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For years elite opinion has maintained that women are happier in marriages that represent a union of equals and where spouses share identical responsibilities in the workplace and at home. Even as very few couples actually live this way, a study by two noted University of Virginia sociologists debunks the feminist spin, finding that women - even those who espouse egalitarian ideals - are far happier in marriages that have a traditional division of labor.

Looking at a subsample of 5,000 couples drawn from the second wave (1992-94) of the National Survey of Families and Households, Bradford Wilcox and Steven Nock measured women's marital happiness, women's satisfaction with the emotional attention they receive from their husbands, and the time husbands spend with their wives against a number of independent variables associated with various theories of marriage.

Their findings reveal that the more traditional the woman and the more traditional the marriage, the happier the woman. Women are happiest when they tend to hearth and home and their husbands bring home the bacon (earning at least 68 percent of family income). This did not surprise the researchers because they also found that men who were married to homemakers are more likely to spend "quality time" with their wives.

These traditional wives also expressed greater satisfaction with their husbands' emotional interaction with them. In contrast, women who aspire to having "companionate" marriages, thinking "equality" will deliver what they really desire - the emotional engagement of their husbands - actually end up spending less time with husbands than their traditional peers. And these wives are less satisfied with the understanding they receive from their husbands.

Also contributing to women's marital happiness is a dynamic generally missing from egalitarian marriages: a shared commitment to marriage as a social and normative institution, where each spouse views matrimony as a binding commitment that "should never be ended except under extreme circumstances." Wives also reported higher satisfaction with their husbands' affection and understanding when couples share high levels of church attendance.

The consistency of these findings across their statistical models led the researchers to suggest that cultural shifts in the last generation, from declines in church attendance to acceptance of divorce and premarital sex, have taken a toll on women's happiness. Yet they point to rising expectations of women for marital equality as especially problematic: "Our findings suggest that increased departures from a malebread winning/female-homemaking model may also account for declines in marital quality, insofar as men and women continue to tacitly value gendered patterns of behavior in marriage."

(Source: W. Bradford Wilcox and Steven L. Nock, "What's Love Got to Do With It? Equality, Equity, Commitment, and Women's Marital Equality," Social Forces 84 [March 2006].

Bait and Switch?

While social scientists tend to celebrate the growing diversity of living arrangements in America that depart from the natural family, occasionally their guild concedes that not all family forms are created equal. In documenting the "wide and deep" diversity of living arrangements in America, a special issue of Social Science Research nonetheless finds "very significant" differences in these arrangements, especially between marriage and cohabitation and between first and second marriages.

Introducing an issue devoted to family research, Steven Nock of the University of Virginia cites "growing equality between the sexes" as perhaps the "most obvious" contributor to what he calls a "restructuring of intimate relationships" like marriage and cohabitation. And while not lamenting these changes per se, he nonetheless observes - without noting the irony - that what sexual equality has given it may have also taken away, as these changes in family structure increasingly represent the basis of social inequality. He writes:

"The 'haves' are generally those in stable marriages. The 'have nots' are generally those who live outside of marriage, especially with children. So vast is the difference, one is tempted to replace the traditional notion of social class with the more descriptive term marriage class. Marriage now divides the population in much the same way social class once did. Indeed, it may do so more profoundly. Neither education nor occupation so clearly discriminates between those at the two ends of the economic spectrum as marital status does. Those with higher levels of education, income, and occupational stability are more likely to be married and vice versa. The poor or precarious are more likely to be single and vice versa."

Yet the sociologist seems unable to nock off the baggage of his peers, cautioning against reading too much into what he admits are "pervasive correlations," because "the reality is far more complicated." And rather than questioning parents who choose to live outside the protective bonds of marriage, Nock ends up claiming that "family economics," more than family structure, drive the "intergenerational transmission of disadvantage" associated with deviations from the married norm.

So a journal that initially sees "very significant" differences in family forms pulls a bait and switch, ending up making the case for "the pervasive impact of poverty on children," pointing out how "parents can moderate significantly the otherwise deleterious consequences of poverty by their own behavior and choices." Unfortunately none of the articles suggest that marrying or staying married might be among those responsible choices that might make a significant difference for children.

Source: Steven L. Nock, "Illustrations of Family Scholarship: Introduction to the Special Issue," Social Science Research 35 [June 2006] 322 Feminist Dogma on Marriage Debunked -331. For more informaton: The Howard Centre & The World Congress of Families. Ph: +(815) 964 5819; Fax + (815) 965 1826 934 North Main Street, Rochford, Illinois 61103, USA