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SMNTY Classics: Women and Happiness (Part 2) · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
0:06
Speaker 2: I welcome to Stuff'll never told you a production of
0:08
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio and Samantha, you were not here for the last classic,
0:22
Speaker 2: but you know what I brought back.
0:24
Speaker 1: What did you bring back?
0:26
Speaker 2: Are Women in Happiness series that we did, which was
0:30
Speaker 2: a four part series. They were all Monday minis, but
0:34
Speaker 2: I brought it back because they recently the Happiness and
0:37
Speaker 2: Index came out and there was a lot of news
0:40
Speaker 2: about it. The US dropped out of the top twenty
0:43
Speaker 2: for like the first time ever. Surprise, I know, and
0:47
Speaker 2: they were like, yeah, it's election here. But anyway, so
0:51
Speaker 2: I thought we would just continue to bring these back,
0:54
Speaker 2: especially because you and I were just discussing the internet
0:57
Speaker 2: has become such a grim place and we do talk
0:59
Speaker 2: about some some reasons why happiness is a struggle for
1:03
Speaker 2: women sometimes, but we also talk about some good things
1:06
Speaker 2: in these So this is part two of our Women
1:11
Speaker 2: and Happiness series.
1:13
Speaker 1: Please enjoy. Hey, this is Anny and Samantha. I don't
1:22
Speaker 1: come to step. I never told your production of iHeart Radio.
1:33
Speaker 3: And welcome to us going on rants about some of
1:36
Speaker 3: the articles we found on women happiness. So yeah, this
1:40
Speaker 3: is part two.
1:40
Speaker 2: It is a Part two, and I feel like we
1:42
Speaker 2: could have a part three, Part four. We're really hoping
1:44
Speaker 2: to hear from you listeners.
1:45
Speaker 3: Yes we do want to part three with your opinions.
1:49
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, we're due for a listener mail segment, so
1:53
Speaker 2: send those our way. Check out part one if you
1:56
Speaker 2: haven't already, because apparently people have a lot of thoughts
1:59
Speaker 2: on women and the happiness and it's not great.
2:03
Speaker 3: It's not great. So picking back up, Yeah, we did
2:06
Speaker 3: recently just read a couple of articles. One was specifically
2:10
Speaker 3: about the fact that feminism was killing happiness, essentially from
2:17
Speaker 3: twenty one article written from a conservative perspective and about
2:21
Speaker 3: why you know, happiness can be found through utilizing our bodies,
2:25
Speaker 3: so does at the end of the article. And then
2:29
Speaker 3: we also talked about the fact that Dolan, who we
2:32
Speaker 3: did talk about this report, previously said the single women,
2:35
Speaker 3: single childish women maybe one of the higher happier population, which, yeah,
2:42
Speaker 3: we talked about all of that. But continuing on with
2:45
Speaker 3: a couple more articles, and one's actually a comic I
2:48
Speaker 3: believe Aubrey Hirsch who spotlighted this article but then also
2:52
Speaker 3: did the illustrations and the writing for this comic. So
2:56
Speaker 3: if you want to go look at it. You should again.
2:59
Speaker 3: It's written by Aubrey Hirsch in the Vox women are
3:03
Speaker 3: increasingly unhappy. This comic explains why or women happy chords
3:07
Speaker 3: gender gap okay, and it's part of the happiness issue
3:12
Speaker 3: of the highlight of Vox.
3:14
Speaker 1: Okay. So here we go.
