Work Outside the Home? What Home?

Apparently, it has taken sociology only forty years or so to discover the obvious: that having wives and mothers work outside the home is bad not only for the children, but for the marriage.

Why wouldn't it be so? There is something to be said not only for division of labour--the foundation, after all, of civilization itself--and for taking care of one another as a natural expression of love. The symbiosis of male and female has to do with a lot more than having sex.

According to a recent piece in Forbes magazine, reviewing the research to date, “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.”

And get this nugget: “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.”

This means that the feminist drive to equal pay for women ensures that 50% of marriages are going to be unhappy on this factor alone.

The incidence of divorce is far higher when both spouses work. The more hours the wife works, the more likely the divorce; whether the husband works longer or shorter hours or not does not seem to matter.

Meantime, consider this: a good marriage means a higher income, a longer, healthier life, and better-adjusted, healthier, brighter children. Conversely, a failed marriage means a lower income—on average, a 77% drop in net worth—a shorter, sicker life, and badly-adjusted, sicker, less intelligent children.

Whatever else it has done, good or bad, this is one demonstrable heritage of feminism—for both men and women.