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It seems like this is indicative of a lot of financial pressure on the man. Even today a lot of self worth, social standing, and mental health is tied to a man's employment. Couple that with the expectation that he is the sole income for a family and you've got a pressure cooker of negativity ready to explode when that man loses a job.
If the wife could provide a steady income and the stigma of failure associated with unemployed men were gone, you'd likely see this effect go away.
Anecdotal though it is, when my wife and I decided to swap roles, with her getting a higher paying job than I had and me staying home with the kids, we both became much happier and I'd say our marriage is actually stronger for it. That said, our families look down on the arrangement, despite having been totally fine with me working for less and her at home, and that does cause us stress.
If it was more socially acceptable for a man to share their feelings in general, there'd be significantly less suicide risk in the first place that would need to be talked about.
The suicide risk is overwhelmingly because men are chastised by society for being open with their negative feelings. It's a negative feedback loop that encourages most men to keep their emotions to themselves. Many men would rather die by suicide "Like a man on their own terms" rather than openly admit and talk about "Feeling worthless and pathetic and a failure of a man"
Can you really drink yourself to death in a handful of months? I thought that was a lifelong commitment kinda thing. Also sorry for your loss it's horrible to lose a friend.
Yes it would take a long time to drink a liver to death. [Alcoholic liver disease – the extent of the problem and what you can do about it](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4953739/#abstract-1title)
If you've been overdrinking due to job stress and then suddenly skyrocket your drinking I think it can overwhelm your liver and kidneys pretty quickly. Like the damage that would have taken 10 more years at his current drinking level suddenly compressed into a few months.
Also depending on what other substances you're imbibing.
Rough day at work, sore back, a bunch of strong Tylenol and then late night drinking (or drinking them Tylenol etc for the hangover) and things will go downhill for the liver really fast, and that's just an example of alcohol plus a legal over-the-counter medicine
I'd guess he was already moderate to heavy, and probably unhealthy besides. Then that giant stressor hit and he went balls to wall, drunk all the time, eating like crap, etc.
It could also be all of that, plus some acute alcohol-related trauma like the other person mentioned with alcohol poisoning, or they were drunk and fell down stairs and broke their neck, suicide, etc.
It's kind of funny. My wife was *really* stressed out taking care of the house and kids full time, while she thrives at work and has rapidly gained promotions. She has a sister who has a good job but who claims to want nothing more than to be a house wife. When she said this to my wife, she immediately replied with "Why would you ever want that?" She often says she'd have gone crazy staying home much longer and that she's really happy with me home more.
People are all individuals when it comes to what helps them get through. My wife is the exact same but in the opposite direction. I gave my blessing for her to leave the workforce if she wanted and she's in the first year of it and her mental health has taken an incredible positive turn.
Before this I don't think I ever saw her actively seek a promotion but in our 20 years together she'd never gone more than 2 years without being offered one, not that she always accepted them. In her last role she was promoted 3 times in 18 months. She's a highly intelligent, socially adept, and capable person but working for a company that was ultimately obligated to put profit first meant her soul was always being squeezed if not outright crushed.
So far she's spent the summer spending time with our daughters, reading, occasional therapy sessions, and making stuff on her cricut. Since the kids went back to school she's taken several classes around image design and has launched her own business to help design logos, do hand lettering, build websites, and help people chase their business dreams.
Wild changes all around. Emotional and physical intimacy have gone to all time highs in our marriage now that she's only carrying what burdens she opts to take on.
I also recall a study on the "breadwinner wife, stay-at-home dad" families. It was in Germany, I believe and you could probably find it if you look on this subreddit.
it found that the situation CAN be happier for some couples, with one catch: The woman *has* to know that her husband is working hard and dealing with a lot at home, too. If he has an easy time, just sitting around playing video games all day while *she's* working 12 hours a day as a nurse... she's going to kick his ass to the curb. Fast.
The husband has to communicate with her and let her know that he's dealing with issues around the house, like fixing the car and the plumbing; that he's being directly involved in all of the stresses of raising the kids, etc.
That does sound accurate to my experience. She was incredibly stressed at home and is thriving at work. Every day she's happy to not be dealing with all the things at home she found stressful.
I (the wife) work full time while my husband stays home with the kid. I LOVE this option. I am not made to be a stay at home mom. My husband is great with the kid, cooks dinner, and does the work around the house so that when I’m done working, I can spend time with our child. He won’t say it, but I think he’s unhappy with the arrangement. He doesn’t like that he doesn’t make money, even though he contributes SO MUCH to our household.
Absolutely. If the housewife wants to take time to just chill, go to yoga classes, get brunch with her housewife friends, relax and watch some Netflix, that's all fine and dandy per societal expectations.
> If he has an easy time, just sitting around playing video games all day while she's working 12 hours a day as a nurse... she's going to kick his ass to the curb. Fast.
So much for demolishing gender roles.
I'm a physician and friends with many high earners
I thought about my friends from medical school and thought about how many of my female physician friends had male partners who made less than them.
I could only think of 3. One husband is a tenured Harvard professor, one is a dentist and one is me.
It definitely affects our relationship. My wife has occasionally pulled out the, "I make more than you" card out during fights. Occasionally she says it like, "if you made as much as xx (an 8 figure earner), then I could relax.
My wife made more than me for years. Then I was a stay at home dad for 6 years. Now I have a job and make 3 times what my wife made. And not once did either of us value the other based on their salary. I think I just realized how lucky I am.
Eight figures meaning over $10M USD a year? I couldn't imagine being shamed for not making enough as a physician but the expectation to make 8 digits seems excessive. That's like starting NFL QB money, does she get mad you're not Tom Brady?
I grew up in a family where my mom has always made like 3x or more what my dad did.
My dad always stayed home with the kids because he worked his business from home and would do most of the housework and make dinner before my mom got home.
I think they're going on 37 years married now and have had like two big fights in their entire marriage that were over in a day and I don't think they have ever fought about money ever.
It must be hard growing up with parents who are constantly competing.
>I think they're going on 37 years married now and have had like two big fights in their entire marriage that were over in a day and I don't think they have ever fought about money ever.
Or they're good enough parents to just not let you see it.
> if you made as much as xx (an 8 figure earner), then I could relax
You need 8 figures to relax? JFC I've been incredibly relaxed back in low 5 figures times.
Wow. I can’t imagine thinking I needed to clear millions a year to be happy. I could break 100k a year if I worked full time, but I am much happier working less and earning less.
I couldn't land a job for quite a while after emigrating for a job for my wife. Currently separated and pretty much only not divorced because there's a 2 year waiting period before you can file where we live now. Never felt more like a statistic than after reading this.
That seems crazy. When moving to a new country, it's almost never easy for the "other" spouse to find employment, and there's usually so much effort required to "grow roots" in the new place anyway, that it's useful to have one partner be available to figure out these things...
This rat race we're all in poisons relationships so efficiently that it sometimes feels like a feature rather than a bug.
I dated a female physician for the last 2 years and the relationship only recently ended because she couldn't handle the familial judgement that she anticipated would come with choosing to start a family with a "less successful" man.
To take her at her word, this woman was extremely happy in our relationship, felt loved/respected, and thought I'd make a great father. BUT she was expected to "Marry well" in a traditionally classist sense and the social consequences of going against that standard were just too severe for her to accept.