3:15
Speaker 3: So hopefully I do this justice because it is a comic,
3:17
Speaker 3: you're supposed to be reading it, and she gets it
3:20
Speaker 3: from different reports. So it starts with a science that
3:23
Speaker 3: says Women's Strike for peace and equality. American women have
3:27
Speaker 3: made progress since nineteen seventy. Women today are better educated
3:31
Speaker 3: and better paid than we were in nineteen seventy. So
3:34
Speaker 3: it has a little graph continues on. We have more
3:36
Speaker 3: support in our work at home as well as more
3:39
Speaker 3: opportunities outside of the home. We've made real gains toward
3:43
Speaker 3: equal rights and reproductive freedom. And yet in the decades
3:47
Speaker 3: between nineteen seventy and two thousand and five, women's self
3:50
Speaker 3: reported happiness scores have declined, both in the absolute and
3:53
Speaker 3: relative to men's scores. There isn't any more recent data
3:58
Speaker 3: on the phenomenon, but a studies have shown trends in
4:01
Speaker 3: women's psychology that help answer the troubling question. If women
4:06
Speaker 3: have made so many substantive gains in the last fifty years,
4:09
Speaker 3: why are we less happy? One culprit might be the
4:13
Speaker 3: women's changing expectations. As our opportunities in life and work increased,
4:19
Speaker 3: so did our opportunities to compare ourselves not just to
4:22
Speaker 3: other women, but to the men around us. Our expanding
4:26
Speaker 3: awareness of our persisting limitations might cause us to report
4:31
Speaker 3: feeling less happy. The growing complexity of women's lives may
4:36
Speaker 3: also be a factor. In nineteen seventy, a woman who
4:40
Speaker 3: was primarily a homemaker might judge her happiness based solely
4:44
Speaker 3: on her family life, whereas a woman fifty years later
4:48
Speaker 3: might be considering circumstances at home and at work. All
4:52
Speaker 3: of this is good news, since it suggests that it's
4:55
Speaker 3: our frame of reference for happiness that may have shifted
4:59
Speaker 3: and the bar has been raised. But another explanation for
5:03
Speaker 3: the persistence of the male female happiness gap is that
5:07
Speaker 3: men may have reaped more than their share of benefits
5:10
Speaker 3: from the women's movement. Marriage economists Betsy Stevenson and Justin
5:15
Speaker 3: Wolfers speculate that while men enjoy the spoils of sexual revolution,
5:20
Speaker 3: they are far less impacted by the decline of traditional
5:24
Speaker 3: families and rising economic inequality, and although men's contributions have increased,
5:31
Speaker 3: women still do, on average, more than twice the housework
5:35
Speaker 3: that men do, according to the leading family researcher Scott Coltrane.
5:40
Speaker 3: Because women's increasing participation in the workforce has not been
5:44
Speaker 3: met with a proportionally decreasing responsibilities at home, many women
5:49
Speaker 3: are now forced to work with sociologist Arlie Russell Huschild
5:53
Speaker 3: and en Machan called the second shift that cuts into
5:57
Speaker 3: our leisure time. This exposed to some of the work
6:01
Speaker 3: we still need to do until we can enjoy real
6:04
Speaker 3: equality in every sphere, women's happiness is bound to lag
6:08
Speaker 3: behind men's. And then if you go loy she has
6:11
Speaker 3: a little hierarchy of knees for women. Essentially at the bottom,
6:15
Speaker 3: it's bodily autonomy, second of safety, then justice, then education,
6:20
Speaker 3: then work, then at the top home. That's interesting. I've
6:24
Speaker 3: never seen this, especially now that we're finally close enough
6:27
Speaker 3: to see what we're missing. So that was the end
6:30
Speaker 3: of it. Again, this is twenty nineteen, and we talked
6:33
Speaker 3: about this in reference to the pandemic, and I found
6:36
Speaker 3: that interesting, and that again that hierarchy pyramid that they
6:40
Speaker 3: had created specifically for women's happiness. That was interesting. I've
6:43
Speaker 3: never seen that.
6:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think again, if you haven't listened to
6:48
Speaker 2: part one, go listen to it. But I think that's
6:51
Speaker 2: a really good point that is made in this comic,
6:54
Speaker 2: is that it's also maybe the bar is shifting because
6:59
Speaker 2: as women moved in to the workplace, we were like, wait,
7:02
Speaker 2: so now I'm doing this job, but also still expected
7:05
Speaker 2: to do this thing from before, which is like the
7:07
Speaker 2: housecare and the childcare and all this stuff. And I
7:11
Speaker 2: we talked about it in a recent book club, but
7:14
Speaker 2: that the idea of men really reaping the benefits from
7:18
Speaker 2: the women's movement in terms of like the sexual revolution
7:20
Speaker 2: where they don't have to raise the children if that,
7:24
Speaker 2: if that happens, and that kind of being the impetus
7:27
Speaker 2: for why abortion became such a big hot button issue.
