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First of all, I'm not shocked that conservative self-report, and that's the important thing, being more happy than liberals. The whole conservative worldview is that God, family, etc. all inhrently will make you happy, so why would say, a 29-year old conservative woman in rural Nebraska who got married at 21, and has a middle-class exurban life with a couple of kids and such admit to being depressed or unhappy, when she's been told that the whole undergirding of her world means she should be happy with what she has.
I do actually think a lot of current studies that basically try to paint liberal women and teenage girls as basically abnormal are at best, being misinterpeted by conservatives, as argued in this NYT piece - https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/23/opinion/cdc-teenagers.html. As pointed out in that piece, twenty-five days, back in the 90's, now considered the Good Old Days, there was the same worry and overreaction. At least now, we largely don't have doctors telling girls with eating disorders, 'at least you're losing weight.'
As for studies showing women happier in the 50's, I'm happy to say most studies about anybody who wasn't a straight white male in the 50's I view with suspicion at best, but even if they are true, so be it - people have the freedom to make choices that make them unhappy.
I actually thnk the secret is the people who are actually probably happiest are moderates/apathetic/apolitical secular suburbanites, who may have been divorced, had multiple partners, smoke pot, but also drive an SUV, BBQ, etc.
But again, even if you were right about why that is, you're stuck with explaining why liberals used to be happier.
Academia is absolutely dominated by leftwingers, particularly in the social sciences, if anything their bias goes against painting teenage girls as abnormal, they're definitely not setting out to do so.
I made it about half way through that article, I can't say it contains a lot of substance. Where are the parts showing the study is being misinterpreted?
Yes, and? Seems like they were right and things only got worse?
Yes, we now tell these same girls that they're stunning and brave boys, and refer them for mastectomies.
It's a bit unfair to open with a relatively small and addressable objection like selection bias, when there's a much bigger one directly behind it like "I just don't trust studies from the 50's". OK, I generally don't trust studies that don't meet the criterion of embarrassment. Like I said, I'm happy to throw out the majority of social science, but this cannot be done selectively.
Sure, but my question is should we be advising people tomake choices which we know will make them unhappy?
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