【推荐2】In countries around the world, women do more unpaid labor-housework, child and elder care, and the mental load of managing a family than men. New research suggests it takes a health toll(代价)on many of them.

An analysis of 19 studies covering 70,310 people globally, which is published this month in The Lancet(柳叶刀)Public Health, found that the more of this labor women do, the worse their mental health. The findings point out women are more often diagnosed with anxiety and depression than men.

Housework and child care, the research found, have much less of an impact on men’s mental health. That’s probably because they do so much less of it. In the United States, women do an average 4.5 hours of such work a day, compared with 2.8 hours for men, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In Greece, women do 4.3 hours while men do an hour and a half. Even in the most gender-equal countries, like Sweden, women do 50 minutes more a day than men.

It’s also because the type of such work men do is generally less time-sensitive. For example, men are more often responsible for outdoor tasks, like mowing the lawn, that are done less often and on their own schedule. Women are more likely to take on daily tasks that need to be done at certain times, like preparing meals or cleaning up.

Social expectations probably also play a role. Studies have shown that women feel pressure to keep their homes clean, for instance, and feel judged if they don’t. Men, on the other hand, are often praised for doing daily tasks like taking a child to an appointment.

The Lancet researchers said that drawing clear conclusions from the 19 studies was difficult and that more research would be welcome.

【推荐3】Success is something we are told to celebrate when we achieve it. However, it might come as quite a surprise to many of us. Sometimes, we feel guilty (内疚) when we do become successful.     1     It’s more common than you think! Below are some of the most common reasons why people feel guilty about success.

You’re the First in Your Family To Achieve This Level of Success.

If you are the first person in your family to become successful, you may feel superior (有优越感的) to the others.     2    . For example, studies have shown that when the first generation college students attend college, they feel exactly the thing.

You Worry Success Came Too Easily

We have so many messages in our culture about having to work hard to succeed.     3     Or we tell them “try your best” when they aren’t working hard enough.

We associate success with lone hours at work over a desk, or keeping practicing a skill. But sometimes, we get lucky. We have succeeded before many years of hard work and effort. This can also lead to feelings of guilt.     4    

Many Other Talented People Are Less Successful

If you become successful, you might feel guilty because you know others are still struggling.     5     This can make you question whether you are truly deserving the success you’re experiencing.

【推荐2】Former Irish President Mary Robinson was just making a polite conversation with an Ethiopian teenager about her wedding day. The 16­year­old had already been married for a year. “She looked at me with the saddest eyes and said, ‘I had to drop out of school.’ ” Robinson said in a telephone interview. “That conveyed to me the reality.” said Robinson, the first woman to serve as Ireland’s president and former U. N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. “Her life, as far as she is concerned, had more or less ended.”

Robinson said keeping girls in school was one of the most important things policymakers could do to address the coming challenges of an ever­increasing population, predicted by the United Nations to reach 7 billion soon. “European countries are concerned about aging populations, but this is much less of an issue than the huge number of people which we are going to see over the next 40 years when the population goes from 7 billion to 9 billion,” she said. “Almost all of that increase will be in poor developing countries, so that we have a very big challenge.”

Family planning experts worry in particular about the future population explosion in Sub­Saharan Africa. In May, the United Nations projected the world population would reach 9.3 billion in 2050 and 10.1 billion by 2100. Much of that growth will come from Africa, where the population is growing at 2.3 percent a year—more than double Asia’s 1 percent growth rate. If that rate stays consistent, which is not certain, Africa’s population will reach 3.6 billion by 2100 from the present 1 billion.

Joel Cohen, a professor of population studies at Rockefeller University and Columbia University in New York, said universal secondary education offered a way to reduce population in high birth rate regions. In addition to providing information about birth control, a secondary education teaches women to reduce their own fertility, improve the health of their children and allows them to move from a mindset of having many children in the hope that some will survive to improve the quality of each child’s life, Cohen wrote in the journal Nature.