7:31
Speaker 2: I think that's a really good point to make too,
7:35
Speaker 2: because obviously it is important, it is kind of like
7:39
Speaker 2: our whole thing, but there are still these societal inequalities
7:46
Speaker 2: where men are benefiting of Oh, your work now, and
7:51
Speaker 2: also you'll still do the house so I can take
7:53
Speaker 2: care of the kids.
7:54
Speaker 3: Fantastic but you're going to cook dinner, yes, right, right,
7:58
Speaker 3: well have it. And I found it interesting because we
8:14
Speaker 3: talked about this in a previous episode when we were
8:17
Speaker 3: talking about the fact that the feminist movement was based
8:20
Speaker 3: on women going to work and leaving the home, but
8:22
Speaker 3: that is behind the women who do want to stay
8:25
Speaker 3: at home and having to shift both narratives and not
8:27
Speaker 3: being able to be a part of that movement because
8:29
Speaker 3: I'm like, no, no, you need to get out right. But
8:31
Speaker 3: it was also very like, oh, this is very classist
8:35
Speaker 3: as well as racist to not think about all of
8:39
Speaker 3: these other underlying needs here. But this is kind of
8:42
Speaker 3: that same conversation of like the bar has been changed.
8:46
Speaker 3: What we have now focused on as important leaves behind
8:49
Speaker 3: what needs to be addressed as well, but we don't
8:52
Speaker 3: want to focus on it because that's too much of
8:54
Speaker 3: an old school idea for us to look at, and
8:58
Speaker 3: that includes who does work at the home, how do
9:00
Speaker 3: you share it, and how do you become equal not
9:04
Speaker 3: just out in the work place, which is what we
9:07
Speaker 3: could typically focus on because you know, money and paychecks
9:11
Speaker 3: are measurable.
9:13
Speaker 1: Right right. And I think also just the.
9:20
Speaker 2: It's unfortunately been very effective the kind of anti feminism narrative,
9:25
Speaker 2: and a lot of these things that we talked about.
9:27
Speaker 2: Even though any like strategic incompetence where it's the four
9:32
Speaker 2: a lot of women, the bar is just of success
9:36
Speaker 2: is just higher, and expectations is just higher. That is
9:40
Speaker 2: something we feel ourselves because we were raised that way,
9:42
Speaker 2: but it's also put on us. And so I think
9:45
Speaker 2: that's a part of this too, is that whole like
9:48
Speaker 2: you can have it all, you can do it all,
9:50
Speaker 2: and then we'll give you like the most passing of
9:52
Speaker 2: smattering praise and then not give you any raises or anything,
9:56
Speaker 2: but like.
9:56
Speaker 1: Oh, wow, you were able to do all of that.
9:58
Speaker 1: I can't believe it. How do you do it anyway?
10:01
Speaker 3: And because you've done it, we expect it exactly. It
10:03
Speaker 3: will be disappointed if you can't keep doing it exactly
10:06
Speaker 3: or won't keep doing it.
10:07
Speaker 2: And if you have children, it's so hard. It's just
10:13
Speaker 2: very effective to use children against women in that argument
10:17
Speaker 2: of well, the children are going to suffer if you
10:18
Speaker 2: don't step up, or if you don't do those things
10:22
Speaker 2: in that way.
10:22
Speaker 3: Or you're not fit for the workplace, if you care
10:25
Speaker 3: too much about your.
10:25
Speaker 2: Children exactly, because then you don't care as much about
10:29
Speaker 2: your work rights.
10:31
Speaker 3: Oh you're just a woman thinking about babies. But yeah,
10:35
Speaker 3: I also really do like the idea, as you were saying,
10:38
Speaker 3: is that mindset? And they do talk about that at
10:39
Speaker 3: the beginning, about the fact that we put pressure on ourselves,
10:42
Speaker 3: but we don't necessarily, it's that society puts pressure on us.
