11/29/2019 The Breadwinner Husband Still Matters in Marriage | Institute for Family Studies

SEPTEMBER ,

The Breadwinner Husband Still

Matters in Marriage
by Alysse ElHage, @ALYSSEELHAGE

Highlights
Despite an increasing share of married women in the workforce, the husband-breadwinner
norm is alive and well.
Marriage has a transformative e ect on men, improving their behavior, health, and work
ethic.

In a post (http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/ / / /letter-to-my-breadwinner-

husband.html) that originally appeared on her personal blog and was reprinted last week
by FoxNews.com, writer Suzanne Venker thanks her “breadwinner husband” for all he does
for their family. “It is the steady breadwinner husband, men like you, who allow women like
me to live such comfortable lives,” she writes.

As much as I appreciate Venker’s perspective, some of the wording in her post bothers me
(i.e., “allow” and “comfortable”), especially when she points to the bene ts of “depending” on
her husband’s income over the years. To me, her piece downplays the gi she and so many
other spouses give their partners by staying home and performing the o en thankless tasks of
maintaining a household and caring for children. It also bothers me because while I am
essentially a “stay-at-home mom,” I also work part-time, and my workload has varied over the
years based on my husband’s income and my kids’ ages. Despite the fact that he’s always made
more money than me, I’ve never felt “dependent” on my husband: in my view, we both give
equally to the family, just in di erent ways.
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Not feeling dependent on my husband is a pretty big deal to someone who grew up with a
single mom who was our family’s sole or primary breadwinner. In fact, until I got married
and experienced it for myself, the concept of a "breadwinner" husband was foreign to me,
although I did watch my father serve as the sole breadwinner in his new family a er my
parents divorced. Still, in the single mother world that I knew best, men were not exactly
known as providers. Most of the husbands in my extended family ran away from their
nancial responsibilities, leaving women to pick up the slack. is experience not only
encouraged me to want to work but also gave me a better appreciation for faithful men, like
my husband, who consistently work hard to help provide for their families. at brings me to
the part of Venker’s post that rings true: “ e culture wants us to believe the breadwinner
husband is obsolete,” she writes, “but you and I both know that isn’t true.”

Not only is the breadwinner husband not obsolete, the husband-breadwinner norm is also
alive and well. Even though the share of working married moms who out-earn their husbands
has increased (http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/ / / /chapter- -married-mothers-
who-out-earn-their-husbands/) substantially, a vast body of research shows that a husband’s
employment still matters for marital stability.

In a recent study
(http://www.asanet.org/sites/default/ les/attach/journals/aug asrfeature.pdf) published this
July in American Sociological Review, Harvard sociology professor Alexandra Killewald,
Ph.D., analyzed data on , heterosexual married couples from the to waves of
the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). She looked speci cally at the potential e ects
on marital stability of “spouses' division of labor, overall nancial resources, and wives’
economic prospects following divorce,” comparing couples married before to those
married in or later (through ).

A vast body of research shows that a husband’s employment still matters for
marital stability.

In both the early and later cohorts, about percent of husbands had a full-time job. It was
di erent for women: percent of wives were employed full-time in the earlier cohort,
compared to percent in the later cohort. And while the percentage of wives working full-
time increased, the share of housework they perform declined—from percent in the earlier
cohort to percent in the later cohort.

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The study found that how couples divide housework is no longer associated with an increased
risk of divorce. In the earlier cohort, women who performed less housework had a higher risk
of divorce, but in the more recent cohort, that was no longer the case.

More notably, Killewald found that for couples married in or later, marriages in which
the husband was not employed full-time were one-third more likely to divorce. Speci cally, a
husband who was not employed full-time experienced a “ . percent predicted probability of
divorce the following year, compared to . percent if he is employed full-time.”

Commenting on her ndings, Killewald noted (http://www.asanet.org/press-center/press-

releases/study- nds-couples-division-paid-and-unpaid-labor-linked-risk-divorce): “[My]
results suggest one way that expectations about gender and family roles and responsibilities
a ect men’s lives, too: men who aren’t able to sustain full-time work face [a]
heightened risk of divorce.”

Killewald is certainly not the rst to nd an association between men’s employment and
marital stability. A study conducted by three economists and published in
(http://papers.ssrn.com/sol /papers.cfm?abstract_id= ) found that “In couples where
the wife earns more than the husband, the wife spends more time on household chores;
moreover, those couples are less satis ed with their marriage and are more likely to divorce.”

And an earlier study (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC /) by Liana C.

Sayer, Paula England, Paul Allison and Nicole Kangas found that when a husband is
“nonemployed” (de ned as not working at all), both the husband and the wife are more likely
to end a marriage. In an email interview with IFS, one of the study’s co-authors, New York
University sociology professor Paula England, explained her ndings.

“The innovation of our study was to look separately at what predicts a divorce wanted more
by the woman versus a divorce wanted more by the man,” England wrote. “We found that a
nonemployed man predicts either the woman leaving the man or the man leaving the
woman.”

She continued, “Killewald’s data just show her if they got divorced, not who le . We found
that women’s employment doesn’t make men leave more, and it only makes women leave
more when they are unhappy in the marriage.”

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Both studies drew similar conclusions regarding the association between men, marriage, and
work. England’s study concluded, “Men’s breadwinning is still so culturally mandated that
when it is absent, both men and women are more likely to nd that the marital partnership
doesn’t deserve to continue.”

