhappy that leads people to complain, but it is truer to say that it is complaining that leads to people becoming unhappy. Become grateful and you will become a much happier person.”
Perhaps this explains at least a little bit of the unhappy state of girls and women.
Check out the links in this blogpost for a deeper dive into the wisdom Dr. Leonard Sax offers when it comes to raising your families. His books are a goldmine of sound insights to dealing with this toxic culture.
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