Ross Douthat: Liberated and Unhappy

For those who are unfamiliar with him, Ross Douthat is a columnist with the The New York Times. He is refreshing when compared to the columnist he replaced, Bill Kristol, but I’m still very much at odds with his political views.
His newest article is about two trends: the various forms of equality that women have achieved and rising levels of unhappiness among women
I’ll assume that the findings in the economics paper he cited, “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness”, are accurate. But I’m wary of what people might conclude from them.
Ross offers his conclusion based on what he thinks feminists and traditionalists have gathered from it:

The feminist will see evidence of a revolution interrupted, in which rising expectations are bumping against glass ceilings, breeding entirely justified resentments. The traditionalist will see evidence of a revolution gone awry, in which women have been pressured into lifestyles that run counter to their biological imperatives, and men have been liberated to embrace a piggish irresponsibility.
There’s evidence to fit each of these narratives. But there’s also room for both.

Pray tell, Mr. Douthat, what the biological imperatives of women are when it comes to embracing or shunning certain lifestyles. Hmmm?
As it turns out, the “embrace-the-happy-medium” approach isn’t always the best thing to do, especially if you don’t have evidence that it’s the best approach. The traditionalist claim demands evidence, and again, there is none for it here.
This was irksome, but it was nothing compared to this:

They should also be able to agree that the steady advance of single motherhood threatens the interests and happiness of women. Here the public-policy options are limited; some kind of social stigma is a necessity. But a new-model stigma shouldn’t (and couldn’t) look like the old sexism. There’s no necessary reason why feminists and cultural conservatives can’t join forces — in the same way that they made common cause during the pornography wars of the 1980s — behind a social revolution that ostracizes serial baby-daddies and trophy-wife collectors as thoroughly as the “fallen women” of a more patriarchal age.

Yes, you read this correctly; we should embrace social stigmatization of single mothers! Why? Because public-policy options are limited. So instead of suggesting that we should, you know, push for more comprehensive public-policy options for single mothers, we should stigmatize! How do we do this? By implying that they’re just as bad as trophy-wife collectors!
His reference to public-policy options does imply that one of the reasons he supports stigmatization of single mothers has to do with the fact that they’re not as financially safeguarded as married couples with children. That part seems true enough, but being the uber-liberal that I am, I’d say that fact warrants stigmatization of our limited public-policy options instead of the single mothers who go through these hardships as a result of these limitations.
And now for the climax:

No reason, of course, save the fact that contemporary America doesn’t seem willing to accept sexual stigma, period. We simply don’t have the stomach for permanently ostracizing the sexually irresponsible — be they a pregnant starlet, a thrice-divorced tycoon, or even a prostitute-hiring politician.

Yes, Douthat. Your implication that single mothers are generally “sexually irresponsible” was received loud and clear.
Fuck you.