RebelDad

Overworked Husbands=At-Home Moms (But Not Vice Versa)

Posted on 06. Apr, 2010 by Brian Reid in at home moms, at-home dads, economy, gender equity, work-like balance

Yesterday, I posted on Katherine Lewis’ great WaPo Magazine story on the struggles of a woman to get back into the workforce. But there is an even bigger question that undergirds that whole article: what drives people out of the workforce in the first place? This is the great unmentionable in “opt-out revolution” stories in which well-educated women leave the workplace. It’s usually framed as a question of prioritizing: having a child draws out the maternity instinct, making work for pay all the less appealing.

That’s the romantic version, anyway.

A new paper out in American Sociological Review finds another reason why highly educated, high-powered woman leave the workforce: they’re married to workaholics. It’s especially pronounced in professional woman and in mothers. Here’s the essence of the research, from the press release on the article:

… having a husband who works 60 hours or more per week increases a woman’s odds of quitting by 42 percent. … The odds of quitting increase by 51 percent for professional women whose husbands work 60 hours or more per week, and for professional mothers the odds they will quit their jobs jumps 112 percent.

What’s dispiriting is that this isn’t about money or the difficultly of balancing life in a household where one partner is gone 12+ hours a day. It’s about gender norms. When the researchers look at women who worked 60+ hours a week, husbands were no more likely, statistically, to quit. So the traditional model, with the guy’s career first, remains the reigning paradigm.

I’ve done my part to change the trend, but — apparently — I haven’t done enough.