And as Killewald’s study put it, “breadwinning remains a central component of the marital
contract for husbands.”

As a married mom who has not worked full-time since my kids were born, I found myself
wondering if maybe one reason for the persistence of the husband-breadwinner norm is that
some married mothers, like me, prefer the option of being able to work less or not at all,
especially while our kids are young. Naturally, in order for us to work less, our husbands must
work more.

Some married mothers, like me, prefer the option of being able to work less or
not at all, especially while our kids are young. Naturally, in order for us to work
less, our husbands must work more.

According to a recent Pew survey (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-

tank/ / / /mothers-and-work-whats-ideal/), most married mothers in the U.S. prefer
to either work part-time or not at all (in , percent of American mothers said they
preferred part-time work, percent preferred full-time work, and percent preferred to
not work at all). Additionally, Pew also found that about one-in- mothers
(http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/ / / /opting-out-about- -of-highly-
educated-moms-are-staying-at-home/) with a Master's degree or higher are “opting-out” of
the workforce to care for their families.

When I asked Professor England about this, she acknowledged that while some married
mothers may prefer to work less, she does not believe that is what is behind the husband-
breadwinner norm.

“I think that our culture still devalues women and traditional female roles and activities…
People see it as a step down for men to do anything associated with women, whereas it is not
seen as a step down for women to do activities traditional for men,” England told me. “As long
as that is true, both women and men will look down on men who aren’t employed full-time.
at stigma is what I suspect Killewald is nding leads to divorce.”

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For her part, Killewald admitted in her study that there could be another explanation for her
ndings beyond “gendered interpretations” about marriage, writing:

It is possible that husbands’ less than full-time employment is associated with marital
disruption more strongly than wives’, not because of gendered interpretations of lack of
full-time employment, but because husbands’ part-time employment or
nonemployment is more likely to be involuntary. Involuntary nonemployment may
negatively a ect marriages more strongly than voluntary nonemployment, by a ecting
outcomes like partners’ mental health. It is not possible to evaluate this perspective
with the current data because voluntary specialization by men in unpaid labor is rare:
in , only about one- h of stay-at-home fathers were home primarily to care for
the family.

So while a minority of married fathers are home with the kids, including some by choice as
Anna Sutherland recently explained (http://family-studies.org/why-some-dads-stay-home/),
the majority of at-home dads are home due to a job loss or lack of good employment
prospects. In general, it seems, most married men want to work full-time or prefer to do so if
they are not working.

Perhaps that’s another reason the husband-breadwinner norm has staying power: there’s
something about marriage and fatherhood that inspires most men to want to work harder and
earn more for their families. As IFS Senior Fellow W. Bradford Wilcox explained in a
recent PragerU video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtvfHnZMcOY), marriage has a
“transformative” e ect on men’s lives—positively impacting their “behavior, emotional health,
and nancial well-being” as well as their work-ethic. According to his research, married men
enjoy a “marriage premium,” working an additional plus hours and earning about
percent more annually than their single peers from similar backgrounds. He points out that
married men “assume a new identity,” becoming more responsible and developing a new
attitude towards work.

There’s something about marriage and fatherhood that inspires most men to
want to work harder and earn more for their families.

With marriage and work so interconnected for men, it makes sense that not being able to
work full-time would negatively impact marital stability, especially since unemployment (or
underemployment) is more likely to be involuntary for husbands than wives. is could also
explain why previous research has shown that men whose wives earn more than they do tend
to be less happy in their marriages. For example, research by Wilcox and Je ery Dew
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(https://www.amazon.com/Gender-Parenthood-Biological-Scienti c-
Perspectives/dp/ ) found that fathers who worked less than their wives were
percent less likely to report being very happy in their marriage than men whose wives stayed
home. And a study (http://asr.sagepub.com/content/ / / .abstract) published last year by
University of Connecticut sociologist Christin Munsch found that men whose wives earn
more are more likely to cheat, leading Munsch to conclude
(http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-economic-dependence-in delity-
-story.html), that there “is something about not being the breadwinner than men
especially don’t like.”

However, things could be changing among younger couples. In a new study

(https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/ / / .htm) that examined data on
married couples between the ages of to , Munsch found that husbands’ “psychological
well-being and health were at their worst during years when they were their families' sole
breadwinner,” compared to the years when their partners contributed equally.

Other changes may also have an impact. Women are now more likely to earn a college degree
(http://blogs.census.gov/ / / /women-now-at-the-head-of-the-class-lead-men-in-
college-attainment/?cid=RS ) than men, and the most educated women
(https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/ / / /the-most-educated-
women-are-the-most-likely-to-be-married/?
utm_campaign=Brookings+Brief&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=
more likely to be married, so the percentage of wives who out-earn their husbands could
continue to rise. Stay-at-home dads by choice are more likely in families (http://family-
studies.org/why-some-dads-stay-home/) where the wife is more educated, and with fathers
increasingly recognized as unique and invaluable (http://family-studies.org/the-unique-
contribution-of-fathers-to-child-health/) caregivers, it is possible more married dads will
voluntarily stay home in the future.

Whether the husband-breadwinner norm will continue in the face of these cultural shi s
depends, in part, on how married couples adjust and choose to divide labor inside and
outside the home. Rather than questioning why breadwinning is still central to a husband’s
role in marriage, perhaps we should appreciate it as a division of labor that simply works best
for many families. We should also respect and support the di erent ways today’s men and
women adjust their lives to make work and family life function best for them.

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