Why do women hate other women so much? It may seem like one of those ‘just-so’ assumptions, but the psychological literature backs it up. “I can confidently report,” says psychologist Seth Myers. “That the women I’ve worked with report more critical views of other women than the men do with their own male peers.”
If that’s the case, should it surprise us that feminism – supposedly, after all, the institutional expression of femaleness – is so often strangely inimical to women’s wellbeing? Especially since the 1970s, when the major battles for women’s rights were won. Ever since, it seems, feminism has done little more than repeatedly punch women in the face. Most recently, in its rigorous promotion of transgenderism (although many ‘gender-critical’ feminists are belatedly realising just what a Frankenstein ‘gender studies’ has made, women are still overwhelmingly more likely than men to promote ‘trans rights’), but also in the society-wide gaslighting exercise of cradle-to-school childcare. Who in their right mind decided that the misery of a nine-to-five cubicle monkey was preferable to staying home and raising children?
Not to mention feminism’s relentless hostility to marriage. No institution has been so derided – hated even – by feminists as marriage. For all their blatherskite about ‘supporting a woman’s right to choose’, if a woman chooses a ‘trad-wife’ lifestyle, they’re viciously attacked by feminists. Hateful feminist harpies like Clementine Ford vomit out demented anti-marriage screeds (which read far more like Jeremiads against their own failed relationships than reasoned analysis).
Yet, as Camille Paglia remarked, of watching mothers with their families on the Jersey Shore: “Those women are happy.” The neurotic feminist career women of the Upper East Side very much are not.
Are married mothers actually less happy than single women without children? That’s one of the questions that, along with my colleagues Jenet Erickson, Wendy Wang, and Brad Wilcox, I set out to answer by conducting a nationally representative survey of 3,000 American women ages 25 to 55, fielded by YouGov in March 2025.
Surprise, surprise! The feminists are lying.
Married mothers are actually happier than unmarried women and married women without children. In the survey, 19 per cent of married mothers described themselves as “very happy,” compared with 11 per cent of married women without children, 13 per cent of unmarried mothers, and 10 per cent of unmarried women without children. Married mothers were also more likely to say that life is enjoyable most or all of the time than the other three groups. These numbers are controlled for age, family income, and education, so we know that those factors aren’t the cause of the differences.
These findings are not a one-off. Well-respected sources, such as the General Social Survey, show the same result; married mothers and fathers in that survey were more likely to report being “very happy” than unmarried people and those without children. Another recent study found that married or partnered mothers are less likely to frequently feel depressed or anxious than people in the other three groups.
At this point, your bitter feminist cat lady sprays her cask wine over the screen as she splutters that the study has it all the wrong way. It’s not that marriage makes people happier, but happier people are more likely to marry.
Except that that doesn’t seem to be the case.
One study controlled for premarital happiness levels and still found that marriage results in happier people and a less intense dip in life satisfaction at middle age.
This isn’t to say that marriage and family are a constantly sunny skip down the primrose path. But the ‘return on investment’ that is the hard work of marriage is much greater levels of happiness.
Why, then, are mothers happier? The reasons speak to the profound experience of parenthood. Married mothers were the most likely to agree that their life “has a clear sense of purpose” (28 per cent), followed closely by unmarried mothers (25 per cent). Only approximately 15 per cent of women without children agreed. Mothers were also more likely than non-mothers to agree that their life “feels meaningful” all or most of the time.
There is far more meaning and reward from a three-year-old handing you a sticky bit of paper with a crayon scrawl on it, than from printing out this quarter’s TPS report.
The false narrative that marriage and motherhood are a recipe for women’s unhappiness is doing a lot of damage. In a nationally representative survey that I analyzed for my book Generations, the number of 18-year-old women who expected to have children plummeted by 11 percentage points from the late 2000s to the early 2020s. Negative messaging about marriage and motherhood is likely at the root of these Gen Z shifts.
Miserable feminist school librarians will buy up bucketloads of Clammy Fraud’s hateful anti-marriage screed – and then wonder why mental ill-health is spiralling amongst younger generations.
