Women take on more
earning and men take
on more caring.


By TARA PARKER-POPE

Ever since feminists first urged women to leave the house and pursue careers, people have argued over whether women’s marriages and romantic prospects would suffer for it. Was a financially successful woman a threat to her husband or a relief?

In January, a report from the Pew Research Center about what it called “the rise of wives” revived the debate. Pew found that in nearly a third of American marriages, the wife is better educated than her husband. And though men still earn more than women, wives are now the primary breadwinner in 22 percent of couples, up from 7 percent in 1970.

While the changing economic roles of husbands and wives may take some getting used to, the shift has had a surprising effect on marital stability , contributing to lower divorce rates and happier unions.

“Women no longer need to marry up educationally or economically, so they are more likely to pick men who support a more egalitarian relationship,” said Stephanie Coontz, director of research and education for the Council on Contemporary Families and author of “Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage.”

The changing roles in marriage often aren’t what many couples plan, but instead are a reaction to unexpected financial pressures. That’s what happened to Cynthia and Brian Walder of West Springfield, Massachusetts, who had four children in five years. Although her first and second pregnancies were carefully planned, a surprise set of twin boys meant that their day care costs would be prohibitive if both parents kept their jobs. “Someone had to leave their job and stay home,” said Ms. Walder, who is 34.

Her marketing job with an insurance firm provided the family’s health benefits, so about a year ago, Mr. Walder, a 36-year-old real estate broker and consultant, opted to stay home. “It was stressful,” he said. “If you’d asked me five years ago would I be in this spot, I’d say ‘No way.’ ”

While it’s widely believed that a woman’s financial independence increases her risk for divorce, divorce rates in the United States tell a different story: they have fallen as women have made economic gains. The rate peaked at 23 divorces per 1,000 couples in the late 1970s, but has since dropped to fewer than 17 divorces per 1,000 couples. Today, the statistics show that typically, the more economic independence and education a woman gains, the more likely she is to stay married.

Sociologists and economists say that financially independent women can be more selective in marrying, and they also have more negotiating power within the marriage. But it’s not just women who win. The net result tends to be a marriage that is more fair and equitable to husbands and wives.

The changes are not without their challenges. “With women taking on more earning and men taking on more caring, there’s a lot of shifting and juggling,” said Andrea Doucet, a sociology professor at Carleton University in Ottawa. Her study, the Bread and Roses Project, tracks couples in the United States and Canada in which women are the primary breadwinners. But the dynamic is “not as easy as you’d think it would be,” she said. “You can’t just reverse the genders.”

Men, for instance, sometimes have a hard time adjusting to a woman’s equal or greater earning power. Women, meanwhile, struggle with giving up their power at home and controlling tasks like how to dress the children or load the dishwasher.

Kristen W. Springer, a sociologist at Rutgers, has found that among men in their 50s, having a wife who earns more money is associated with poorer health. Among the highest earning couples in her study, a husband who earns less than his wife is 60 percent less likely to be in good health compared with men who earn more than their wives.

And even among dual-earning couples, women still do about twothirds of the housework, on average, according to the University of Wisconsin National Survey of Families and Households. But men do contribute far more than they used to. Studies show that since the 1960s, men’s contributions to housework have doubled, while the amount of time spent caring for children has tripled.

And the blurring of traditional gender roles appears to have a positive effect. Lynn Prince Cooke, a sociology professor at the University of Kent in England, has found that American couples who share employment and housework responsibilities are less likely to divorce compared with couples where the man is the sole breadwinner.

Mr. Walder said that other mothers tend to shower him with praise: “They say, ‘That’s great, my husband wouldn’t be able to do it.’ I think they’re selling their husbands short. All guys could do it, just like all women can be the breadwinners.”


GRAHAM ROUMIEU