Women still spend more time caring for children compared to men, as evident from the US survey carried out between 2011 and 2021.
Interestingly, while levels of employment affected child care time for both men and women, for men the effect was less pronounced.
One other interesting finding is that the difference between men and women is minimal when both work full-time, suggesting a more equal distribution of duties due to lack of available time.
I’m not saying that equal share of childcare responsibilities is necessary the single key to happiness in the country - but it is important, and if there are good reasons for such a distribution aside from tradition and outside of newborns, I’d like them to be found.
Also, it’s important to figure out what you mean by happiness, because world rankings on “happiness” commonly include economic variables, life expectancy etc., which is great, but does not necessarily reflect the level of, well, happiness. Finland in particular is one of the countries with highest prevalence of depression in the world:
As per 2017 in the US - I wonder as well, but I guess that’s some outlying data point.
Yea my intention was only to show that even in happier countries there can be natural differences in self assigned care giving duties. I wasn’t disagreeing with anything just trying to add to the conversation. Yea happiness is a strange metric I hear you, but the Nordic countries are generally high up in the list of “gender equality” or equity or what not.
I see!