10:47
Speaker 3: I'm sorry to the first article that we talked about
10:49
Speaker 3: in part one where they're like, oh, they just want
10:52
Speaker 3: to blame the patriarchy. But if a system existed in
10:55
Speaker 3: order to keep maintain power for one specific gender, one
10:59
Speaker 3: specific race, then yeah, they're still to blame and we
11:02
Speaker 3: should call it out. So stop shaming that, and that
11:06
Speaker 3: is that conversation? Is that because we have to? I mean,
11:11
Speaker 3: god dang it. The fact that we're talking about a
11:14
Speaker 3: Supreme Court justice nominee, Katanji Brown Jackson, and the fact
11:17
Speaker 3: that she's so overly qualified. Literally the people who oppose her,
11:22
Speaker 3: Lindsey Graham said, she's amazing, She's qualified. I'm gonna vote no.
11:27
Speaker 3: That tells you right there, right there, what kind of
11:30
Speaker 3: system is set up? And it's not just a mindset,
11:33
Speaker 3: because she has completely proven ourselves repeatedly with these obnoxious
11:39
Speaker 3: questions that have nothing to do with being a judge
11:41
Speaker 3: or Supreme Court justice. But yet, yeah, she's deemed as
11:47
Speaker 3: not qualified by a certain group of people who want
11:50
Speaker 3: to maintain a status quo.
11:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that that is part of what
11:56
Speaker 2: we're talking about here, because again, these were articles that
11:58
Speaker 2: sort of popped up early the Google search when it's
12:01
Speaker 2: like women in happiness and like one of the first
12:04
Speaker 2: ones is like feminism is ringing happiness, and the other
12:06
Speaker 2: one is like, oh, single women are more happy, and
12:08
Speaker 2: then this one is like happiness is going down, but
12:12
Speaker 2: here's why. And I think that that's I believe I
12:17
Speaker 2: said this in the last one too, is it's worth
12:19
Speaker 2: seeing these and Justine, we're seeing that, we're seeing this
12:22
Speaker 2: very qualified woman being told like that doesn't matter essentially,
12:27
Speaker 2: And so we've talked about this in so many episodes
12:30
Speaker 2: because I think of gaming too, where it's like will
12:32
Speaker 2: that will let women come in and play with us,
12:35
Speaker 2: but only if they play second string, they play by
12:39
Speaker 2: our rules. They're still for us to look at. There's
12:42
Speaker 2: still like we are in control of this, you're just
12:45
Speaker 2: for us, and it's so cute. You want to play
12:48
Speaker 2: in this like sandbox with us. But if you rock
12:51
Speaker 2: anything in this boat, you're out.
12:53
Speaker 3: We're gonna yell at you to go make a sandwich. Which,
12:55
Speaker 3: by the way, every time I've seen a TikTok video
13:00
Speaker 3: of women gamers coming in and just destroying these dudes
13:03
Speaker 3: who were like, oh, she's coming in. Oh yeah, you
13:06
Speaker 3: know you hear the I guess it's a uh twitch
13:09
Speaker 3: streamers who play with each other. I don't know games, y'all.
13:13
Speaker 3: Things I don't understand. But at one point, you know,
13:16
Speaker 3: you hear the duzzaying oh here she comes, blah blah blah,
13:21
Speaker 3: and she may not say anything. Typically the women don't
13:24
Speaker 3: say anything. They just come in. You see a picture
13:26
Speaker 3: of her face smiling because she knows she's about to
13:28
Speaker 3: rip them. And then when she starts, they're like, oh man,
13:33
Speaker 3: what is she doing? What are you doing, and like
13:35
Speaker 3: yelling at her, and then she'll say something along the
13:38
Speaker 3: long along the lines of oh I thought you said
13:40
Speaker 3: the one could do that. I'm here to help you out,
13:42
Speaker 3: and they're like, go make us a sandwich, and then
13:44
Speaker 3: essentially running away from her after she like beats their ass.
