“We’ve created a culture based on lies. Here are some of them: Career success is fulfilling; I can make myself happy; Life is an individual journey; You have to find your own truth; and Rich and successful people are worth more than poorer and less successful people.”
Those are the powerful words of New York Times columnist David Brooks, who wrote an op-ed earlier this year entitled “Five Lies Our Culture Tells” to promote his new book, The Second Mountain. Brooks’ core argument is that America has “overdone” it with the concept of hyper-independence. The only way forward to a meaningful life is to focus on our relationships. “We are formed by relationship, we are nourished by relationship, and we long for relationship. Life is not a solitary journey. It is building a home together. It is a process of being formed by attachments and then forming attachments in turn.”
Brooks’ message couldn’t have come at a better time. Not only are millennials plagued by loneliness and depression, women across four generations are also unhappier than ever. Much of their misery is due to the lies our culture tells.
The one thing Brooks doesn’t do is point the finger at who, specifically, is doing this lying — and why. He points to an attitudinal shift in the 1960s when Americans were encouraged to live for the “self.” It was a reasonable reaction, he adds, to the stifling nature of the 1950s. But then something happened. “By conceiving of ourselves mostly as autonomous selves, we’ve torn our society to shreds.”
Indeed we have. But who was primarily responsible for sending this message in the 1960s, and to who was the message directed?
Let me help you: feminists and women.
According to the latter study above, 49% of women say, “work-life balance is a myth.” Indeed, women today feel “more stressed, tired, overwhelmed, anxious and burned out across every aspect of their lives than in the past — and significantly more so than their male counterparts.”
Funny, this data is eerily similar to a 2009 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research that found women have become decidedly less happy in the post-feminist era. “In the 1960s,” writes Ross Douthat in “Liberated and Unhappy,” “American women reported themselves happier, on average, than did men. Today, that gender gap has reversed. Male happiness has inched up, and female happiness has dropped.”
This phenomenon is a direct result of the lies women were fed about what constitutes a happy life. Since the 1960s, elite feminists have been shockingly successful at selling the idea that marriage and motherhood are stifling, that in order for a woman to be truly happy and fulfilled, she needs to live a man’s life — because men (presumably) have the better end of the deal. Being out in the world slaying dragons, despite having a boss and the constant pressure to produce, is sold to women as liberating. And women listened.
There’s just one problem: It isn’t true that men had it made. What’s more, no one explained to women how they were supposed to follow the male trajectory while also raise a family. No one told them those two paths invariably clash, causing women to crash and burn ultimately. No one told them that not only is it impossible for anyone, male or female, to “have it all,” men and women are vastly different by nature and will thus never be successful in leading identical lives.
The reason American women are “more stressed, tired, overwhelmed, anxious, and burned out across every aspect of their lives than in the past” is precisely because, similar to the lies on Brooks’ list, they were groomed to believe that career success is more fulfilling than marriage and family and that they don’t need a man to be happy. Yes, some men (such as Brooks, by his own admission) fell prey to the idea that achievement makes us happy, but it is women who lead the charge.
It is women, not men, who have had these cultural lies drilled into them since the day they were born. Feminists feed women lies for political gain. They need women to believe professional success is where true fulfillment lies in order to achieve their goals. They don’t want women to be focused on relationships. They don’t want women to make commitments and keep them. They don’t want women to be happy.
Men just followed suit. Prior to the 1960s, men were as focused on family as women were. Getting married and having children was considered the cornerstone of life, not the capstone. It was, for both men and women, the whole point. Professional success was all well and good, but it didn’t compete with family. It supported the family to help it succeed. In other words, men went with what they thought women wanted. But as it turns out, it’s not what women want. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be miserable.
The only path forward is, as Brooks suggests, to dump the “individualist” worldview and to return to our relational roots. “Eventually, most people realize that something is missing in the self-interested life.”
That’s true, but wouldn’t it be nice if people understood this before their lives started? Must everyone learn the hard way? It’s absolutely within our control to change the road we’re on, but it will require a monumental mind shift, and it will demand that women take the lead by doing the exact opposite of what the culture tells them to do.
Ladies, it is you most of all who have absorbed the lies our culture tells. The greatest lie of all is that career success is fulfilling in and of itself. If that is all you wind up with, you’ll be miserable. Career success pales in comparison to finding a man to love who will love you back. It pales in comparison to having strong, healthy relationships with your children.
If you put your relationships first and fit the rest of your life around that, you’re home free.
Suzanne Venker (@SuzanneVenker) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner‘s Beltway Confidential blog. She is an author, columnist, and radio host. Her newest book, WOMEN WHO WIN at Love: How to Build a Relationship That Lasts, was published in October 2019. Suzanne’s website is www.suzannevenker.com.
