To be honest, I had never heard of Chappell Roan until clips of her talking on Alex Cooper‘s Call Her Daddy podcast started appearing in my X feed.
“A lot of them are married with children, and they have their own houses,” Roan said of her childhood friends who still live in southeast Missouri. “To me … Like, I don’t know when that’s going to happen for me. I don’t know when that’s realistic, if ever.”
So far, nothing noteworthy. But then Roan continued.
“All of my friends who have kids are in hell. I actually don’t know anyone who’s happy and has children at this age … I’ve literally not met anyone who’s happy, anyone who has light in their eyes, who has slept,” she said.
Yikes!!! What an absolute horror getting married and having children must be!
(Chris Pizzello/AP)
But wait, what does the data actually say? Are married parents really as miserable as Roan made them out to be? Not at all. In fact, they are the happiest Americans.
According to the General Social Survey, 40% of married parents with children said they are “very happy” compared to 25% of married couples without children and 21% of unmarried people without children. To be fair, unmarried parents are the least happy, but Roan made it quite clear she was talking about married people with children, not single parents.
Now, it’s possible that all of Roan’s married friends are just the exception — maybe they are all unhappy. But another possibility is that Roan was projecting.
After all, she recently came out as lesbian, an increasingly common occurrence for women of her generation. But just as many young women are suddenly deciding they are lesbian, many are also switching back. Studies have shown that women’s sexual attractions are more fluid than men’s, often switching back and forth. One recent study found that more than a quarter of nonheterosexual young women returned to heterosexual status in just a five-year window.
Maybe all of this sexual identity exploration is healthy for young women, but the best data say it is not. Research shows that bisexual females and females questioning their sexuality have significantly higher scores for depression, anxiety, and traumatic distress than female heterosexuals.
And this vulnerable group appears to be Roan’s target demographic. Her top song, “Good Luck, Babe,” is about a bisexual woman who denies romantic affection for Roan.
CHAPPELL ROAN SAYS SHE DOESN’T KNOW A PARENT ‘WHO IS HAPPY’
“And when you wake up next to him in the middle of the night,” the song goes, “With your head in your hands, you’re nothing more than his wife.”
And people still have the audacity to ask for examples of popular culture attacking the institution of marriage.