Trade caregiving for well-being

Get your journals ready to write down these words of wisdom! Journalist, speaker and writer Gail Sheehy spills the beans on the secret to woman’s long-term happiness. In her last article in USA TODAY, she presents Mary Claire Orenic as the “happiest woman at midlife”, being that she is an accomplished woman with a happy family life and a limited number of children. In Mrs. Orenic’s case, she has only child, which is one child less than “the ideal number contribute to a woman's long-term happiness”, based on the “massive data search by Gallup-Healthways for USA TODAY” (which, by the way, is not accessible through the article).  Sheehy writes that the “greatest impact on a woman's well-being at age 50 is to be free of caregiving responsibilities for children in the home and to have healthy parents who don't need care.”

Perhaps Mrs. Orenic is a very happy woman. It does indeed seem that she is devoted to her son and husband, and that value can be admired from cultures across the board. Her personal case is not for study here, but rather the confirmations made in light of her case and the Gallup-Healthway data collection.

I don’t know what took me more off guard: 1. the attempt to literally calculate happiness according a specific number of children and a cut-off age for having children; or 2. the assertion that being free of “caregiving responsibilities”, as she puts it, augments a woman’s happiness. (Note that Sheehy uses the word “well-being” and happiness interchangeably in the article.)

Let’s talk numbers. Another woman known for her happiness and publically awarded for her contributions and “success” didn’t even have one child: Mother Teresa of Calcutta, winner of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. Accomplished? She founded a religious community which by her lifetime, reached nearly 4000 members just in the female religious branch, 157 communities in 123 countries throughout the world, all completely dedicated to taking care of the most destitute and unwanted (the poor, the dying, the orphans, the marginalized). A woman with no physical children, but carried out her "caregiving" responsibilities until she died, leaving a legacy of good behind her. In a way, she continued to engender life well past her midlife period.

She may not have coined, but she sure did promote, the phrase “the joy of giving”. For her, these weren’t just words; they were a mentality, a lifestyle, a spirituality. In her bold and rich Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Mother Teresa tells a story about a Muslim mother who divided rice among her eight children and a neighboring Hindu family who brought Mother Teresa (and the rice) to them in the first place. She said: “I didn't bring more rice that evening because I wanted them to enjoy the joy of sharing. But there were those children, radiating joy, sharing the joy with their mother because she had the love to give. And you see this is where love begins - at home.”

In his encyclical letter Mulieris Dignitatem - On the Dignity & Vocation of Women- John Paul II states that “Woman can only find herself by giving love to others.”  Fulton Sheen highlighted the same point from a different perspective in his work, The World’ First Love "Woman's unhappiest moments are when she is unable to give; her most hellish moments are when she refuses to give.”

Sheehy’s “freedom from caregiving responsibility--happiness” theory is not compatible with the “fulfillment in giving” perspective that has no room for limits or calculations.  The giving of self in love may be expressed in many different forms and lifestyles, from the woman with one, eight, or no children of her own. Though a constant gift of self may not always be pleasurable or easy, it is more than just noble or admirable, and more than beneficial for just the woman herself. The ripple effects extend to the family, the community, to society itself. Think about it. What would happen if women “free” themselves of giving?