Connect / Eddie Holt: Single men and those over 55 are, it appears, the happiest men in Ireland, while six out of 10 men in both the Republic and the North are happy with their standard of living.
Nonetheless, Irish men are not as happy as Irish women. These are among the key findings of the Mintel Ireland Men's Lifestyles report issued in midweek.
The findings clearly suggest that, for men at least, the years of marriage or partnership remain a struggle. Mind you, only one in five men admitted being willing to sacrifice family time in order to progress at work. This was so even though the report found that men's careers remain extremely important as a means for them and others to assess their social status and personal value.
The author of the report, Eamonn Finn, adds that men are more likely than women to suffer adverse effects from losing their jobs. "Given all the changes that have and are taking place in the workplace, men's traditional attitude of self-worth linked to work still remains very strong," he writes. Meanwhile, females continue to dominate in terms of educational achievement and results.
So it's reasonable to conclude that, with an increasing number of women striving to land high social status jobs, men will feel even greater pressure. It's been decades since gender was a dominating fault-line in Ireland. Even in the Republic, religion was arguably more determining. Now race - especially colour - is increasingly critical and class is practically as resistant to change as ever.
The position of women - which was once, like the rest of society, under Catholic Church hegemony - has certainly changed now that market economics are the controlling force. Indeed, it can easily be argued that the contemporary love affair with an often tyrannical market has had more profound changes on women's lives than on men's. Quite simply, more and more women have jobs and careers.
For many, though, it's not simply a matter of choice. Financial realities dictate that a greater number of women in stable (and unstable!) relationships must work outside their homes or slide rapidly down the material ladder. In that sense, the notion of women choosing careers is questionable. Clearly many do, but many more find themselves compelled to bring home money.
Juggling careers, children, cooking and cleaning in order to maintain repayments on absurdly large mortgages and frequently over-powered cars, young and middle-aged couples give large chunks of their lives to work. The rat race we used to hear about is now thriving in Ireland and legions of men - and presumably women too - who are neither single nor over-55 are ground down by it.
Time was when the first half of adult life - between, say, 20 and 50 - was the period in which people made their mark on the world. It was largely ego-driven, sometimes aggressive and usually competitive. After that, life generally became less hectic and more self-centred, rather than ego-centred. No doubt, this general trajectory is still true, but the market is warping it by demanding more and more.
The report further found that the average age for men marrying is increasing annually. The average marrying age for a man is now 34 in the Republic and 32 in the North and almost two-thirds of 20- to 25-year-old men in the Republic live at home with their parents. All of these developments can be linked to exorbitant house prices.
So, we have built a society in which people - particularly youngish couples with families - commute and work but have severely restricted time for themselves and their children. In fairness, most people appear to acknowledge that the relative affluence such arrangements bring are preferable to a sluggish economy with few jobs, fewer luxuries and high emigration.
But there is a growing sense of working to fulfil the demands of the economic machine. It seems to control workers more than they control it. It's not surprising really that single men and those over 55 report themselves to be the happiest. The single ones - at least for the most part - are not concerned about children and those over 55 have, to a large degree, got their families reared.
It appears, then, that people have children not simply to add to their happiness, but perhaps from an even deeper urge to procreate lines of our species. Certainly, the falling birth rate in Ireland (a good reason for women to remain happier than men), though primarily caused by the availability of contraception and the loss of Catholic Church hegemony, also has links to the market.
When Catholic Tiger Ireland was in its pomp - keeping, as fundamentalism does, the outside world at bay - dreadful events took place in schools, orphanages and Magdalene laundries. Occasionally there were whispers of dark deeds, but it's only been in the last 14 or so years - since the Eamonn Casey scandal broke - that the public has become aware of the extent of the horror.
Now that the market has replaced the Catholic Church as the single most influential force in Irish life, there's a sense of liberation. It's waning, however, as the combined demands of work and children are making people less happy. New Ireland seems certain to become as unbalanced as traditional Ireland used to be.