Research suggests that society puts enormous pressure on men who earn less than their wives.
Love & Money is a MarketWatch series looking at how money issues impact our relationships with significant others, friends and family. “My wife has always earned more money than me, and for a while it absolutely killed our sex life. Dead. I’m a trial lawyer now, but from 2006 to 2016 I didn’t make a dime. I went back to school to get my master’s and Ph.D. and try to break into academia.
The financial gender balance within marriage seems to be changing at a faster pace than society’s attitudes about successful women. Men and women who put love ahead of money may be part of a new generation that is breaking away from old-fashioned tropes about who should be the breadwinner. However, studies indicate that they’re pushing against larger social and cultural forces, which put a higher value on husbands who earn more than their wives.
Americans see men as the financial providers, even as women’s contributions grow, a separate report published in 2017 by the Pew Research Center found. Women bring at least half or more of the earnings in almost one-third of cohabiting couples in the U.S., up from just 13% in 1981. “But in most couples, men contribute more of the income, and this aligns with the fact that Americans place a higher value on a man’s role as financial provider,” the authors said.
People’s attitude to finance and romance also change from wedding No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3, said Randy Kessler, who wrote the book, “Divorce: Protect Yourself, Your Kids, and Your Future,” and also practices family law in Atlanta, Ga. “People marry more for romance than for finance. However, for a second or third marriage, people may be looking for financial security,” he said. Despite being a divorce lawyer, he describes himself as a romantic.
Writer Julia Baird has another, less flattering, theory about men’s attitudes to money and marriage. She wrote in Glamour Magazine: “Oh, how fragile is the ego of a man. We must never let him feel like a bonsai in a grove of California redwoods — no, he must always see himself as a towering tree, magnificent in comparison with his female partner.” When she was writing a biography of Queen Victoria, Baird discovered that even Victoria was afraid her beloved Albert would feel emasculated.
Gender politics takes a back seat to an uncertain economy Uncertain economic times and age bring a dose of realism to gender politics at home. More than half of Americans say they want a partner who provides financial security more than “head over heels” love, according to a recent survey by Merrill Edge, an online discount brokerage and division of Bank of America Merrill Lynch BAC, +0.79% Contrary to research by Pew and others, this sentiment is held in almost equal measure by men and women .
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