Public Release: 28-Jul-2016
Study finds couples' division of paid and unpaid labor linked to risk of divorce
American Sociological Association
A new study suggests that financial factors, including couples' overall resources and wives' ability to support themselves in the event of a divorce, are not predictive of whether marriages last. Rather, it is couples' division of labor -- paid and unpaid -- that is associated with the risk of divorce.
"My results suggest that, in general, financial factors do not determine whether couples stay together or separate," said study author Alexandra Killewald, a professor of sociology at Harvard University. "Instead, couples' paid and unpaid work matters for the risk of divorce, even after adjusting for how work is related to financial resources."
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s part of her study, which appears in the August issue of the American Sociological Review, Killewald compared couples married in 1974 or earlier with couples married in 1975 or later to explore whether the effects, or lack thereof, of these factors changed over time. Killewald found that, in both the old and new cohorts, financial factors did not play a role in divorce. On the other hand, while the division of labor did affect marital outcomes in both cohorts, there was some variation in terms of what division of labor was better for marriage stability.
For couples married before 1975, the higher the percentage of housework a woman did, the less likely her marriage was to end in divorce. For the more recent cohort, however, that was no longer the case. "For couples married more recently, expectations for the division of housework between spouses appear to have changed, so that men are expected to contribute at least somewhat to household labor," said Killewald, who noted that, even in the more recent marriage cohort, wives do more than 70 percent of the housework, on average. "In general, men seem to be contributing a little more than they used to, and these contributions may now be expected and appreciated by wives."
Killewald found that, for couples married after 1974, neither wives' full-time employment nor sharing the housework more evenly was associated with the risk of divorce. In this cohort, husbands' full-time employment was an important factor in marital stability, with the risk of divorce higher for men who were not employed full-time.
[Well, if men are not doing their share of housework, their wives are not likely to feel like supporting them financially too.]
"For contemporary couples, wives can combine paid and unpaid labor in various ways without threatening the stability of their marriage," according to Killewald, who said that while the gender revolution and the feminist movement have allowed women to take on traditionally male-dominated roles and responsibilities, men's roles and responsibilities have not expanded or diversified proportionately.
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"Because I do not find that couples are more likely to divorce when women are better able to sustain themselves financially in the event of a divorce, public financial support -- to divorced women and other groups -- such as the earned income tax credit (EITC) or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), is unlikely to heighten divorce rates," Killewald said.
tags: relationships
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