13:48
Speaker 3: But yeah, that's that constantly need and like, seriously, that
13:52
Speaker 3: one phrase is continually said, ye, go make us a sandwich.
13:56
Speaker 3: Is that a key phrase that I don't know about.
13:58
Speaker 3: Is that supposed to be like a trigger but thing
14:00
Speaker 3: that where the boys come in pile on.
14:03
Speaker 1: I don't know.
14:03
Speaker 2: I mean because I remember when I was at Georgia
14:08
Speaker 2: Tech and there was like a.
14:10
Speaker 1: Hilly Quinton rally.
14:12
Speaker 2: Somebody people came and showed up and said that, like,
14:15
Speaker 2: go back to the kitchen, go make a sandwich. So
14:18
Speaker 2: I think that's a very like just trying to reduce
14:23
Speaker 2: women and make them kind of the subservient position.
14:27
Speaker 3: I mean, couldn't it be like, go make us a
14:28
Speaker 3: pot roast?
14:29
Speaker 2: Oh, it's much more difficult. It guess it depends on
14:36
Speaker 2: the sandwich. But I do think I do think that
14:41
Speaker 2: that that kind of constant like you can't escape these things, right,
14:46
Speaker 2: If I, like go to play a video game, then
14:48
Speaker 2: it's always like a reminder to me that I'm.
14:50
Speaker 1: Viewed this way.
14:51
Speaker 2: And I think that's also a piece of this puzzle
14:53
Speaker 2: of like why women aren't as happy, because it's just
14:58
Speaker 2: a constant deluge of sexist nonsense that you have to
15:03
Speaker 2: like have the strength to combat it when even internally
15:09
Speaker 2: you might be dealing with imposter syndrome.
15:11
Speaker 1: Or whatever it is, right in the face of all
15:14
Speaker 1: of this on Sense.
15:15
Speaker 3: And again we talked about imposter syndrome and the fact
15:18
Speaker 3: that this imposter syndrome, it's not necessarily just that we
15:20
Speaker 3: think that we can't do it, that it's been ingrained
15:23
Speaker 3: into our minds and repeatedly told that we can't do it.
15:28
Speaker 3: So it's not just us pretending that we can't. It's
15:30
Speaker 3: because we've been told. So we need to lay it
15:32
Speaker 3: the responsibility where it needs to be laid. But you know, something,
15:36
Speaker 3: on top of what we've been researching in this and
15:38
Speaker 3: as we're reading these articles, of course with that, it
15:41
Speaker 3: showed us a lot of articles about where people are happy.
15:45
Speaker 3: And there was one article and it wasn't just about women,
15:49
Speaker 3: but about just being happy.
16:04
Speaker 2: So we wanted to end with this article, which is
16:09
Speaker 2: titled want to make your country Happier?
16:11
Speaker 1: Elect Women. This came out in twenty twenty one and.
16:15
Speaker 2: It was by Rhann Eisler and Robin Baker and I
16:18
Speaker 2: hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, and it was in Miss magazine.
16:23
Speaker 2: So here's some quotes from that. Happiness is often perceived
16:27
Speaker 2: as an elusive feeling, a fleeting moment in a person's life.