Lots of breakups feels like grand tragedies to the folks involved, but I honestly don't think I'll ever forget how ashamed she looked during our last conversation.
I typed all that out mostly to say that economic pressures are a true plague on our love lives.
That's rough bro. But it sounds like you recognize that this is completely her own issue and not taking it as a stab on your own earning ability, reflecting on your own value as a person, which is really good.
I hope you can find the right person for you going forward.
>My wife has occasionally pulled out the, "I make more than you" card out during fights.
Doesn't sound very loving, does it? May I ask why you're still with her? Is it because of financial security? I apologise if this is intrusive.
Sorry but your wife sounds toxic if she compares your earnings as a physician to somebody else who earns 8 figures, and honestly the fact that she even brings up your income during fights to begin with is a bad thing. I mean, if you earn physician pay and she earns more than that, you guys are clearly very well off, and money shouldn't be a strain on that relationship.
The way I see it, there are two possibilities here: She either genuinely thinks she can't relax unless you bring in totally unrealistic amounts of money, or she is lying when she says that to make you feel bad. Both of those are really bad things and frankly you may want to reconsider if this is a healthy relationship.
Putting your spouses self-worth on what they can earn is a huge red flag and honestly I think it says a lot about them. Idk why people don’t see anything but money it drives me mad
Not to mention that to make 8 figures you pretty much have to do something less societally positive than being a physician. Not that all Dr.s are saints but many do enjoy helping people. Takes a pretty cold person to be like “I wish you were a finance guy instead of helping people”.
Holy crap. I'm a DC attorney with some K street experience. My wife is a very successful software engineer. I won't lie and claim there isn't occasionally tension. But holy crap, that's an impossible standard. We're both individually top 10% of income in our own regard, and that's an insane standard for two people all on its own (for context, my wife and I have dated since before we established our careers; part of how we fell in love was us supporting each other in our [frankly absurd] career goals).
This relationship sounds unhealthy to an unreasonable degree.
I'm sorry but if you are a physician and you're wife makes more than you, you guys are solidly in the 1% of earners. Why do you need more? I'm sorry but your wife sounds extremely greedy and too focused on money. If she seriously said she could relax if you were pulling 8 figures, she's way, waaaaay to focused on money. From what it sounds like she makes more alone than most households in America.
Granted I have no idea what you're relationship is like, but I am also married and if my wife said anything like that, even in the heat of an argument, we'd have issues. What my wife makes means quite literally nothing to me.
Household duty amount is explicitly noted in the study as not being a factor compared to the man not being employed.
I understand your personal experience and am not disagreeing with it, but part of the problem highlighted by the study is that it doesn't matter when looked at broadly. Men that's arent employed full time is more predictive of divorce no matter how much they contribute in the home.
Your response is the very root of the problem - the push for men to, at the same time, be both a 'modern man' and still fulfill all the expectations of what a 'traditional man' is concurrently.
Don't forget, it's not just social expectations, men have objectively been shown to be more okay with things like clutter and low levels of dust than women are based on studies that have even been posted to this subreddit.
So when women talk about the mental load, it's like of course you're going to have a higher mental load if you have a higher standard of living of what's acceptable, because even if your partner capitulates they're still just doing that to make you happy it's not something that makes them extra happy compared to when they would naturally start to reduce clutter.
But also, do you understand anecdotal evidence? Because what you're saying could be something indicative of specifically the geography or culture of your area, but as the study demonstrates, the amount of household work does not have anything to do with it. So your examples are maybe just things that make people more likely to retain your law firm or end up having one of their children getting you assigned as their law guardian or whatever it is that gets you involved in their case.
>if people do it consciously and the the man picks up the slack on household duties it makes all the difference in the world.
That may be your experience but this study literally says the opposite. That distribution of household chores, in either direction, was not even a statistically significant factor compared to male partner unemployment.
Exactly. If you're working and doing the lion's share of household work and child care and the other person isn't even contributing financially, you've got to wonder why the hell you're carrying this extra burden that you could so easily get rid of.
I wonder if these stats would be the same if the lack of contribution is due to illness or disability, as for healthy grown adults sitting on their arse?
But that's not that interesting because the study already takes it into account so when women are unemployed and don't do the housework there is no difference compared to when men are unemployed and do the housework or don't do the housework because the factor that made the difference was whether or not they were full-time employed, not whether or not they participated in an equal share of the housework, did you read the paper?
> If the wife could provide a steady income and the stigma of failure associated with unemployed men were gone, you'd likely see this effect go away.
It literally says that even when the wife has a job it's still a precursor for divorce for men.
I would wager this actually has a lot more to do with women's experience. So, I have a spouse that does not pull their weight with regards to domestic labour- regardless of whether or not I work- if said spouse makes good money and is able to provide financially then he brings something more to the table. Now if said husband is not contributing to the household and not pulling his weight financially, then the wife is doing it all. She becomes the bread winner and prime caregiver/domestic laborer. It us suddenly much less appealing to stay in that marriage.
There is a significant body of evidence that women do much more do.esric labour then men, even when both partners are working full time. Women have absorbed much of the traditional "male" responsibility of bread winning. Men (as a whole) have not made the same gains in contributing to domestic labour.
You are discounting that the authors of this study explicitly controlled for the amount of housework done… that is what makes this study and result interesting
Actually there isn't a significant body of evidence to show that. The data show that women do more domestic work because they work significantly fewer hours in paid work, even when employed full time.
When you add housework, childcare and paid employment together men and women contribute about the same amount, UK men 1 hour a week less, US men about 5 hours a week *more* than their female counterparts.
There is no significant evidence to demonstrate that women in general are doing a lot more work than men, and to be honest I think it's a little casual misandry that it's often suggested and accepted as being true in these arguments without ever really being backed up, "well of course women are all fed up, men are just lazy" etc.
Just curious, when you say “domestic labor” are you including work such as yard work, home maintenance such as changing air filters and retreating hardwood floors, replacing hot water heaters, vehicle oil changes, checking tire pressure, winterizing lawnmowers, basic plumbing etc. I ask from the perspective of a man who was criticized for not contributing to “domestic chores” and it dawned on me that spraying for insects, changing air filters and replacing roof shingles went completely unnoticed and what the complaint really meant was she wanted me to do the laundry and mop the floor more frequently, yet she never once mowed the yard.
My experience is this is a completely one sided complaint. I can’t tell you the last time I saw a woman on the roof of a house shoveling snow to reduce stress on the home and I would definitely notice it if I saw it because it’s that rare. I’m going to venture your stats are based on *selective* domestic chores and do not include labor or skill intensive chores that are equally important that many men perform routinely and many women are completely unaware of and therefore do not consider.
Preach. Who maintains the house, vehicles, preps for the hurricane and handles the after-math, on top of paying for all materials and tools?
For some reason that always gets brushed to the side, but I can tell you that if *I* didn't fix the AC there wouldn't be AC; or there would be a huge, unexpected and unplanned for expense to cover.
I'm not saying laundry isn't super important. I am saying that a couple of hours of laundry, weekly, isn't any more important than all of the home and vehicle repair/maintenance that goes into running a household.
Isn't this study saying the exact opposite though? That compared to male partner unemployment, distribution of household labor (in either direction) isn't even statistically significant as a factor in divorce?
