Fairly relevant for female entrepreneurs. I have a professional acquaintance who has been toying with being the prototypical power woman (who, IMO, doesn't really exist): involved supermom, successful entrepreneur, good wife. My advice to her was that I've been successful and have a family and family is way more satisfying. Besides, once your kids are grown up, PLEASE continue contributing to society by being an entrepreneur. You're not going to keep having kids when you're 40. Enjoy your youth and love your kids.
"For the couples themselves, the dynamic may be a problem. As long as the woman earns less, her income does not cause trouble in the marriage. Once she earns more, however, marriage difficulties jump and divorce rates increase. Interestingly, it does not seem to matter whether she earns only slightly more, or substantially more—an indication that it is not female income per se, but the mere fact of earning more, that causes trouble."
I think your comment is of kind intent, but if I were to summarize it, it reads to me like "Women, you should defer your careers by 20 years so you don't upset your spouse and, through his insecurity, risk divorce."
Maybe the advice should be that men should get counseling or something if they're so insecure that they divorce their breadwinner.
The main message, that one group of people in society (women) should defer their careers by 20 years to avoid this, is still the wrong advice to be giving to people, in my opinion.
Advice or not, it's good to realize what the dynamics are. If you pursue career first your chances for finding successful/attractive man later diminish because for successful/attractive guys it makes sense to go for the most attractive thing: young/hot women and by the time you decide to settle you might not be in that category any longer.
It's a choice. Many people find it wrong but they would find: "if you delay settling down/children then you will likely have less attractive/successful (in other words lower status) partner to do so with" even more wrong.
As others have said,women initiate a legal divorce in ~70% of cases while some other studies have shown that women cause the divorce in over 80% of the cases (either by infidelity or some other issue which leaves the man no choice but to initiate the divorce).
It's not just kind intent, it's the world as it is. I wouldn't want my friend's marriage and family to be a martyr to the cause so I gave her the best advice I could with the knowledge and experience I had at hand.
eh, read more to me like: "you make more than your man? You deserve better". Anyone ever met the one friend who instigates things in relationships by saying stuff like this? male ego is certainly a factor but entitlement that we create in America with feel good statements like ”you deserve the best, you're a catch, don't settle for anything less ” is probably more subtle but just as real a problem. We can't all expect the best, if you want a stable relationship you'll have to make concessions.
Marriage comes from a time when women were unable to earn a living on their own, and we still hold up many of those ideals, even in our modern equal-oppurtunity society. Perhaps when a woman clearly demonstrates she is equally capable of being the breadwinner, the couple are freed to be more open to making relationship decisions on the basis of the relationship alone without feeling the obligations of marriage?
In the vast majority of cases, divorce is worse for the kids and usually leaves the women worse off for a variety of reasons (and if I hear patriarchy, /thread done.)
There are many situations in which divorce is the only choice but it is dangerous to imply that it is right thing to do more often than not because we are now supposedly more enlightened.
Divorce is bad for WOMEN??
Divorce is a disaster for men both emotionally and financially. Even prenuptial agreements are largely useless as they are normally overturned by the court system. A serious consideration (and study) of the chances of divorce and the normal outcome of divorce would have any man reconsidering (assuming he is thinking rationally rather than emotionally).
After divorce in today's society, a man is 12 times more likely than his ex to commit suicide. This seems to indicate that men after divorce having a much harder time than women and the constant nature of these numbers indicates that these issues are not being addressed by society.
I remember reading about a man who was sent to prison for not paying child support and alimony. He was wealthy before the 2008 crash, but afterwards was un/underemployed and simply COULDN'T pay the almost $100,000 required by the state.
I have found no cases where women deal with this kind of discrimination in the courtroom while there is a staggering amount of cases where men are completely destroyed financially and left seeing the most important people in their life for a few hours every couple of weeks simply because they are men.
Oh, look. A gender-related discussion on HN has once again summoned the requisite MensRights advocate. Hitler. Hitler! The thread is dead! You win! Hitler!
Actually, I don't think anyone has shown how divorce is worse than any other non-married couple breaking up (except maybe some hardships due to legal proceedings).
The premise was that couples with high-earning females no longer feel the pressure to stay together just because of the marriage, and therefore evaluate their relationship on the merits of the relationship alone, as if the marriage never existed.
I guess you could argue that any relationship divide is a bad thing, but if you never have a relationship with someone, how can you determine if you mesh together? Sometimes you don't.
Try looking at "should" not as "Doing X is proper and just" but as "Doing X has expected result of Y, so if you really want Y then better choose X".
Reality doesn't care about moral opinions of how reality should be - if you observe in practice that choosing to having a career sometimes carries an unfair consequence, then taking that risk into account helps your decisionmaking, and ignoring the consequence because it's unfair would hurt only yourself.
That's such a sad dynamic. One of the best ways to make yourself a smarter/better person is to spend time with someone who's a smarter/better person than you are. Obviously income does not correlate perfectly with how smart/good a person is, but there is certainly some correlation. And who do you spend more time with than your wife?
My wife is the chief of family medicine at a small hospital; not surprisingly she makes more than I do. One way that we've sidestepped the issue is how our incomes come in. She has a steady job, I play the startup lottery. You can't directly compare the incomes.
This is what I think the fundamental cause of the dynamic in the article:
Women want men they can rely on to be conquerors. Lazy, jobless guys do not fit that bill. Startup guys who are making shit happen do. Even if you're not making as much money as her in this case but you are the most awesome person everyone knows and everyone respects you, she will automatically fall in line.
But wait for your first startup to fail spectacularly due to your own mistakes. That will be the true test.
If you take time out to have kids, then getting back into work, assuming you're not suited to be an entrepreneur, seems likely to be difficult to impossible. You don't have references or a continual work history, your skills are liable to be a decade out of date, and there's certainly a bias against hiring older people for lower-level positions.
Before people say "why don't men do the same?" here is why: http://jobs.economist.com/article/when-women-dare-to-outearn...
"For the couples themselves, the dynamic may be a problem. As long as the woman earns less, her income does not cause trouble in the marriage. Once she earns more, however, marriage difficulties jump and divorce rates increase. Interestingly, it does not seem to matter whether she earns only slightly more, or substantially more—an indication that it is not female income per se, but the mere fact of earning more, that causes trouble."
I doubt that is changing anytime soon.