16:30
Speaker 2: National happiness might sound absurd, but a recent study by
16:32
Speaker 2: the United Nations reveals that happiness can actually be a
16:35
Speaker 2: public policy with highly successful results. The twenty twenty one
16:39
Speaker 2: World Happiness Report shows that high levels of government spending
16:42
Speaker 2: on human infrastructure, the services and systems that improve people's
16:45
Speaker 2: quality of life, are the key to happiness. The top
16:49
Speaker 2: ranked countries of the World Happiness Report share this high
16:51
Speaker 2: level of public investment in human infrastructure. Finlam came in
16:55
Speaker 2: first for the fourth year in a row, followed by Denmark, Switzerland,
16:58
Speaker 2: Iceland and the Netherlands. They have very healthy market economies
17:02
Speaker 2: precisely because they invest heavily in caring for people starting
17:05
Speaker 2: at birth. These countries are not socialists, they simply have
17:08
Speaker 2: more women in leadership positions. Finland, for example, passed the
17:12
Speaker 2: Parliament Act to give women the right to vote and
17:14
Speaker 2: run for parliamentary elections in nineteen oh six, much earlier
17:17
Speaker 2: than the US, and today women are about half of
17:19
Speaker 2: Finland's national legislature. However, neither the World Happiness Report nor
17:23
Speaker 2: policy makers acknowledge the connection between the two. Human infrastructure
17:27
Speaker 2: is supported by women and leading government positions. This correlation
17:30
Speaker 2: can be explained by another still generally ignored fact that
17:34
Speaker 2: care work, such as caring for children and the elderly,
17:36
Speaker 2: has been devalued under a hidden gendered system of values
17:40
Speaker 2: that has gone along with the ranking of men masculinity
17:42
Speaker 2: over women femininity. Women in leadership positions understand this historic
17:47
Speaker 2: pattern and that its solution lies in providing more choices
17:50
Speaker 2: to families for access to public services that help nurture
17:53
Speaker 2: human development and balance the gender division of labor. Therefore,
17:56
Speaker 2: the presence of women in government leads to more caring
17:59
Speaker 2: policies that so human infrastructure for all, from high quality
18:02
Speaker 2: early education to universal health care. However, the participation of
18:07
Speaker 2: women in a government's policy making requires a pre existing
18:09
Speaker 2: high status of women in general. International studies show that
18:13
Speaker 2: the status of women is a powerful predictor of a
18:15
Speaker 2: nation's general equality of life and economic success. Already, in
18:20
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five, based on statistical data from eighty nine nations,
18:23
Speaker 2: the Center for Partnership Studies published report titled Women, Men,
18:27
Speaker 2: and the Global Quality of Life demonstrating this exact correlation.
18:30
Speaker 2: Since then, other studies such as the World Value Survey
18:33
Speaker 2: and the World Economic Forums Gender Gap reports have also
18:36
Speaker 2: confirmed the correlation between the country's standards of living and
18:40
Speaker 2: economy and the status of women. The rise of women's
18:42
Speaker 2: status empowers women to run for government. Nonetheless, little attention
18:46
Speaker 2: has been given to the economic success of the nations
18:49
Speaker 2: with the lowest gender gap, such as Finland, Norway, Denmark
18:51
Speaker 2: and Sweden. In reality, a higher valuing of the stereotypical
18:55
Speaker 2: feminine caring, caregiving and nonviolence is not only good for women,
18:59
Speaker 2: also good for men and children of both genders, as
19:02
Speaker 2: well as for business.
19:04
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm not gonna lie. I had a moment as
19:05
Speaker 3: like having to hold it in when we talked about
19:08
Speaker 3: care work, and I'm like yes, as I shouted again.
19:13
Speaker 3: But this is obviously a stark contrast from the first
19:16
Speaker 3: article that we read at the beginning of this two parter,
19:20
Speaker 3: when it does talk about the fact that from birth
19:22
Speaker 3: to death you expect us to take care of women
19:24
Speaker 3: and children, and this is like, oh, yeah, seriously, that
19:27
Speaker 3: makes us happy, Yeah, from birth to death. And I
19:30
Speaker 3: will say this is also this magazine is a little
19:32
Speaker 3: as biased in that it is left leaning like us.
19:36
Speaker 3: So I'm not going to say because the other one
19:37
Speaker 3: I did say is conservative. This is definitely left leaning
19:40
Speaker 3: as well as the fact. Though, unlike the other report
19:43
Speaker 3: where I had to try to click on the research
19:45
Speaker 3: that they penned for US that went to another conservative
19:49
Speaker 3: article without the actual I could not get to the
19:51
Speaker 3: Pew research unless I just type it in by myself.
19:54
Speaker 3: This one actually does highlight the actual Like you click
19:57
Speaker 3: on it, it takes you to that actual statistics and studies.