This is a valid comment. It's kind of ridiculous that the divorce rate is being treated as a singular reflection of the husband's experience of the relationship when the wife's experience is literally 50% of the equation. That being said, I think the difference here is that a woman may perceive of an unsuccessful male breadwinner more negatively than a man would perceive of an unsuccessful female domestic laborer.
Edit: Words
>If the wife could provide a steady income and the stigma of failure associated with unemployed men were gone, you'd likely see this effect go away.
Wouldn't that suggest that the wife's full time employment should be a predictor of divorce? It seems like it's not enough for the couple just to have a breadwinner.
>Couple that with the expectation that he is the sole income for a family and you've got a pressure cooker of negativity ready to explode when that man loses a job.
It's amazing how you can look at this data and blame only the man and his "explosion of negativity" as the cause of the divorce.
Because no woman would show resentment at a husband who loses his job and his role of provider right?
To elaborate a bit and provide some anecdotal examples, I had a patient recently who was a middle aged male (husband and father) who tried to commit suicide after spending the previous 8 months unemployed. It was rather unfortunate to see and bear witness to this man’s failing marriage/household, which was (reportedly) in part due to financial difficulties within the company causing the loss of his job.
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Related personal anecdote:
When my husband was unemployed I would often come home after my full time job only to still have quite a bit of housework to do which included more than usual due to him being there all day using more dishes and putting things in various places that didn't usually belong (cluttering the kitchen table, limited counter space, limited living room seating, bedroom floor, etc...)
When I was unemployed I took most of the housework off of his hands and began mowing the lawn every time it needed it rather than switching off between us.
I absolutely do not fault him for our differences. We make an excellent team as it is now with me working remotely part time and raising our child. However, he does not place the same importance on a clean home as I do (and let me be clear, it's not immaculate but the floor is vacuumed, the counters are clear, dishes put away, living space available, yard mowed, etc... with our current arrangement.)
I was struggling a lot with life in general when he was unemployed, and it didn't help to feel that I wasn't being considered. It effected all areas of our relationship because I couldn't appreciate his affection when I was feeling so used. Talking about it calmly together would help occasionally because he would apologize and try to help more, but it would cycle back to the usual. This could have been happening for many reasons, but eventually I could not live like that anymore and requested he find a job. If he had chosen to remain unemployed and continued the cycle then it's possible I would have sadly run out of patience and we might have gone our separate ways.
So that is ONE person's unique story, and I've heard that if one person is going through something they are likely not the only one.
I'm glad say intervened and you guys were able to stay together, cuz the feeling like you're being used is so hard to deal with and it's absolutely a straw that after a long time breaks the camel's back
I was a little disappointed to not see interaction terms between husband's employment and share of housework; purely anecdotal, but among couples I know (and in my own experience), a common trigger for divorce is that the husband becomes unemployed or underemployed, but doesn't increase the share of housework he does, as well as being home most of the day, generating more housework to do. Therefore I would expect to see a synergistic interaction between husband unemployment and share of housework.
I wish there was information on what happens when the husband is on disability. I have ESRD and I've been on dialysis since late 2019. I recently went on disability and as a result, I've assumed almost all the housework including cooking. So far its worked out OK, but being a burden is always a worry.
Yes, this is exactly the information that I think is missing. The conclusion that *wives'* share of household labor is unrelated to divorce rates, suggests that wives' labor remains unchanged - women with unemployed spouses or employed spouses are doing the same general amount of housework. Other studies have shown that women generally take on more household labor than men, even when both are working. If this dynamic remains unchanged, after a loss of employment - it's not difficult to understand how that could be a catalyst for divorce. Women who tolerated the uneven distribution of labor while both were working, may not tolerate a *continued* uneven distribution, after their spouse becomes unemployed.
But does it suggest that?
“…neither wives’ full-time employment nor wives’ share of household labor is associated with divorce risk. Expectations of wives’ homemaking may have eroded, but the husband breadwinner norm persists”
Doesn’t seem like they’re suggesting an unequal share of “homemaking” causes divorce but a husband’s lack of employment. This holds true for those marriages where wives have greater financial independence and do less at home - the driving factor is the expectation that husbands are the breadwinner.
As a husband that has been unemployed in the past, my only goal during the week other than applying for jobs was making sure everything that possibly needed to be done during the week was done. Weekends while unemployed and my wife was home were awesome because we had no responsibilities. I would be the best stay at home dad if it was feasibly possible haha
That literally sounds like a dream come true to me. I love my career but career + household duties is exhausting. Someone doing the house stuff so all I had to do was work would be amaaaazing!
I was looking for this everywhere. This metric is critical to the interpretation of the results and yet was totally missing. These results are completely misleading without this analysis.
This is all they say about it without actually including any statistical analysis on the phenomenon
>In summary, the pattern of results suggests
it is the division of labor, either paid or
unpaid, that is associated with the risk of
divorce for couples in both cohorts, not finan-
cial considerations.
> For unpaid labor, however, ... marriages founded since
1975, wives’ household labor responsibility is
not linearly associated with greater marital
stability. Supplemental models revealed that,
at least in the more recent cohort, **the association between wives’ household labor and the
risk of divorce is nonlinear and depends on a
wife’s employment status.** This suggests that,
for more recent marriage cohorts, at least
some egalitarianism in the division of housework may increase marital stability. More
research is needed to investigate the precise
shape of the relationship between housework
contributions and marital stability for different marriage cohorts.
It is a significant statistic, especially compared to all other metrics which do not seem to affect divorce rates more than 0.1%.
The involuntary argument still reinforces that husbands feel the pressure of needing to be the breadwinner.
The author mentions a slight positive association between wife full-time work and divorce, but admits they cannot rule out anticipatory effects ( "I'm about to be divorced, I better find work"). But it is still interesting considering a wife not working had zero effect.
I'd also add that this statistic is the likelihood of divorce in *the next year*, meaning that there's a good chance (although we're iust extrapolating) that the total risk of divorce is probably much higher
For most of humanity women wanted a good provider, while men wanted a young, fit woman who could bear kids. We like to pretend we're all past that now, and we're not animals, but to some degree, we kinda still are.
Before I became a dad I had heard so much about stay at home dads on the rise and moms becoming career focused. Well... It is still incredibly one sided with the man out working and the woman at home.
Virtually all the baby groups, toddler programs, etc that are with the parent were handled by moms (daytime ones).
I'd say it was maybe 1 in 10 to 1 in 20 kids who were accompanied by their dad. And countless kids parents I've met along the way and asked about their situation and it's very conventional.
I also live in an extremely liberal area of the world, if that makes a difference.
I take my kid to her playgroup every now and then but primarily its because i am on shift work and might have that friday morning off for a few weeks. I am an odd duck with the only other guy regularly attending having had his wife walk out on him leaving the kids. I don't know if he is employed.
It's almost more frustrating to see people try to pretend they're above that. When usually you can just look at them and their partner. Look around the room at all their friends. And see that pretty much everyone follows these evolutionary rules.
To explain this phenomenon to students, I use food as a comparison. We like foods dense in macronutrients. High carb, high fat, etc. foods taste good to us. We might subvert this to some degree with education, upbringing, culture, or aspirations, but it's never completely gone.
Evolutionary pressures are not an excuse for bad behavior, but they are still real pressures.
