“Why are Liberal Women so Unhappy?” Lucian Conway asks in a recent article. To answer, he begins by reviewing polls revealing the far greater rates of depression and dissatisfaction among liberal women versus their conservative counterparts.

Conway also touches on studies demonstrating that young left-wing females also suffer more psychological problems. This issue is larger than the article implies, however, with one study showing that 56% of young liberal white women “have been diagnosed with a mental health condition.”

Conway then points out that two institutions — marriage and religion — might reduce the happiness gap between liberal and conservative females by almost half. Marriage and faith can plug both sexes into a culture of relationship, thereby promoting greater stability and satisfaction in life.

Conway spends the rest of his article encouraging liberal women to pursue certain conservative values “independent of politics” for their positive effects on mental and emotional well-being, noting that responsibility and agency are key among the conservative values leading to greater happiness. By declaring themselves or others victims, as many progressives do, responsibility vanishes, which often brings on a feeling of helplessness, which then generates anxiety and depression. “Unthinking dismissals of religion, marriage, personal agency, and resiliency aren’t just dismissals of conservative values; they are dismissals of things known to promote joyful and healthy lives,” Conway concludes. “They are dismissals of things that might improve the health of vulnerable populations — including liberal young women.”

Writer Joy Pullman makes similar arguments in “3 Ways Women Can Make Themselves More Marriageable” – that title alone would send many progressive women scrambling for the exits. Worthy as they are, however, her three pieces of advice – Go to church and read the Bible; resolve past family issues preventing the desire for children; cultivate feminine habits and traits – will probably find little favor among women raised and educated with a deep aversion to such suggestions.

Tucked away in Pullman’s article is the rock-bottom explanation for the unhappiness of liberal women and for many men as well:

While how people live shapes what they believe, what people believe also shapes how they live. So feminism shapes how we all live now, estranging women from their own biology while also estranging men and women from each other.

“Compared to men, women are now more likely to: own a house, graduate from every level of education, say they’re not looking for a spouse, and express wholesale disdain and dislike for the opposite sex,” Pullman notes, referencing a Wall Street Journal article, “American Women Are Giving Up on Marriage.” “Multiple women the WSJ quoted indicated they left relationships because they wanted to prioritize careers over motherhood, while the men they were dating wanted women who prioritized motherhood.”

This turning away from tradition, marriage and motherhood should surprise no one, as it affirms Pullman’s earlier statement: “what people believe also shapes how they live.”

For half-a-century, American culture has educated its daughters to be independent, to feel superior to men while striving to become like them, and to find work outside the home and to make money, preferably lots of it. “Girl Power,” “The Future Is Female,” “Girls Lead, Boys Follow,” and “I’m a Woman, What’s Your Superpower?” are just some of the bumper sticker slogans that pushed this lopsided distinction between boys and girls. Reverse the sexes, as in “The Future is Male” and “Boys Lead, Girls Follow,” and it may be easier to understand the ugly side of this brainwashing and the damage it did to boys and to male-female relationships.

When we read articles like the one in the WSJ, we should remember that large numbers of women, including many liberals, haven’t followed the pied pipers of propaganda to such extremes. Moreover, we can surmise that many of these women who tout their degrees and income, sneering their contempt at marriage and men, are among that same miserable crew who appear in the studies mentioned by Pullman and Conway. For them, exchanging marriage, motherhood, and men for power, money, and a career may turn out to be more a deal with the devil than a pathway to liberation and self-fulfillment.

There is one last irony at work in the position taken by these women. Men were once criticized for upside-down priorities, for putting career and advancement ahead of their wives and families. In copycatting them, these liberal women have taken an extra step and eradicated husbands and children altogether.

For them, at least some of them, this conscious and cataclysmic break from tradition will not end well. Rather than saying “I told you so,” we might instead feel some sympathy for their unhappiness. After all, they were shaped by their beliefs.

—

The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

Image Credit: PickPik