Friday, June 13, 2008

The Perils of Marrying a Professional Woman?

I found this opinion piece (and counter-opinion piece) very interesting:

Careers and Marriage

Essentially the author at Forbes cites recent studies that have found professional women are more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat and 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.

These kind of statistics are interesting but I'm not sure how useful they are. They did get the female writer who responded to it a bit riled up though.

What do you think?

3 comments:

Stacey said...

It's difficult to discern the male writer's article without having seen this "research". It does seem rather one-sided. Without having read the research I think it is obvious that today's divorce rate is in large part due to women having demanding careers and married couples who both work are off on their own paths in life instead of together. What are the statistics of business partnerships that fail? I don't know off hand but I know it is a high percentage. Why would marriages be that different, add to that they generally are committed to different businesses. Our parents and grandparents had their defined roles when women stayed home and raised the children and maintained the household. Those marriages stayed together but does that necessarily make those women happy and fulfilled? Hm, I wonder what those statistics are?

I don't know if women "resent" their children per se. I think career moms and wives are just plain tired. It would seem many of them still look after a larger portion of maintaining the home, scheduling the kid's lives and having to work at their jobs and perform and be focused.

Also, in my own "limited research" (observing and talking to women I know) it would seem women work harder at personal growth. What was once an "equal" partnership often ends up mismatched thru the years. You may have married prince charming but one day you find yourself with a small boy. I'm sure that comment will stir up some debates but I'll just throw it out there anyway ;)

When you're tired, unhappy, unfulfilled and possibly mismatched; finding yourself with less in common, with different agendas and probably more to argue and fight about... yes I agree there would be a higher probability of divorce or getting involved in things that would eventually lead to divorce.

But I ask the same question as the female writer did. What are the men doing?

Jay Boaz said...

I don't know how much stock I'd put in this article. The author went and found all the research to back up his point of view, but he didn't seem to look for anything BUT research to back his claim.

For example, he states studies show "career women" are more likely to cheat. What about "career men"? I don't recall him comparing the two figures to show that career women are more likely than career men to cheat.

Until he's willing to compare all the pitfalls he apparently found by marrying a "career woman" with the similar statistics for "career men", I'm not buying what he's selling.

Jay

Stacey said...

I agree with Jay. I could probably find some statistics to support my claim that purple puppies make better pets. Why? Because of all the "recorded" evidence that states the issues with all of the other colours of dogs out there. Therefore all pet owners would be happier if they sought out purple dogs.

Yeah, that's it.