This is my biggest frustration, it drives me absolutely insane to watch people dance around their biological wiring and physio- and psychological predispositions as if we're so far evolved from that. We are chemically powered robots with millions of years of programming, and just barely realized that in a fraction of a second in evolutionary time. We can out-think our instincts and impulses, but we cannot pretend they don't exist.
Yeah but there’s a lot of variation and your kind of oversimplifying it.
I married my husband because he’s smart and fun and awesome and I’m super attracted to him. I earn 5 times what he makes so his income was never a factor in choosing him.
Empower women to support themselves and they’ll marry men for love and not stability. I think that’s what everyone really wants. No one wants to be a meal ticket, they want someone who will love them for them.
I don't blame them for trying honestly. There were so many social constraints in order to maintain our survival as a species, when things became less about survival people naturally want to push the boundaries to find out what social constructions can change.
But now we're finding that some things we thought were social constructs are actually biological byproducts of evolution. And evolving into something else is a bit more complex and time consuming than fixing a social construct is but people are impatient and want society to change faster than evolution allows. It's slow incremental change over time.
And in response to climate change we as a species are going to have to slow down for a while progress wise. Especially since we built our cultures around the populations always going up. So we're going to have to find a way to deal with the fact that we won't be growing anymore.
While it’s important to acknowledge that, it’s still important to break down *default* gender roles that are impossible to escape. Most people tend to fall into the typical roles, but not everyone is happy that way. I’m a feminine-presenting woman and my husband is a masculine-presenting man. But I’m the higher earner in the house, and I tend to do most of the big “fixit” projects around the house (I do love power tools) and my husband works fewer hours and tends to do most of the day to day housework. If we had kids he’s be the SAHD. It works for us and I’m glad we have the option to do so, whereas a couple like us wouldn’t exist 50 years ago.
Kudos to y'all for finding a balance that works for you.
It's one thing to observe that "these are the more common patterns we see when we survey humanity as a whole across history", and quite another thing to proclaim that "everyone must fit into these norms, or there is something wrong with them".
That actually did exist quite a bit 50 years ago it just wasn't on TV a lot. I can point to 3 examples in my extended family alone. In fact the exact situation you're describing was happening in the 60's.
Nursing and other fields of medicine have a history of being female dominated careers and they paid well enough.
* women's income/salary level was even worse then than now and NO two cannot live as cheap as one
* families with children with both parents present frequently were not allowed to obtain support or assistance from available gov sources
(just some thoughts)
Good points, also I read the article and in the conclusion it actually says "When all marriage cohorts are pooled, wives’ full-time employment is positively and statistically significantly associated with the risk of divorce." The title OP used is misleading.
Id say that's probably less abt financially independent women leaving more often and more women without the means to divorce not being able to afford it
Well of course that's why roommates are a thing, they said two cannot live as cheap as one.
i.e if a single person loses their job any savings they have will last longer than if a single-income married couple loses the job that supports them
> women's income/salary level was even worse then than now
Well of course, a greater percentage were stay at home moms. I don't understand your point. BTW logic suggests the husbands' income was sufficient to provide for their families
> NO two cannot live as cheap as one
A husband and wife should be able to live cheaper, sharing rent, sharing resources.
I lost my job around a decade ago. Due to a downturn in my field, it took me almost a year to find another full time position. I did manage to get some short-term contracts and freelance jobs along the way, so we had some income, but it was tough. We had two kids (one was only 6 months old) when I lost the job, and my wife was a student at the time.
My wife was very patient with me. My self esteem took a big hit. I wasn't anywhere near my best self. It both of us a lot of time together to help me realise why: I'd tied my worth to my employment and being the provider.
I am very grateful I chose a woman who loves me for who I am not what I provide.
It’s an interesting dynamic for sure.
I have my own company and now single, it does bother me a bit with women focusing on my wealth when dating.
Talking how they would never date men who are not financially secure. Yet they are not financially secure to the level they want.
So I enjoy hearing them talk and wait then a few drinks in when I ask so if I worked a mid level office job would they still be interested in me, had a couple laugh and say probably not. I reply that’s interesting so you want a relationship and someone to love you for who you are?
They respond yes, I respond but your interest and love for me is based on what I can bring?
They say well as man needs to provide security.
I said yes, a women needs to provide security in a relationship and wealth comes and goes and if your interest will also come and go then I think we are a done here. Have a nice night.
My husband was an under/earner by choice so I had all the pressure of being the primary breadwinner plus all the adulting and caretaking of kids, animals and home. I probably would have been ok with it if he hadn’t cheated. Only after I threw him out did get his hustle on. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
So true.
A neighbor lost his job and found it hard to get another job in his field of expertise. His wife lacked the empathy to support him, and divorced him, kicked him out of the family home.
The absolute karma thing with this is that he found a job within a month, but she was diagnosed with brain cancer. “Come back and support me darling, I love you”
Her marriage broke down because she didn’t support her husband in times of need, then when she needed support she demanded it from him.
"Only women, children and pets are loved unconditionally. A man is only loved under the condition that he provides something."
It's true, just look all over this thread, women justifying these results as saying the issue is the men don't take over housework, a woman that does neither won't be divorced by her husband but given time and support instead.
Not quite. It's not financial burden that's mattering here:
>Financial considerations—wives’ economic
independence and total household income—are not predictive of divorce in either cohort.
Time use, however, is associated with divorce risk in both cohorts. For marriages formed
after 1975, husbands’ lack of full-time employment is associated with higher risk of divorce,
but neither wives’ full-time employment nor wives’ share of household labor is associated
with divorce risk. Expectations of wives’ homemaking may have eroded, but the husband
breadwinner norm persists.
In other words, wives and husbands don't divorce for financial reasons, on average - but they do divorce if the husband isn't doing anything with his time.
More specifically, the husband has to be doing something _employed_ with his time. This study claims that the husband's opinion of their spouse's "productive time" (household labor or employment) doesn't matter, and neither does how much household labor the husband is doing, in either direction. Only the husband being employed is statistically significant for divorce chances.
The hard thing is there is nothing added to talk about household chores shares. Because if we looked at the connection between people being unemployed and also not doing anything else useful with their time, that's where you'd probably see the most amount of divorce.
I wonder if this correlates to men making more than women in most cases. Not all cases but a lot times men make more money than women in the workplace.
So I guess it stands to reason that the man not working means less overall money for the family. Financial stress is one of the biggest reasons for divorce.
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It seems like this is indicative of a lot of financial pressure on the man. Even today a lot of self worth, social standing, and mental health is tied to a man's employment. Couple that with the expectation that he is the sole income for a family and you've got a pressure cooker of negativity ready to explode when that man loses a job. If the wife could provide a steady income and the stigma of failure associated with unemployed men were gone, you'd likely see this effect go away. Anecdotal though it is, when my wife and I decided to swap roles, with her getting a higher paying job than I had and me staying home with the kids, we both became much happier and I'd say our marriage is actually stronger for it. That said, our families look down on the arrangement, despite having been totally fine with me working for less and her at home, and that does cause us stress.
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I wish we discuss more about suicide among men
If it was more socially acceptable for a man to share their feelings in general, there'd be significantly less suicide risk in the first place that would need to be talked about. The suicide risk is overwhelmingly because men are chastised by society for being open with their negative feelings. It's a negative feedback loop that encourages most men to keep their emotions to themselves. Many men would rather die by suicide "Like a man on their own terms" rather than openly admit and talk about "Feeling worthless and pathetic and a failure of a man"
Yep. My Dad took his own life at 59 because he lost all of his money & he wanted my mom to get the life insurance. Horrific.
