Do you hate being around your parents?

Posted at 12:15 PM Apr 23, 2010

By Andrea Grimes

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Thought-provoking news coming out of the New York Times' Economix blog today--apparently women are far more likely to describe being around their parents or their children as "unpleasant" than men are. But wait! Don't all women want families and babies? Are we not all marriage-crazed balls of impregnate-me-now-and-settle-down?

Let us try to make our little ladybrains understand this bizarre finding. A study from Princeton establishes something called the "U-index," which is the amount of time people say they're in an unpleasant state (stressed, unhappy, etc.). Per the NYT:

For most of the categories, men and women report being in an unpleasant state about the same portion of the time. But the biggest divergences relate to spending time with family, and not in the way that stereotypes of feminine domestic bliss might predict: Women appear much less happy when spending time with their children and parents than men do.

This can be partly explained by the different types of activities the two genders are likely to be doing around their families. For example, when women are spending time with their children, they are more likely to be doing chores and handling child care, which can both be relatively stressful activities. When men spend time with their children, on the other hand, they spend relatively more time watching television and traveling -- more leisurely activities.

This probably doesn't come as much of a surprise to anyone from an even vaguely traditional American family. Even when women work, they end up doing a disproportionate amount of child care and housework, and when their parents age, women are more likely to become their caretakers. Major holidays are times for men to sit around and watch football, while the women pack into the kitchen and cook. (It differs a bit in my family--the men totally do kitchen clean-up duty after the meal, while the ladies drink coffee and watch football. Pretty sweet.)

Thing is, the Princeton survey also suggests that women are overall more unhappy than men even when they're performing the same tasks re: family, children:

But even if you control for these different types of activities -- that is, even when both genders are engaging in the exact same labors or pastimes with their kin -- there are still "sizable differences in the U-index between men and women when they are in the company of their parents or children," the study's authors write.

Again, I'm not particularly surprised. In terms of societal expectations, women are held to a higher standard in their private lives because they have been classically associated with the private sphere. Women who are not good at or happy being domestic are doubly punished--not only are they bad wives and mothers, but they're bad women overall, because they don't adhere to our ideas about what women should be. Compound that with the guilt that comes from not liking something that's traditionally feminine, of feeling bad or different or shamed because of a dislike of caretaking/cooking/cleaning/whatever, and you're going to get an unhappy bunch of ladies.