Men: Find a wife. Women: Don’t bother.
Basically, that’s the message of a British behavioral science professor who’s been studying the happiness (and misery) of unmarried, married, divorced, separated and widowed individuals, reports The Guardian.
Paul Dolan, who teaches at the London School of Economics, was recently at the Hay Festival, an annual gathering of literature and arts in England. While there, he broke it all down.
“We do have some good longitudinal data following the same people over time,” Dolan said, “but I am going to do a massive disservice to that science and just say: if you’re a man, you should probably get married; if you’re a woman, don’t bother.”
Yikes.
Dolan, whose latest book is “Happy Ever After,” said that unmarried and childless women are the happiest of all the subgroups, adding that they are more likely to live longer than married moms.
Men, he said, benefit from married because they “calmed down.”
“You take less risks, you earn more money at work, and you live a little longer,” he said. “She, on the other hand, has to put up with that, and dies sooner than if she never married. The healthiest and happiest population subgroup are women who never married or had children.”
Dolan said men’s health improved after getting married, mainly because they take fewer risks. Women, on the other hand, didn’t really change their health outlook by getting wed. Middle-aged married women were, he finds, to have a higher risk of physical and mental troubles than women who are single.
He said he acknowledges that the societal stigma often put on older, single women could leave them feeling unhappy.
“You see a single woman of 40, who has never had children — ‘Bless, that’s a shame, isn’t it? Maybe one day you’ll meet the right guy and that’ll change,’” he said. “No, maybe she’ll meet the wrong guy and that’ll change. Maybe she’ll meet a guy who makes her less happy and healthy, and die sooner.”