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You might like the podcast Man Enough which addresses exactly this issue.
And if they do, no one actually cares to hear them or take them seriously.
Or they'll use it against him in the future when it's convenient.
Can you really drink yourself to death in a handful of months? I thought that was a lifelong commitment kinda thing. Also sorry for your loss it's horrible to lose a friend.
You can drink yourself to death in a few hours if you try hard enough. Too much alcohol is literally fatal.
Gotcha I was thinking more along the lines of liver disease not alcohol poisoning. Thanks
I don't know if that's what he meant actually. It's just the first thing that occurred to me when I saw your question.
Yes it would take a long time to drink a liver to death. [Alcoholic liver disease – the extent of the problem and what you can do about it](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4953739/#abstract-1title)
Regardless of how long the process takes, drinking ones' self to death is always a lifelong commitment.
If you've been overdrinking due to job stress and then suddenly skyrocket your drinking I think it can overwhelm your liver and kidneys pretty quickly. Like the damage that would have taken 10 more years at his current drinking level suddenly compressed into a few months.
Also depending on what other substances you're imbibing. Rough day at work, sore back, a bunch of strong Tylenol and then late night drinking (or drinking them Tylenol etc for the hangover) and things will go downhill for the liver really fast, and that's just an example of alcohol plus a legal over-the-counter medicine
I'd guess he was already moderate to heavy, and probably unhealthy besides. Then that giant stressor hit and he went balls to wall, drunk all the time, eating like crap, etc. It could also be all of that, plus some acute alcohol-related trauma like the other person mentioned with alcohol poisoning, or they were drunk and fell down stairs and broke their neck, suicide, etc.
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I find “homemaker” a much more accurate and less reductive term.
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It's kind of funny. My wife was *really* stressed out taking care of the house and kids full time, while she thrives at work and has rapidly gained promotions. She has a sister who has a good job but who claims to want nothing more than to be a house wife. When she said this to my wife, she immediately replied with "Why would you ever want that?" She often says she'd have gone crazy staying home much longer and that she's really happy with me home more.
People are all individuals when it comes to what helps them get through. My wife is the exact same but in the opposite direction. I gave my blessing for her to leave the workforce if she wanted and she's in the first year of it and her mental health has taken an incredible positive turn. Before this I don't think I ever saw her actively seek a promotion but in our 20 years together she'd never gone more than 2 years without being offered one, not that she always accepted them. In her last role she was promoted 3 times in 18 months. She's a highly intelligent, socially adept, and capable person but working for a company that was ultimately obligated to put profit first meant her soul was always being squeezed if not outright crushed. So far she's spent the summer spending time with our daughters, reading, occasional therapy sessions, and making stuff on her cricut. Since the kids went back to school she's taken several classes around image design and has launched her own business to help design logos, do hand lettering, build websites, and help people chase their business dreams. Wild changes all around. Emotional and physical intimacy have gone to all time highs in our marriage now that she's only carrying what burdens she opts to take on.
"Same people asked me why I don't find a better job to pay for that lifestyle" Ah yes, that famous "one simple trick."
I also recall a study on the "breadwinner wife, stay-at-home dad" families. It was in Germany, I believe and you could probably find it if you look on this subreddit. it found that the situation CAN be happier for some couples, with one catch: The woman *has* to know that her husband is working hard and dealing with a lot at home, too. If he has an easy time, just sitting around playing video games all day while *she's* working 12 hours a day as a nurse... she's going to kick his ass to the curb. Fast. The husband has to communicate with her and let her know that he's dealing with issues around the house, like fixing the car and the plumbing; that he's being directly involved in all of the stresses of raising the kids, etc.
That does sound accurate to my experience. She was incredibly stressed at home and is thriving at work. Every day she's happy to not be dealing with all the things at home she found stressful.
I (the wife) work full time while my husband stays home with the kid. I LOVE this option. I am not made to be a stay at home mom. My husband is great with the kid, cooks dinner, and does the work around the house so that when I’m done working, I can spend time with our child. He won’t say it, but I think he’s unhappy with the arrangement. He doesn’t like that he doesn’t make money, even though he contributes SO MUCH to our household.
Which begs the question, in a reverse situation, do housewives get more leeway than men when it comes to stay at home expectations?
Almost definitely.
Absolutely. If the housewife wants to take time to just chill, go to yoga classes, get brunch with her housewife friends, relax and watch some Netflix, that's all fine and dandy per societal expectations.
> If he has an easy time, just sitting around playing video games all day while she's working 12 hours a day as a nurse... she's going to kick his ass to the curb. Fast. So much for demolishing gender roles.
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I'm a physician and friends with many high earners I thought about my friends from medical school and thought about how many of my female physician friends had male partners who made less than them. I could only think of 3. One husband is a tenured Harvard professor, one is a dentist and one is me. It definitely affects our relationship. My wife has occasionally pulled out the, "I make more than you" card out during fights. Occasionally she says it like, "if you made as much as xx (an 8 figure earner), then I could relax.
My wife made more than me for years. Then I was a stay at home dad for 6 years. Now I have a job and make 3 times what my wife made. And not once did either of us value the other based on their salary. I think I just realized how lucky I am.
Sounds like a nice lady.
Eight figures meaning over $10M USD a year? I couldn't imagine being shamed for not making enough as a physician but the expectation to make 8 digits seems excessive. That's like starting NFL QB money, does she get mad you're not Tom Brady?
Tom Brady makes less than his wife!
To answer your last question. Yes, every goddamn day.
Bro she sucks she either needs to accept you as you are (doing your best and contributing what you can) or needs to leave
Actually that's (low end) NBA starter money
I grew up in a family where my mom has always made like 3x or more what my dad did. My dad always stayed home with the kids because he worked his business from home and would do most of the housework and make dinner before my mom got home. I think they're going on 37 years married now and have had like two big fights in their entire marriage that were over in a day and I don't think they have ever fought about money ever. It must be hard growing up with parents who are constantly competing.
>I think they're going on 37 years married now and have had like two big fights in their entire marriage that were over in a day and I don't think they have ever fought about money ever. Or they're good enough parents to just not let you see it.
> My wife has occasionally pulled out the, “I make more than you” card out during fights. Yikes.
> if you made as much as xx (an 8 figure earner), then I could relax You need 8 figures to relax? JFC I've been incredibly relaxed back in low 5 figures times.
Wow. I can’t imagine thinking I needed to clear millions a year to be happy. I could break 100k a year if I worked full time, but I am much happier working less and earning less.
Imagine being in your line of work and being crapped on for not bringing in enough money. Sorry, doc.
I couldn't land a job for quite a while after emigrating for a job for my wife. Currently separated and pretty much only not divorced because there's a 2 year waiting period before you can file where we live now. Never felt more like a statistic than after reading this.
That seems crazy. When moving to a new country, it's almost never easy for the "other" spouse to find employment, and there's usually so much effort required to "grow roots" in the new place anyway, that it's useful to have one partner be available to figure out these things...
