The New World is witnessing a new world order as the latest American Census Bureau data has revealed that the nation’s twenty and thirty-something men are becoming increasingly comfortable with letting their wives be the main breadwinners in the household.
Shifting education and job market patterns are fuelling this new attitude towards work, family and gender differences and this could in turn result in an increasing number of marriages in which women are the lone or primary earners.
Bringing home the bacon
According to the Census Bureau data, the percentage of women bringing home the larger income in two-income households has risen from 17.8% in 1987 to 25.3%.
Catalyst, a New York-based research group found that the salaries of college-educated women were also seen to have risen more rapidly, up by 34.4% since 1974 in comparison to 21.7% for male graduates.
In the age group of 20 to 30-somethings, women hold more college degrees than men. The 25 to 29-year age bracket saw only 25.5% men holding a bachelor’s degree as compared to 32.2% women.
Women also dominated the more lucrative professional courses making up more than half of the student population in medical and law courses.
The education inconsistency is expected to widen in coming years by the Labor Department.
Girl power
Over the last 20 years the number of men reported to be comfortable with the idea of their wives supporting them has risen, even though the majority still says they would prefer to work for the family’s needs.
Stephanie Coontz, a historian at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., has authored several books on marriage and gender roles.
She says:
Men are saying, `I don’t mind being married to a woman who earns more than I,’ and women are giving up the notion that they have to find a man who can support them.
And even though men still bring home the bigger share of the income, the pay gap is decreasing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 2005, women on average earned 81 cents for every dollar men made, bringing the stat up from 76.1 cents in 2001 and 66.6 cents in 1983.
The gap was even narrower for workers in their 20s and early 30s as 25 to 34 year old women were reported to earn 89 cents for every dollar men made in 2005, as compared to 75 cents made by women in the 35 to 44-year age group.
Coontz says that the confidence of a stronger economic stand has released women from their traditional roles as wives and mothers, in the process giving them a stronger voice in their marriages.
She says:
There’s a certain exhilaration that women are feeling. Women have suddenly been freed to pursue ambitions that they once had to channel into finding a successful man rather than being a successful person.
Mr. Mom
Ellen Galinsky, president of the New York-based Families and Work Institute says that the change has also shown up at home with an increasing number of men, 34% today as compared to 24% a decade ago, are willingly lending a hand with household chores like doing dishes, laundry and looking after the children.
Coontz says:
Younger couples increasingly expect this sort of equality or flexibility. Women who first poured into the workforce during the 1970s sparked this change in attitudes. They and the growing number of women who followed them into offices and factories during the 1980s and 1990s “created a whole new climate’.
The backfire
But not all is well in girlpowerland. And in some cases, the men are not too comfortable handing over the reins to their women.
Personal-finance expert Suze Orman says the issue generated a huge share of the advice requests women sent her. Because money is a physical manifestation of who you are. Some men who earn less than their wives or girlfriends feel they must be less valuable people, and that belief can put a strain on relationships.
Steven Nock, a University of Virginia sociologist found in a study, that women who earned more than their husbands were more likely than high-earning men to walk out of an unsatisfying marriage.
In most cases, men are dogged down by ego-deflating jokes at social events and sometimes by family members as well.
But those who can handle it certainly can claim to get more than they bargained for because a successful woman radiates confidence, filling every sphere of her life with it, including her marriage.
Via: chicagotribune
