For decades, feminists have argued that the strains upon marriage caused by the movement of women into paid employment were merely transitional and would disappear after society had adjusted to this new economic pattern. This line of reasoning has recently been called into question by sociologist Scott J. South of the State University of New York at Albany.
South notes that the classic "specialization and trading model" of marriage, developed by such theorists as Talcott Parsons and Gary Becker, has long held that "similarity in the economic roles of husbands and wives-and particularly the economic independence afforded employed married women-detracts from the gains to marriage and consequently increases the likelihood of marital dissolution." Do the data actually support this theory? Yes, South reports, but only in recent years.
Using panel-study data, South shows that between 1969 and 1976, the risk of divorce remained "relatively low for both employed and nonemployed wives," with no significant difference in divorce risk separating the two groups. The same data reveal that between 1977 and 1984, the risk of divorce actually ran slightly higher among nonemployed wives than among employed wives. However, between 1985 and 1992 the annual probability of divorce among employed wives exceeded that for nonemployed wives by a remarkable 40 percent.
What does this pattern tell us? To start with, South sees in "the failure of the effect of wives' employment on divorce to decline over time" strong evidence against "the view that its disruptive impact is unique to the early stages of the rise in married women's labor force participation and is destined to fade as societal institutions and attitudes adjust to women's enhanced economic roles." Indeed, South finds it ironic that the classic predictions of Parsons and Becker about how wives' employment would elevate divorce rates "were unlikely to have been correct when these theorists first developed them, [but] they appear to have become validated under recent conditions."
So why is wives' employment more corrosive of marriage now than in the past? Why has "the impact of wives' labor force supply on the risk of divorce has become increasingly positive over the past quarter century"? South advances three plausible hypotheses.
First, South suggests that the institutional structures and social policies which were supposed to mitigate "the disruptive impact of wives' employment on marital quality" may also have "weakened the link between marriage and motherhood." That is, when corporate and government policies give employed women family leave from their jobs and provide them with subsidized child-care facilities, they make it "increasingly easy for working mothers to cope following a divorce." They thereby make employed married women less reluctant to dissolve their marriages.
Second, South points to the spread of "nontraditional gender role attitudes." The effect of wives' employment on the risk of divorce appears to be "much stronger" among couples in which the wife espouses nontraditional gender-role ideologies than among couples in which the wife holds to traditional gender-role beliefs. So "the historical shift toward more nontraditional gender roles" in society in general would predict that women's employment would become more subversive of wedlock.
Third, South limns "declines in occupational sex segregation." Such declines have brought "more and more employed married women . . . in close proximity with men who might serve as more attractive mates than their current husbands."
Clearly, Americans can stop waiting for the end to the painful transition period in which wives' employment undermines marriage. The end is nowhere in sight-and this is no transition period.