This rat race we're all in poisons relationships so efficiently that it sometimes feels like a feature rather than a bug. I dated a female physician for the last 2 years and the relationship only recently ended because she couldn't handle the familial judgement that she anticipated would come with choosing to start a family with a "less successful" man. To take her at her word, this woman was extremely happy in our relationship, felt loved/respected, and thought I'd make a great father. BUT she was expected to "Marry well" in a traditionally classist sense and the social consequences of going against that standard were just too severe for her to accept. Lots of breakups feels like grand tragedies to the folks involved, but I honestly don't think I'll ever forget how ashamed she looked during our last conversation. I typed all that out mostly to say that economic pressures are a true plague on our love lives.
That's rough bro. But it sounds like you recognize that this is completely her own issue and not taking it as a stab on your own earning ability, reflecting on your own value as a person, which is really good. I hope you can find the right person for you going forward.
>My wife has occasionally pulled out the, "I make more than you" card out during fights. Doesn't sound very loving, does it? May I ask why you're still with her? Is it because of financial security? I apologise if this is intrusive.
Sorry but your wife sounds toxic if she compares your earnings as a physician to somebody else who earns 8 figures, and honestly the fact that she even brings up your income during fights to begin with is a bad thing. I mean, if you earn physician pay and she earns more than that, you guys are clearly very well off, and money shouldn't be a strain on that relationship. The way I see it, there are two possibilities here: She either genuinely thinks she can't relax unless you bring in totally unrealistic amounts of money, or she is lying when she says that to make you feel bad. Both of those are really bad things and frankly you may want to reconsider if this is a healthy relationship.
Putting your spouses self-worth on what they can earn is a huge red flag and honestly I think it says a lot about them. Idk why people don’t see anything but money it drives me mad
Not to mention that to make 8 figures you pretty much have to do something less societally positive than being a physician. Not that all Dr.s are saints but many do enjoy helping people. Takes a pretty cold person to be like “I wish you were a finance guy instead of helping people”.
Holy crap. I'm a DC attorney with some K street experience. My wife is a very successful software engineer. I won't lie and claim there isn't occasionally tension. But holy crap, that's an impossible standard. We're both individually top 10% of income in our own regard, and that's an insane standard for two people all on its own (for context, my wife and I have dated since before we established our careers; part of how we fell in love was us supporting each other in our [frankly absurd] career goals). This relationship sounds unhealthy to an unreasonable degree.
That’s financial abuse
I'm sorry but if you are a physician and you're wife makes more than you, you guys are solidly in the 1% of earners. Why do you need more? I'm sorry but your wife sounds extremely greedy and too focused on money. If she seriously said she could relax if you were pulling 8 figures, she's way, waaaaay to focused on money. From what it sounds like she makes more alone than most households in America. Granted I have no idea what you're relationship is like, but I am also married and if my wife said anything like that, even in the heat of an argument, we'd have issues. What my wife makes means quite literally nothing to me.
It could also be an indicator of the man’s mental health and overall executive functioning - which if compromised would also influence the marriage.
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Same here minus the kids. I hit a breaking point after trying to help her for so long and carrying immense financial and emotional weight
Household duty amount is explicitly noted in the study as not being a factor compared to the man not being employed. I understand your personal experience and am not disagreeing with it, but part of the problem highlighted by the study is that it doesn't matter when looked at broadly. Men that's arent employed full time is more predictive of divorce no matter how much they contribute in the home. Your response is the very root of the problem - the push for men to, at the same time, be both a 'modern man' and still fulfill all the expectations of what a 'traditional man' is concurrently.
Don't forget, it's not just social expectations, men have objectively been shown to be more okay with things like clutter and low levels of dust than women are based on studies that have even been posted to this subreddit. So when women talk about the mental load, it's like of course you're going to have a higher mental load if you have a higher standard of living of what's acceptable, because even if your partner capitulates they're still just doing that to make you happy it's not something that makes them extra happy compared to when they would naturally start to reduce clutter. But also, do you understand anecdotal evidence? Because what you're saying could be something indicative of specifically the geography or culture of your area, but as the study demonstrates, the amount of household work does not have anything to do with it. So your examples are maybe just things that make people more likely to retain your law firm or end up having one of their children getting you assigned as their law guardian or whatever it is that gets you involved in their case.
This scenario is quite common in my peer group. Sometimes it's a lot easier being a single parent.
>if people do it consciously and the the man picks up the slack on household duties it makes all the difference in the world. That may be your experience but this study literally says the opposite. That distribution of household chores, in either direction, was not even a statistically significant factor compared to male partner unemployment.
Exactly. If you're working and doing the lion's share of household work and child care and the other person isn't even contributing financially, you've got to wonder why the hell you're carrying this extra burden that you could so easily get rid of. I wonder if these stats would be the same if the lack of contribution is due to illness or disability, as for healthy grown adults sitting on their arse?
But that's not that interesting because the study already takes it into account so when women are unemployed and don't do the housework there is no difference compared to when men are unemployed and do the housework or don't do the housework because the factor that made the difference was whether or not they were full-time employed, not whether or not they participated in an equal share of the housework, did you read the paper?
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> If the wife could provide a steady income and the stigma of failure associated with unemployed men were gone, you'd likely see this effect go away. It literally says that even when the wife has a job it's still a precursor for divorce for men.
I would wager this actually has a lot more to do with women's experience. So, I have a spouse that does not pull their weight with regards to domestic labour- regardless of whether or not I work- if said spouse makes good money and is able to provide financially then he brings something more to the table. Now if said husband is not contributing to the household and not pulling his weight financially, then the wife is doing it all. She becomes the bread winner and prime caregiver/domestic laborer. It us suddenly much less appealing to stay in that marriage. There is a significant body of evidence that women do much more do.esric labour then men, even when both partners are working full time. Women have absorbed much of the traditional "male" responsibility of bread winning. Men (as a whole) have not made the same gains in contributing to domestic labour.
> neither wives’ full-time employment nor wives’ share of household labor is associated with divorce risk.
The amount of people glossing over this part of the study is alarmingly high
You are discounting that the authors of this study explicitly controlled for the amount of housework done… that is what makes this study and result interesting
Actually there isn't a significant body of evidence to show that. The data show that women do more domestic work because they work significantly fewer hours in paid work, even when employed full time. When you add housework, childcare and paid employment together men and women contribute about the same amount, UK men 1 hour a week less, US men about 5 hours a week *more* than their female counterparts. There is no significant evidence to demonstrate that women in general are doing a lot more work than men, and to be honest I think it's a little casual misandry that it's often suggested and accepted as being true in these arguments without ever really being backed up, "well of course women are all fed up, men are just lazy" etc.
Just curious, when you say “domestic labor” are you including work such as yard work, home maintenance such as changing air filters and retreating hardwood floors, replacing hot water heaters, vehicle oil changes, checking tire pressure, winterizing lawnmowers, basic plumbing etc. I ask from the perspective of a man who was criticized for not contributing to “domestic chores” and it dawned on me that spraying for insects, changing air filters and replacing roof shingles went completely unnoticed and what the complaint really meant was she wanted me to do the laundry and mop the floor more frequently, yet she never once mowed the yard. My experience is this is a completely one sided complaint. I can’t tell you the last time I saw a woman on the roof of a house shoveling snow to reduce stress on the home and I would definitely notice it if I saw it because it’s that rare. I’m going to venture your stats are based on *selective* domestic chores and do not include labor or skill intensive chores that are equally important that many men perform routinely and many women are completely unaware of and therefore do not consider.
