Working Women, Stay at Home Dads, and Divorce

When I was in college I spent a very long summer doing a temp job in a doctor's office. One of the doctors, a cardiologist, was a woman. Her husband was a stay at home dad and part-time auto mechanic.

With my small town up bringing, this struck me as odd. And statistically, it was: people tend to marry someone with the same educational level. (See this Freakonomics post, or the pie chart below, from Pew).

Notice, also, that the percentage of women who earn more than their husbands is growing: from 4% in 1970, to 22% in 2007. In 2007, Cliff and I were in that 22% category though we've since switched places.

This research came to mind as I read a recent report (highlighted in this Time Magazine article) about the increased likelihood of divorce for stay at home dads, or men who are unemployed.

In short, working women who are unhappy in their relationships are more likely to leave their marriages. And men who are unhappy not to be working are more likely to leave as well.

I comment on this with caution, as I think the trend toward stay at home fathering should be celebrated. Or, at least, we ought to celebrate that families now have three socially acceptable options: stay at home mom, stay at home dad, or two working parents. Not so long ago, there was really only one acceptable choice: see that data from 1970 as an illustration.

A few months back I heard an NPR piece by a man who, after several years of staying home with his daughter, returned to the workforce with a new job that suddenly made him the family's primary breadwinner. This is a progressive man who felt liberated in his role as a stay at home parent. And yet what was his emotion when he first calculated his new salary? Relief.

The force of his emotion surprised him. More than anything, this should serve as a reminder that our culture has shifted faster than our own psyches. The concept as husband-as-breadwinner is hard to shake, especially for some men, even when their wives are comfortable with alternative models. The pressure this puts on a relationship, when a man is unemployed (willingly or unwillingly) should be acknowledged and discussed. (For a fun take on it, see Cliff's blog, Channeling Your Inner Alan Thicke.)