http://www.forbes.com/home/2006/08/2...x_mn_land.html


Careers and Marriage
Forbes.com

Forbes.com published a story Aug. 22 by editor Michael Noer on two-career relationships that provoked a heated response from both outside and inside our building. Elizabeth Corcoran, a member of our Silicon Valley bureau and principal author of the magazine's current cover story on robots, sent in this rebuttal. Here's a link for reader discussion.

Point: Don't Marry Career Women
By Michael Noer
How do women, careers and marriage mix? Not well, say social scientists.

Guys: A word of advice. Marry pretty women or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Blondes or brunettes. Just, whatever you do, don't marry a woman with a career.

Why? Because if many social scientists are to be believed, you run a higher risk of having a rocky marriage. While everyone knows that marriage can be stressful, recent studies have found professional women are more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat, less likely to have children, and, if they do have kids, they are more likely to be unhappy about it. A recent study in Social Forces, a research journal, found that women--even those with a "feminist" outlook--are happier when their husband is the primary breadwinner.

Not a happy conclusion, especially given that many men, particularly successful men, are attracted to women with similar goals and aspirations. And why not? After all, your typical career girl is well-educated, ambitious, informed and engaged. All seemingly good things, right? Sure…at least until you get married. Then, to put it bluntly, the more successful she is the more likely she is to grow dissatisfied with you. Sound familiar?

Many factors contribute to a stable marriage, including the marital status of your spouse's parents (folks with divorced parents are significantly more likely to get divorced themselves), age at first marriage, race, religious beliefs and socio-economic status. And, of course, many working women are indeed happily and fruitfully married--it's just that they are less likely to be so than non-working women. And that, statistically speaking, is the rub.

To be clear, we're not talking about a high-school dropout minding a cash register. For our purposes, a "career girl" has a university-level (or higher) education, works more than 35 hours a week outside the home and makes more than $30,000 a year.

If a host of studies are to be believed, marrying these women is asking for trouble. If they quit their jobs and stay home with the kids, they will be unhappy (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2003). They will be unhappy if they make more money than you do (Social Forces, 2006). You will be unhappy if they make more money than you do (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2001). You will be more likely to fall ill (American Journal of Sociology). Even your house will be dirtier (Institute for Social Research).

Why? Well, despite the fact that the link between work, women and divorce rates is complex and controversial, much of the reasoning is based on a lot of economic theory and a bit of common sense. In classic economics, a marriage is, at least in part, an exercise in labor specialization. Traditionally men have tended to do "market" or paid work outside the home and women have tended to do "non-market" or household work, including raising children. All of the work must get done by somebody, and this pairing, regardless of who is in the home and who is outside the home, accomplishes that goal. Nobel laureate Gary S. Becker argued that when the labor specialization in a marriage decreases--if, for example, both spouses have careers--the overall value of the marriage is lower for both partners because less of the total needed work is getting done, making life harder for both partners and divorce more likely. And, indeed, empirical studies have concluded just that.

In 2004, John H. Johnson examined data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and concluded that gender has a significant influence on the relationship between work hours and increases in the probability of divorce. Women's work hours consistently increase divorce, whereas increases in men's work hours often have no statistical effect. "I also find that the incidence in divorce is far higher in couples where both spouses are working than in couples where only one spouse is employed," Johnson says. A few other studies, which have focused on employment (as opposed to working hours) have concluded that working outside the home actually increases marital stability, at least when the marriage is a happy one. But even in these studies, wives' employment does correlate positively to divorce rates, when the marriage is of "low marital quality."

The other reason a career can hurt a marriage will be obvious to anyone who has seen their mate run off with a co-worker: When your spouse works outside the home, chances increase they'll meet someone they like more than you. "The work environment provides a host of potential partners," researcher Adrian J. Blow reported in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, "and individuals frequently find themselves spending a great deal of time with these individuals."

There's more: According to a wide-ranging review of the published literature, highly educated people are more likely to have had extra-marital sex (those with graduate degrees are 1.75 more likely to have cheated than those with high school diplomas.) Additionally, individuals who earn more than $30,000 a year are more likely to cheat.

And if the cheating leads to divorce, you're really in trouble. Divorce has been positively correlated with higher rates of alcoholism, clinical depression and suicide. Other studies have associated divorce with increased rates of cancer, stroke, and sexually-transmitted disease. Plus divorce is financially devastating. According to one recent study on "Marriage and Divorce's Impact on Wealth," published in The Journal of Sociology, divorced people see their overall net worth drop an average of 77%.

So why not just stay single? Because, academically speaking, a solid marriage has a host of benefits beyond just individual "happiness." There are broader social and health implications as well. According to a 2004 paper entitled "What Do Social Scientists Know About the Benefits of Marriage?" marriage is positively associated with "better outcomes for children under most circumstances," higher earnings for adult men, and "being married and being in a satisfying marriage are positively associated with health and negatively associated with mortality." In other words, a good marriage is associated with a higher income, a longer, healthier life and better-adjusted kids.

A word of caution, though: As with any social scientific study, it's important not to confuse correlation with causation. In other words, just because married folks are healthier than single people, it doesn't mean that marriage is causing the health gains. It could just be that healthier people are more likely to be married.

Honestly, I don't think marriage holds the same - what word am I looking for [rubs chin] - place or meaning it once did. So does it really matter if a guy marries a career woman or not? In the U.S. 50% of the people divorce anyways.... far more than that are commiting adultry and only a few percentage of Americans hold marriage with "reverence."

The crazy thing is even if the divorce rate in the U.S. was at 95% you would still get articles coming out similar to this.

And I'm not saying no one should ever get divorce. Certainly there are many couples that should or were correct to do so. But my own impression of contemporary marriage (for the most part that is) in the U.S. is one that is anything but reverent or "special" so to speak.

Most married couples in the U.S. have to work anyway so it's not even an option. I think the stress of money (be it for need or be it for increased greed per lifestyle) causes more problems than a "career" per se that a married woman might have.

This study is a crock of shit. My mother is a working mother, and has been throughout raising five children. My father, also works. They've been happily married for 20 years and there has never been any sort of power struggle or affairs. Usually my mom works longer hours than my dad and that only pisses him off when she'll work until 11 and wake up at 5 because he feels like she's pressuring herself too much.

On the other hand, my friend's mom was not a working woman. In her entire life she only held one job and that was a waitress. Then when she married him she quit that job and raised a family. He left her for another woman 13 years later. Now her, my friend, my friend's sister and her younger brother are all working at Wegman's and trying to finish school to pay for what they need. Because she never went to school she can't get a job that pays well and my friend and her siblings are too young to have a career.

There's nothing riskier than a woman that depends entirely on her husband.

Translation: Don't marry a woman who can afford to get divorced and is smart enough to know when she needs to.

LOL

thats pretty much what i read too.

i couldnt believe some of the lines of thought in there. its hilarious until its terrifying

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