Life in the 21st century in comparison with the past

We should be overjoyed to be born these days and enjoy a life in the 21st century

Sometime ago I've read a text in which the author concluded his analysis with the above claim. Surprisingly his arguments were not bad but the conclusion was wondering. I am not going to go through all advantages and disadvantages of living in these/the times of a great technological progress compared to a life in a widely understood "Dark Ages" (by that we mean previous centuries, especially those very far-off/ancient/distant times) as most of us have at least a rough idea in mind. Instead I would like to focus on the structure of the analysis and the choice of a particular model that will allow us the comparison. Then we can draw correct conclusions only if we remain consistent with the chosen model.

Observe that in order to compare these lives one should focus on some particular aspects of a life that could measure our happiness or satisfaction. Basically we have to find answers to really tough questions like what makes your life happy? or what do you want to achieve in your life? what's the most important thing in your life? All these questions go back to a particular set of values that characterizes us. Since there is no one answer we have to simplify the problem and make some initial assumptions.

My first assumption is that everyone wants to live a comfortable life, whatever that means, and we go to a job and work every day in and out to ensure that a certain level is achieved. A level of what? Next we postulate that every normal person prefers to spend time with his/her family and hang out with friends rather than works extra hours. The last assumption is: our personal goals are somehow related to our family and work is a way to achieve them. Those postulates suggest thus that the work is not an end in itself. Under these assumptions we could define our seek to measure as a total time that what we have to spend on work so that our life reaches a certain level.  A level of what?

Without going into the details, roughly speaking the typical family consists of two working parents and both of them have to spend around 8 hours a day for a working. The time left for themselves, possibly their children, friends and other activities is rather limited. If we now use this measure to compare our life to lives in previous centuries when a woman didn't have to go to work and a man normally worked around 6 hours a day, obviously we cannot agree with the above claim.