20:00
Speaker 3: So something to be said about that. But I love
20:06
Speaker 3: everything about this article. It is an implication of where
20:10
Speaker 3: the US is. And if you read the whole article,
20:13
Speaker 3: the bottom talks about the current administration and what they
20:15
Speaker 3: are doing or how they're trying to fix it. We're
20:18
Speaker 3: not talking about that. We're just talking about the study
20:20
Speaker 3: that they're talking about. Finland has been the number one
20:24
Speaker 3: happiest country. Of course, there's a whole other conversation about
20:27
Speaker 3: the intersectionality of it all and who is able to
20:30
Speaker 3: thrive in those areas. Absolutely, and we can come back
20:34
Speaker 3: to that, and we should come back to that. But
20:36
Speaker 3: the overall fact that, yes, helping women and having women
20:40
Speaker 3: in leadership actually makes everyone happy.
20:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, that just makes so much sense to me.
20:46
Speaker 2: I mean, because you know, we've interactd the population and
20:51
Speaker 2: they do have these historically different areas that they've been
20:54
Speaker 2: living in and in terms of like raising children and
20:57
Speaker 2: being the ones responsible for that largely and the like
21:01
Speaker 2: undervalued care work which we were talking about is I mean,
21:05
Speaker 2: that's huge. If you have somebody come in, it'd be like, oh,
21:07
Speaker 2: this is important and we need this and that's going
21:09
Speaker 2: to help our economy and it's going to help happiness
21:11
Speaker 2: and that's going to just uplift all of these sections
21:15
Speaker 2: of our country.
21:18
Speaker 1: To me, that just makes sense, right.
21:22
Speaker 3: And here's the other part to this, Because that first
21:25
Speaker 3: article got me heated, and the fact that it was
21:27
Speaker 3: one of the first things I could find, I was like, ah,
21:30
Speaker 3: we talk about the unity and this is not going
21:32
Speaker 3: to about you know, and the article make sure to
21:34
Speaker 3: say these countries are not socialists, because we know the
21:37
Speaker 3: word socialism has really sparked a lot of anger and
21:41
Speaker 3: along political lines. But when it comes to like the
21:44
Speaker 3: biblical essence of community that has been disbanded in the
21:49
Speaker 3: conservative ideas from what I've gathered, that whole conversation when
21:53
Speaker 3: she says the you know and intentionally dstopian portrait thought
21:57
Speaker 3: during the Obama administration, which is hilarious, was meant to
22:01
Speaker 3: let us know that government is here to supply our
22:03
Speaker 3: every need from birth to death without placing any kind
22:06
Speaker 3: of demands on our behavior. So obviously it was like,
22:09
Speaker 3: you need to take responsibility from birth to death. La
22:11
Speaker 3: da da. You don't need help. It's obvious what's being
22:14
Speaker 3: said in saying that you need to be able to
22:17
Speaker 3: take care of your own and take care of your responsibilities.
22:19
Speaker 3: We're not going to help you. Just deal with it,
22:22
Speaker 3: even though the Crisis Pregnancy Center really you said they
22:27
Speaker 3: do help, but they don't. You just said it starts
22:29
Speaker 3: you on a path. But they also say, you know,
22:32
Speaker 3: you need to take responsibility and not expect any kind
22:35
Speaker 3: of demands. Blah blah blah. And then we have this
22:39
Speaker 3: article showing an example where they say they have a
22:43
Speaker 3: very healthy market precisely because they invest heavily in caring
22:47
Speaker 3: for people starting at birth right, which is a stark
22:51
Speaker 3: contrast in what she is saying. But we have an
22:53
Speaker 3: example here of what is working. And we know that
22:56
Speaker 3: this country was based on very conservative religious eye ideas
23:01
Speaker 3: like what she just said.
23:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it's interesting that we've talked before
23:08
Speaker 2: about in this country, specifically.
23:11
Speaker 1: How we really.
23:14
Speaker 2: We really hold up like capitalist ideas and work and
23:19
Speaker 2: making money and you do it on your own, you
23:21
Speaker 2: pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, and we've made
23:23
Speaker 2: that into like a like an ideology this is what
23:26
Speaker 2: you want, and that we also kind of have really
23:31
Speaker 2: centered masculinity and masculine traits and behaviors. And I've talked
23:35
Speaker 2: recently about like, you know that glorification and asked, I
23:38
Speaker 2: think that's at play here.
