Ruth Whippman > Quotes

“we have almost universally decreed social media to be a kind of personal PR agency, a forum for us to assemble a set of glittering promotional materials for our own lives, all with the aim of making ourselves appear as improbably blissfully happy as possible.”
― Ruth Whippman, America the Anxious: Why Our Search for Happiness Is Driving Us Crazy and How to Find It for Real

“We live in the era of the curated life. At sixteen, this might mean taking a momentary break from feeling fat, ugly, and unlovable to post a barrage of confidence-throbbing, boob-thrusting bathroom mirror selfies. At thirty-five, when Facebook starts to flag your boobs as “offensive content,” it might mean social sharing your pedicured toes on the sun lounger from your once-in-five years vacation or taking advantage of the brief moment that your newborn draws breath from his seven-week screaming-”
― Ruth Whippman, America the Anxious: Why Our Search for Happiness Is Driving Us Crazy and How to Find It for Real

“Perhaps, rather than happiness, we would all be better off focusing on something less subjective, like rights and legal protections. Because, if you really want your employees to be happy, the answer is simple. Pay them fairly, give them good benefits and adequate vacation time, and most important, let them go home. *”
― Ruth Whippman, America the Anxious: Why Our Search for Happiness Is Driving Us Crazy and How to Find It for Real

“(If businesses had a genuine interest in their employees’ happiness, perhaps the single biggest thing they could do would be to encourage them to unionize. Wide-scale research shows that union membership is a large and significant predictor of happiness, with union members consistently reporting far greater well-being than their nonunion peers, independent of income.)8 Indeed”
― Ruth Whippman, America the Anxious: Why Our Search for Happiness Is Driving Us Crazy and How to Find It for Real

“If there’s one reason people in this country have so little time to socialize and connect with others, why Americans spend just four minutes a day “hosting and attending social events,” and just thirty-six minutes a day “socializing and communicating” with the people in their lives, it is this. They are spending too much time at work.”
― Ruth Whippman, America the Anxious: Why Our Search for Happiness Is Driving Us Crazy and How to Find It for Real

“The more happiness research I read, the more it starts to look as though we might all get a better happiness return from sitting in the pub with our friends, bitching about meditation, rather than by actually practicing it. Quite”
― Ruth Whippman, America the Anxious: Why Our Search for Happiness Is Driving Us Crazy and How to Find It for Real

“According to the World Health Organization, as well as being one of the least-happy developed countries in the world, the United States is, by a wide margin, also the most anxious, with nearly a third of Americans likely to suffer from an anxiety disorder in their lifetime.7 A 2012 report by the American Psychological Association warned that the nation was on the verge of a “stress-induced public health crisis.”
― Ruth Whippman, America the Anxious: Why Our Search for Happiness Is Driving Us Crazy and How to Find It for Real

“But in most situations that life throws at us, quiet diligence is more important to success than splashy acts or a feeling that you are special.”
― Ruth Whippman, BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity

“controlling for confounding factors, the study showed that the more intense a mother’s approach, the unhappier she became and the greater her risk of depression, with the most intense mothers experiencing a rate of depression more than three times the level in the general population.”
― Ruth Whippman, America the Anxious: Why Our Search for Happiness Is Driving Us Crazy and How to Find It for Real

“Giving birth, for me, was like emerging from a car crash to find myself inexplicably, madly in love with Vladimir Putin.”
― Ruth Whippman, America the Anxious: How Our Pursuit of Happiness Is Creating a Nation of Nervous Wrecks

“The more connected and loved boys feel, the more community they have in their own lives, and the more empathy they feel from their loved ones, the less need they have to search for belonging in these spaces.”
― Ruth Whippman, BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity

“It is also the right hemisphere of a baby’s brain that builds their very first attachment with their primary caregiver, usually the mother. This bond becomes the template for all future relationships and the foundation of virtually every measure of lifelong emotional well-being.”
― Ruth Whippman, BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity

“Gallup’s 2014 Positive Experience Index, an international comparison study of the moment-to-moment happiness of people living in different nations, ranked America at an underwhelming twenty-fifth in the world, two places behind Rwanda.”
― Ruth Whippman, America the Anxious: Why Our Search for Happiness Is Driving Us Crazy and How to Find It for Real

“I would rather that we destigmatized femininity for boys in the same way that we have destigmatized masculinity for girls.”
― Ruth Whippman, BoyMom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity

“Our narrative of happiness has become individualistic and punitive, totally divorced from social justice or wider responsibility.”
― Ruth Whippman, America the Anxious: Why Our Search for Happiness Is Driving Us Crazy and How to Find It for Real

“businesses had a genuine interest in their employees’ happiness, perhaps the single biggest thing they could do would be to encourage them to unionize. Wide-scale research shows that union membership is a large and significant predictor of happiness, with union members consistently reporting far greater well-being than their nonunion peers, independent of income.)”
― Ruth Whippman, America the Anxious: Why Our Search for Happiness Is Driving Us Crazy and How to Find It for Real

“Community may be the key to happiness, but a manufactured community with financial motives lurking behind every interaction is not the same as a real, organic community, nurtured from genuine human empathy.”
― Ruth Whippman, America the Anxious: Why Our Search for Happiness Is Driving Us Crazy and How to Find It for Real