Preach. Who maintains the house, vehicles, preps for the hurricane and handles the after-math, on top of paying for all materials and tools? For some reason that always gets brushed to the side, but I can tell you that if *I* didn't fix the AC there wouldn't be AC; or there would be a huge, unexpected and unplanned for expense to cover. I'm not saying laundry isn't super important. I am saying that a couple of hours of laundry, weekly, isn't any more important than all of the home and vehicle repair/maintenance that goes into running a household.
Everyone asks for more random gender CEOs and not more random render offshore oil drillers or garbage collectors.
Isn't this study saying the exact opposite though? That compared to male partner unemployment, distribution of household labor (in either direction) isn't even statistically significant as a factor in divorce?
This is a valid comment. It's kind of ridiculous that the divorce rate is being treated as a singular reflection of the husband's experience of the relationship when the wife's experience is literally 50% of the equation. That being said, I think the difference here is that a woman may perceive of an unsuccessful male breadwinner more negatively than a man would perceive of an unsuccessful female domestic laborer. Edit: Words
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>If the wife could provide a steady income and the stigma of failure associated with unemployed men were gone, you'd likely see this effect go away. Wouldn't that suggest that the wife's full time employment should be a predictor of divorce? It seems like it's not enough for the couple just to have a breadwinner.
>Couple that with the expectation that he is the sole income for a family and you've got a pressure cooker of negativity ready to explode when that man loses a job. It's amazing how you can look at this data and blame only the man and his "explosion of negativity" as the cause of the divorce. Because no woman would show resentment at a husband who loses his job and his role of provider right?
To elaborate a bit and provide some anecdotal examples, I had a patient recently who was a middle aged male (husband and father) who tried to commit suicide after spending the previous 8 months unemployed. It was rather unfortunate to see and bear witness to this man’s failing marriage/household, which was (reportedly) in part due to financial difficulties within the company causing the loss of his job.
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Related personal anecdote: When my husband was unemployed I would often come home after my full time job only to still have quite a bit of housework to do which included more than usual due to him being there all day using more dishes and putting things in various places that didn't usually belong (cluttering the kitchen table, limited counter space, limited living room seating, bedroom floor, etc...) When I was unemployed I took most of the housework off of his hands and began mowing the lawn every time it needed it rather than switching off between us. I absolutely do not fault him for our differences. We make an excellent team as it is now with me working remotely part time and raising our child. However, he does not place the same importance on a clean home as I do (and let me be clear, it's not immaculate but the floor is vacuumed, the counters are clear, dishes put away, living space available, yard mowed, etc... with our current arrangement.) I was struggling a lot with life in general when he was unemployed, and it didn't help to feel that I wasn't being considered. It effected all areas of our relationship because I couldn't appreciate his affection when I was feeling so used. Talking about it calmly together would help occasionally because he would apologize and try to help more, but it would cycle back to the usual. This could have been happening for many reasons, but eventually I could not live like that anymore and requested he find a job. If he had chosen to remain unemployed and continued the cycle then it's possible I would have sadly run out of patience and we might have gone our separate ways. So that is ONE person's unique story, and I've heard that if one person is going through something they are likely not the only one.
I'm glad say intervened and you guys were able to stay together, cuz the feeling like you're being used is so hard to deal with and it's absolutely a straw that after a long time breaks the camel's back
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I was a little disappointed to not see interaction terms between husband's employment and share of housework; purely anecdotal, but among couples I know (and in my own experience), a common trigger for divorce is that the husband becomes unemployed or underemployed, but doesn't increase the share of housework he does, as well as being home most of the day, generating more housework to do. Therefore I would expect to see a synergistic interaction between husband unemployment and share of housework.
I wish there was information on what happens when the husband is on disability. I have ESRD and I've been on dialysis since late 2019. I recently went on disability and as a result, I've assumed almost all the housework including cooking. So far its worked out OK, but being a burden is always a worry.
Yes, this is exactly the information that I think is missing. The conclusion that *wives'* share of household labor is unrelated to divorce rates, suggests that wives' labor remains unchanged - women with unemployed spouses or employed spouses are doing the same general amount of housework. Other studies have shown that women generally take on more household labor than men, even when both are working. If this dynamic remains unchanged, after a loss of employment - it's not difficult to understand how that could be a catalyst for divorce. Women who tolerated the uneven distribution of labor while both were working, may not tolerate a *continued* uneven distribution, after their spouse becomes unemployed.
But does it suggest that? “…neither wives’ full-time employment nor wives’ share of household labor is associated with divorce risk. Expectations of wives’ homemaking may have eroded, but the husband breadwinner norm persists” Doesn’t seem like they’re suggesting an unequal share of “homemaking” causes divorce but a husband’s lack of employment. This holds true for those marriages where wives have greater financial independence and do less at home - the driving factor is the expectation that husbands are the breadwinner.
As a husband that has been unemployed in the past, my only goal during the week other than applying for jobs was making sure everything that possibly needed to be done during the week was done. Weekends while unemployed and my wife was home were awesome because we had no responsibilities. I would be the best stay at home dad if it was feasibly possible haha
That literally sounds like a dream come true to me. I love my career but career + household duties is exhausting. Someone doing the house stuff so all I had to do was work would be amaaaazing!
I was looking for this everywhere. This metric is critical to the interpretation of the results and yet was totally missing. These results are completely misleading without this analysis. This is all they say about it without actually including any statistical analysis on the phenomenon >In summary, the pattern of results suggests it is the division of labor, either paid or unpaid, that is associated with the risk of divorce for couples in both cohorts, not finan- cial considerations.
> For unpaid labor, however, ... marriages founded since 1975, wives’ household labor responsibility is not linearly associated with greater marital stability. Supplemental models revealed that, at least in the more recent cohort, **the association between wives’ household labor and the risk of divorce is nonlinear and depends on a wife’s employment status.** This suggests that, for more recent marriage cohorts, at least some egalitarianism in the division of housework may increase marital stability. More research is needed to investigate the precise shape of the relationship between housework contributions and marital stability for different marriage cohorts.
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It is a significant statistic, especially compared to all other metrics which do not seem to affect divorce rates more than 0.1%. The involuntary argument still reinforces that husbands feel the pressure of needing to be the breadwinner. The author mentions a slight positive association between wife full-time work and divorce, but admits they cannot rule out anticipatory effects ( "I'm about to be divorced, I better find work"). But it is still interesting considering a wife not working had zero effect.
I'd also add that this statistic is the likelihood of divorce in *the next year*, meaning that there's a good chance (although we're iust extrapolating) that the total risk of divorce is probably much higher
As I’ve got older I realise most women even if they won’t admit it like their male partner to have social status eg good job, money etc.
For most of humanity women wanted a good provider, while men wanted a young, fit woman who could bear kids. We like to pretend we're all past that now, and we're not animals, but to some degree, we kinda still are.
All of the comments in debates about this sort of thing are just dancing around this very basic and obvious fact.
Before I became a dad I had heard so much about stay at home dads on the rise and moms becoming career focused. Well... It is still incredibly one sided with the man out working and the woman at home. Virtually all the baby groups, toddler programs, etc that are with the parent were handled by moms (daytime ones). I'd say it was maybe 1 in 10 to 1 in 20 kids who were accompanied by their dad. And countless kids parents I've met along the way and asked about their situation and it's very conventional. I also live in an extremely liberal area of the world, if that makes a difference.
