The New York Times editorial page sent a shockwave across the social media landscape this week by publishing a study demonstrating that religious conservative wives are the happiest in America. Since then, many leftists have been excoriating the Times for allegedly undermining the age-old adage that sometimes, ignorance is bliss.
Conducted by seven professors, including a University of Virginia professor of sociology and a Georgetown University professor of marriage, the study from the Institute for Family Students showed that 73% of wives “who hold conservative gender values and attend religious services regularly with their husbands have high-quality marriages.”
“Women in highly religious relationships are about 50% more likely to report that they are strongly satisfied with their sexual relationship than their secular and less religious counterparts,” the article brazenly stated, as reported by The Daily Wire’s Hank Berrien.
Further adding insult to injury for progressives, the article went on to state that just 55% of secular progressive wives in the United States admit to having meaningful and fulfilling marriages.
“Fewer than 46% of wives in the religious middle — who attend only infrequently or don’t share regular religious attendance with their husbands — and only 33% of secular conservative wives — who think men should take the lead on bread-winning and women on child-rearing but don’t attend church — have such marriages,” the report went on to say.
According to Fox News, the op-ed has not exactly gone over well with the majority of left-leaning readers who consume the Times, with many claiming the study only highlights that “brainwashed” wives are programmed to think they are happy.
“People dumb enough to blindly follow a religion are happy because they don’t know any better,” one disgruntled secularist wrote on Twitter. “Dummies are the most content.”
“You know absolutely about the repression of religious conservative women, huh?” asked another Twitter user.
“I used to lie to myself about how happy I was too. I wasn’t. But I was taught to find joy in suffering,” said a third user.
“You know they’re taught to be that way or else they’re ‘not serving their husband or God well.’ Want to know how I know? I was a religious right pastors [sic] wife,” said another user.
Here are a few other examples:
As argued by The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, religious conservative wives being happier than their progressive counterparts should be no surprise, considering that true religion engenders self-sacrifice between both spouses.
“I think religion offers a remedy by focusing the spouses on service and sacrifice rather than equality and sameness,” Walsh wrote. “Scripture tells both partners to serve each other without regard to their contribution. It is a difficult ideal to achieve all the time, but at least it puts a married couple on the right path”
He continued: “Speaking of which, it’s important to have a path, a purpose, in marriage. The secular understanding of marriage is that it’s a union between two people who love each other. But this conception of the marital covenant lacks the depth and coherence to sustain a marriage.”