23:40
Speaker 1: But then also there's just kind of related.
23:44
Speaker 2: There's just this narrative that I don't know, it's clear
23:47
Speaker 2: that we're rich people and capitalism of such a hold
23:51
Speaker 2: on this country where we're like, yeah, it's more important
23:55
Speaker 2: that we give these like tax breaks and sub disease
23:58
Speaker 2: to rich people who help people get elected, and everyone
24:02
Speaker 2: else is just like making less and less and getting
24:05
Speaker 2: less and less and getting worse off, and the gap
24:07
Speaker 2: is getting bigger. And so the happiness part is I mean,
24:11
Speaker 2: I know I've said it before, but my mom told
24:13
Speaker 2: me once money doesn't buy happiness, but it makes it easier.
24:16
Speaker 2: So if we had the support from birth where it's
24:19
Speaker 2: not it's just you know, being able to afford childcare
24:22
Speaker 2: or like anything like that, that gives you the space
24:26
Speaker 2: to build a healthier society that is happier.
24:29
Speaker 3: And some of that is also being able to afford
24:32
Speaker 3: giving to your children. And I don't mean to spoil them,
24:36
Speaker 3: That's not what I'm talking about, because yes, those rich
24:39
Speaker 3: people who give the kids like cars at age three
24:42
Speaker 3: as a whole different conversation. But what I'm talking about
24:46
Speaker 3: is like my family and my parents who couldn't give
24:49
Speaker 3: me the teeth that I needed, you know what I
24:51
Speaker 3: mean as a child, and feeling bad about that and
24:54
Speaker 3: coming back and be like, I'm so sorry we couldn't
24:55
Speaker 3: provide that for you, you know, giving me a car
24:58
Speaker 3: so that I could do activities that I was able
25:01
Speaker 3: to earn it. But like we're teaching our children that
25:03
Speaker 3: the only way you can do this is to drive
25:06
Speaker 3: yourself into the ground for a capitalistic idea at earning
25:09
Speaker 3: minimum wage at this age and then trying to prioritize
25:13
Speaker 3: money over education, prioritize money over love, and like all
25:17
Speaker 3: of these things is a whole different conversation. And can
25:20
Speaker 3: we do it? Yeah, we have, We've done it. Could
25:23
Speaker 3: it be a different story if we didn't have to?
25:25
Speaker 3: And are we saying all women in leadership is great. No,
25:28
Speaker 3: we have prime examples of like why did you do this?
25:31
Speaker 3: What did you? We're talking about qualified women and qualified
25:37
Speaker 3: men whose support Again, though it's harder to find underqualified women.
25:43
Speaker 3: We can there's always exceptions to the rule, but it's
25:46
Speaker 3: harder to find underqualified women than it is to find
25:49
Speaker 3: underqualified men.
25:52
Speaker 1: Just sort of a numbers game.
25:53
Speaker 2: But yeah, right, yeah, yeah again, it just makes sense
26:02
Speaker 2: to me. It makes sense to me. Oh, I'm feeling conflicted.
26:09
Speaker 2: These happiness episodes have got me.
26:11
Speaker 3: All's to negative. No, the kind of negative.
26:17
Speaker 2: It is like a back and fourth it is, it is,
26:20
Speaker 2: And I think there's a lot of just examining we
26:22
Speaker 2: need to do of the narratives we've been fed.
26:24
Speaker 1: Our whole lives, exactly of what happiness even is.
26:29
Speaker 2: Yes, well, speaking of listeners again, we need those happiness
26:34
Speaker 2: stories from you. Any thoughts, any people we should be
26:37
Speaker 2: talking about, any movements we should be talking about anything
26:40
Speaker 2: at all, Please let us know. You can email us
26:42
Speaker 2: stuffan your mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You can
26:44
Speaker 2: find us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast or on
26:45
Speaker 2: Instagram at stuff I Never Told You. Thanks as always
26:48
Speaker 2: to our super producer, Christina, Thank you and thanks to
26:51
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