Stuck in Another Era?

Posted on March 17, 2006 1 Comment

Interesting story that I thought you’d like to see. The lead-in is a bit misleading. Although the article starts out highlighting a new study about differences in gender roles and money, it’s important to note the key result of the study, which was:

The most important determinant in women’s marital happiness was the level of their husbands’ emotional engagement, not money issues.

I’m not sure why the University of Virginia researchers are trying to sell this article as “evidence” that women are happier when their husbands have money or are the sole providers. It doesn’t seem to me that’s at all what their research found, according to the above quote.

Let me know what you think! I’ve bolded some controversial/important points. Thanks to Janet Kidd Stewart of the Chicago Tribune for the article.

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Financial issues send some couples back to another age
By Janet Kidd Stewart, Chicago Tribune
Posted March 12, 2006

Women have narrowed the wage gap but are stuck in what some consider a time warp when it comes to money, some new evidence suggests.

Looking at what makes for happiness in a marriage, experts say equality is important, except, perhaps, when it comes to money.

Studying data from a national survey of 5,000 U.S. couples, University of Virginia sociologists found that married women who don’t work outside the home and those whose husbands earn the lion’s share of the household income were happier than their bacon-bringing counterparts.

Researchers W. Bradford Wilcox and Steven Nock said even among women working outside the home, those whose husbands earn 68 percent or more of the household income were happier.

This news is abhorrent to Nicolette Sonntag, 39, a commercial property attorney with Shefsky & Froelich, a Chicago law firm. About a year ago, Sonntag’s husband, Tony, quit his engineering job to stay home full time with the couple’s son.

Both spouses say they are thrilled with the arrangement. With her salary twice what his was, giving up one of the jobs and not having to pay for day care was a logical choice, said Tony, 40.

Having her son cared for by his father relieves much of her guilt about working long hours, Nicolette said. Now pregnant with their second child, she said the arrangement is far less stressful with Tony at home.There are trade-offs. Tony occasionally feels Nicolette is oblivious to all the housework he does. Nicolette feels stress about being the sole provider.

“It’s scary to think my family is dependent on me,” she said. “Every consequence at work has a bigger effect.”

Haven’t we come a long way from when those gender roles were reversed?Maybe, but experts said we tend to hang on to old notions about money, even as those roles change.

“We’ve gotten caught in a time warp where our economic realities have changed faster than our expectations and identities,” writes Liz Perle, who interviewed nearly 200 women about their relationships with money. Her book, “Money, a Memoir: Women, Emotions and Cash,” was released in January.

Despite high academic and career expectations for young women today, they are persistently bombarded with traditional expectations about marriage and family, Perle said in an interview.

“They’re supposed to be independent but still swoon over a diamond engagement ring,” said Perle, who in the book reveals her own frank tale of marrying for money and security and losing it all, despite being an educated woman in the book publishing industry.

In the University of Virginia study, the most important determinant in women’s marital happiness was the level of their husbands’ emotional engagement, not money issues.

“Regardless of what married women say they believe about gender, they tend to have happier marriages when their husband is a good provider, provided that he is also emotionally engaged,” Wilcox said.

The key message behind the research is that women are happier in their marriage when the division of labor is perceived as being fair, said Stephanie Coontz, author of “Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage” and a family studies expert at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.

And in an earlier study of 96 couples over a six-year period after the birth of their first child, researchers at the University of California found that the most unhappy couples were the ones who reverted to traditional male-female roles the most.

Couples who worked most on their relationship and parenting issues and took time to work out labor division were the most satisfied, said Carolyn Pape Cowan, professor emeritus at UC-Berkeley.

The larger point, which Perle makes in her memoir, is that we all have some emotional baggage to unload if we are to be successful at navigating these new roles.

As for men, the old roles often die hard, Nicolette Sonntag said.

“It’s been a little hard for him sometimes,” she said of Tony. “He’s the only one in his group of friends doing this.”

E-mail Janet Kidd Stewart at yourmoney@tribune.com.

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Comments

One Response to “Stuck in Another Era?”

  1. College Graduate
    March 22nd, 2006 @ 9:22 am

    As a prospective law student, I too have found myself wondering about the entire bread-winning/woman provider dynamic that goes on these days… thanks for posting the article

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