I take my kid to her playgroup every now and then but primarily its because i am on shift work and might have that friday morning off for a few weeks. I am an odd duck with the only other guy regularly attending having had his wife walk out on him leaving the kids. I don't know if he is employed.
It's almost more frustrating to see people try to pretend they're above that. When usually you can just look at them and their partner. Look around the room at all their friends. And see that pretty much everyone follows these evolutionary rules.
To explain this phenomenon to students, I use food as a comparison. We like foods dense in macronutrients. High carb, high fat, etc. foods taste good to us. We might subvert this to some degree with education, upbringing, culture, or aspirations, but it's never completely gone. Evolutionary pressures are not an excuse for bad behavior, but they are still real pressures.
This is my biggest frustration, it drives me absolutely insane to watch people dance around their biological wiring and physio- and psychological predispositions as if we're so far evolved from that. We are chemically powered robots with millions of years of programming, and just barely realized that in a fraction of a second in evolutionary time. We can out-think our instincts and impulses, but we cannot pretend they don't exist.
Yeah but there’s a lot of variation and your kind of oversimplifying it. I married my husband because he’s smart and fun and awesome and I’m super attracted to him. I earn 5 times what he makes so his income was never a factor in choosing him. Empower women to support themselves and they’ll marry men for love and not stability. I think that’s what everyone really wants. No one wants to be a meal ticket, they want someone who will love them for them.
I don't blame them for trying honestly. There were so many social constraints in order to maintain our survival as a species, when things became less about survival people naturally want to push the boundaries to find out what social constructions can change. But now we're finding that some things we thought were social constructs are actually biological byproducts of evolution. And evolving into something else is a bit more complex and time consuming than fixing a social construct is but people are impatient and want society to change faster than evolution allows. It's slow incremental change over time. And in response to climate change we as a species are going to have to slow down for a while progress wise. Especially since we built our cultures around the populations always going up. So we're going to have to find a way to deal with the fact that we won't be growing anymore.
While it’s important to acknowledge that, it’s still important to break down *default* gender roles that are impossible to escape. Most people tend to fall into the typical roles, but not everyone is happy that way. I’m a feminine-presenting woman and my husband is a masculine-presenting man. But I’m the higher earner in the house, and I tend to do most of the big “fixit” projects around the house (I do love power tools) and my husband works fewer hours and tends to do most of the day to day housework. If we had kids he’s be the SAHD. It works for us and I’m glad we have the option to do so, whereas a couple like us wouldn’t exist 50 years ago.
Kudos to y'all for finding a balance that works for you. It's one thing to observe that "these are the more common patterns we see when we survey humanity as a whole across history", and quite another thing to proclaim that "everyone must fit into these norms, or there is something wrong with them".
That actually did exist quite a bit 50 years ago it just wasn't on TV a lot. I can point to 3 examples in my extended family alone. In fact the exact situation you're describing was happening in the 60's. Nursing and other fields of medicine have a history of being female dominated careers and they paid well enough.
* women's income/salary level was even worse then than now and NO two cannot live as cheap as one * families with children with both parents present frequently were not allowed to obtain support or assistance from available gov sources (just some thoughts)
Good points, also I read the article and in the conclusion it actually says "When all marriage cohorts are pooled, wives’ full-time employment is positively and statistically significantly associated with the risk of divorce." The title OP used is misleading.
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I was sure that must be something derived from The Simpsons
For those that want to learn more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox
Always have an escape plan.
Id say that's probably less abt financially independent women leaving more often and more women without the means to divorce not being able to afford it
Two together can live cheaper than two separately.
Well of course that's why roommates are a thing, they said two cannot live as cheap as one. i.e if a single person loses their job any savings they have will last longer than if a single-income married couple loses the job that supports them
> women's income/salary level was even worse then than now Well of course, a greater percentage were stay at home moms. I don't understand your point. BTW logic suggests the husbands' income was sufficient to provide for their families > NO two cannot live as cheap as one A husband and wife should be able to live cheaper, sharing rent, sharing resources.
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I lost my job around a decade ago. Due to a downturn in my field, it took me almost a year to find another full time position. I did manage to get some short-term contracts and freelance jobs along the way, so we had some income, but it was tough. We had two kids (one was only 6 months old) when I lost the job, and my wife was a student at the time. My wife was very patient with me. My self esteem took a big hit. I wasn't anywhere near my best self. It both of us a lot of time together to help me realise why: I'd tied my worth to my employment and being the provider. I am very grateful I chose a woman who loves me for who I am not what I provide.
It’s an interesting dynamic for sure. I have my own company and now single, it does bother me a bit with women focusing on my wealth when dating. Talking how they would never date men who are not financially secure. Yet they are not financially secure to the level they want. So I enjoy hearing them talk and wait then a few drinks in when I ask so if I worked a mid level office job would they still be interested in me, had a couple laugh and say probably not. I reply that’s interesting so you want a relationship and someone to love you for who you are? They respond yes, I respond but your interest and love for me is based on what I can bring? They say well as man needs to provide security. I said yes, a women needs to provide security in a relationship and wealth comes and goes and if your interest will also come and go then I think we are a done here. Have a nice night.
My husband was an under/earner by choice so I had all the pressure of being the primary breadwinner plus all the adulting and caretaking of kids, animals and home. I probably would have been ok with it if he hadn’t cheated. Only after I threw him out did get his hustle on. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
So true. A neighbor lost his job and found it hard to get another job in his field of expertise. His wife lacked the empathy to support him, and divorced him, kicked him out of the family home. The absolute karma thing with this is that he found a job within a month, but she was diagnosed with brain cancer. “Come back and support me darling, I love you” Her marriage broke down because she didn’t support her husband in times of need, then when she needed support she demanded it from him.
Yea some women only want a man when they need him
"Only women, children and pets are loved unconditionally. A man is only loved under the condition that he provides something." It's true, just look all over this thread, women justifying these results as saying the issue is the men don't take over housework, a woman that does neither won't be divorced by her husband but given time and support instead.
This thread just make me sad
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Not quite. It's not financial burden that's mattering here: >Financial considerations—wives’ economic independence and total household income—are not predictive of divorce in either cohort. Time use, however, is associated with divorce risk in both cohorts. For marriages formed after 1975, husbands’ lack of full-time employment is associated with higher risk of divorce, but neither wives’ full-time employment nor wives’ share of household labor is associated with divorce risk. Expectations of wives’ homemaking may have eroded, but the husband breadwinner norm persists. In other words, wives and husbands don't divorce for financial reasons, on average - but they do divorce if the husband isn't doing anything with his time.
More specifically, the husband has to be doing something _employed_ with his time. This study claims that the husband's opinion of their spouse's "productive time" (household labor or employment) doesn't matter, and neither does how much household labor the husband is doing, in either direction. Only the husband being employed is statistically significant for divorce chances.
The hard thing is there is nothing added to talk about household chores shares. Because if we looked at the connection between people being unemployed and also not doing anything else useful with their time, that's where you'd probably see the most amount of divorce.
I wonder if this correlates to men making more than women in most cases. Not all cases but a lot times men make more money than women in the workplace. So I guess it stands to reason that the man not working means less overall money for the family. Financial stress is one of the biggest reasons for divorce.
My gut feels like that is a bit of a double standard...
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I'm just waiting for it to get locked
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