The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

SWF Seeks Bright Lights, Big City

This week's renewed discussions about women "opting out" of the work force—or being forced out—make me think of Joan Didion's 1967 essay "Goodbye to All That." It's about her life in 1950s New York as a twentysomething, when the city emblematized endless possibility, even though she was making very little money. She loved her career and reveled in the sensory experiences of just being there. And then her attitude toward the city soured with age, when she realized "that not all of the promises would be kept."

I was reminded of Didion's journey to disillusionment when I came across a couple studies about women's success and happiness this week. The first (which is new only to me) was a New York Times article from last summer about how young women in their twenties actually out-earn men in New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, and several other big cities. These women have more education than their male city peers and are less likely to be married and raising a family than their suburban female counterparts.

The second study (by USC's Richard Easterlin and Anke Plagnol of the University of Cambridge), forthcoming in the Journal of Happiness Studies, found that women overall are happier than men—until the age of 48. The authors measured happiness as a combination of financial and family satisfaction, and men exceeded women in the first category at the age of 41 and in the second at 64. This seems to suggest that somewhere between 41 and 48, women are more satisfied with their family situation than with their finances. Now add in the conclusions of the previous study of urban women—are young women happiest when facing bright prospects unrelated to their family situation or marital status? Or has the availability of greater professional opportunities simply postponed women's frustrations with the working world?