{"id":778,"date":"2016-06-28T14:36:47","date_gmt":"2016-06-28T19:36:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/?p=778"},"modified":"2016-07-18T11:03:08","modified_gmt":"2016-07-18T16:03:08","slug":"social-policy-happiness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ccf\/2016\/06\/28\/social-policy-happiness\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Not You, It’s Social Policy… ?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before you tell your intimate partners, \u201cIt\u2019s not you, it\u2019s me,\u201d take a look at the media reactions to two new reports from the Council on Contemporary Families<\/a> released this month, one on parenting<\/a> the other on sex<\/a>, and both relating to policy.<\/p>\n

Journalists at several outlets including New York Times,<\/a> Chicago Tribune,<\/a> and AlterNet<\/a> reported that there was a reason\u2014that didn\u2019t justify blaming parents\u2014to explain the \u201chappiness gap,\u201d or the fact that parents in the United States, particularly when compared to parents in other countries, were less happy than non-parents. According to CCF expert Jennifer Glass<\/a>, “The negative effects of parenthood on happiness were\u00a0entirely\u00a0explained by the presence or absence of social policies<\/a> allowing parents to better combine paid work with family obligations. And this was true for both mothers\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0fathers<\/em>. Countries with better family policy \u2018packages\u2019 had no happiness gap between parents and non-parents.” Boston Globe writer Duggan Arnette identified \u201cpaid sick and vacation leave, child care costs, and work schedule flexibility,\u201d<\/a> or lack thereof, as specific factors that were shown to influence the \u201chappiness gap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the happiness gap is not a universal<\/em> problem, and some countries have addressed it. Quartz journalists Solana Pyne and Michael Tabb created a video<\/a> that compares the United States to 22 other countries in terms of parent and non-parent happiness, as well as the availability of various kinds of social supports. The narrator says that \u201cif you\u2019re a working parent,\u201d the reason for the happiness gap \u201cis basically what you\u2019d think.\u201d The happiness gap will seem less inevitable, and its solutions more achievable, however, after seeing visuals comparing the presence of specific policies in countries in which parents are just as happy, if not happier than non-parents, with the\u00a0absence of those policies in the United States, where the happiness gap is the largest.<\/p>\n