By Marta Murray-Close and Misty Heggeness, "not necessarily represent[ing] the views of the U.S. Census Bureau." I don't like the government nosing into the psychology of marriages.
I'm seeing that because it's discussed in "When Wives Earn More Than Husbands, Neither Partner Likes to Admit It/Deceiving the census: New research suggests that social attitudes are lagging behind both workplace progress and how people actually live their lives" (NYT). From the Times article:
Marriage therapists say marriages can become shakier when women earn more than men if men feel insecure or women lose respect for them. Economists say it’s one reason the loss of working-class jobs for men has led to such discontent — and to fewer marriages.Blokes....
“Blokes are threatened by wives who earn more, which surprises nobody but is interesting that you can actually find it in the data,” said Justin Wolfers, who studies the economics of the family at the University of Michigan....
“When the gender norm is violated, there is some compensating behavior to try to undo some of the utility loss experienced by the husband,” said Marianne Bertrand, an author of the study and an economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.From the comments at the NYT, this is the second-highest rated:
This is the most important article in the newspaper today, not the clown's antics. The crisis in masculinity, the failure to acknowledge, understand, or find comfort in women entering the workforce since the 1970s, is what got the clown elected in the first place, and is what drives rightist politics. See Krugman today on the ideology of right-wing politicians despite what their constituents vote for or want. The desperation to recover masculinity in its older forms drove men and women of Germany to embrace someone who promised to lead them out of the humiliations of WWI. We face not a culture war as a distraction, but as the driving force. See Edsall on this topic in his recent post. See gun advertisements promising a purchase of manhood, as if the symbolism weren't enough.
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34 comments:
I question the statistical significance of the findings. It is literally a rounding error.
(Justin is an Aussie, mate)
I spend all my earnings on masculinity.
Shorter top rated comment: Literally Hitler. They're wearing that one out.
Are 'blokes' just bros outside the US? If so, obviously they can't accept that the bitch makes more, it's part of their nature.
-sw
Just don't answer. The fine for not answering is $100 but the fine for deceiving is $500.
Ask them where to send the $100. Be polite.
It's not bitch, it's shelia, mate.
Wild hyperbole is the coin of the realm on the internet.
We're desperate "to recover masculinity" only in an essayist's head.
Otherwise, nobody cares much about this crap.
I sold my house in Woodstock and I live now on the outskirts of a redneck blue collar town in upstate New York. Try to find somebody who wants to talk about this nonsense.
Fabricating these panics is a way for eggheads to keep from being bored.
The University of Chicago has a business school named after John Wilkes Booth?
Where is the discussion of the reasons that the women lied about their incomes? Or is it simply assumed that the men lied for them or forced them to lie?
The crisis in masculinity,
There is no crisis in masculinity. There is a war on masculinity. There is a constant, relentless hysterical assault on everything male. It's starts with drugging our boys in school, discriminating against young men in college, and rigging the game against them legally.
the failure to acknowledge, understand, or find comfort in women entering the workforce since the 1970s,
1) Women have always been in the workforce. Usually as cheap exploited labor. The modern phenomena of women working as equals in the economy happened first in WW I and became permanent in WW II.
2) As far as some of us are concerned, many, if not most, of today's broad society problems are unintended results of this movement. It has undoubtedly lead to the empowerment and fulfillment of women. But it has also lead to the destruction of the family, which in turn causes other problems. It has lead to a demographic crisis.
I would argue that it has failed to lead to increased happiness.
I love the sensitivity with which mens' concerns are addressed.
Last year my wife took on a new position and now outearns me. Facts aren't difficult. No problem with me!
Here's the humorous part of my moving story. I bought a house with my daughter and son-in-law. My son-in-law is an old fashioned blue collar guy who made his living out of the back of a pickup truck before his skills matured and he landed a union job with one of the major commuter railroads.
His circle of friends all have similar resumes. They're all making six figure incomes, most of them with jobs with lifetime security.
What are the guys who went $50,000 in debt for a liberal arts degree doing?
So, in fact, from my perch, it looks like the answer to making more money than your wife is to embrace that traditional blue collar male role to the hilt.
This doesn't sound good for the wage gap theory.
I think this idea that the "traditional" male of say- 100 years ago- would have found his work empowering in any way is pretty laughable. And the idea that women didn't work also seems to me pretty false.
I've been doing Ancestry lately. My family- in some parts- had some money in their European home countries, but most were forced out of their home land for religious reasons and came here penniless. Most remained pretty hard scrabble and any money they made came from farming homestead lands. Those women had like 8 kids, and raising the kids and keeping a farm were real work- a real division of labor between wife and husband.
Later- in the late 1800's, my ancestors got more diverse jobs. Door makers, bakers, stuff like that. But the women had jobs too. I've got postcards they exchanged at the turn of the century where the women are sewing and selling their products, servants in other people's homes, teachers, cooks for other people, inn keepers, etc.
So while I understand there were jobs women weren't really welcome to, it doesn't seem to be to be true that women didn't work. There just weren't daycares so when there were kids, they raised the kids. Which somehow has been being pushed aside as a valuable job.
Jordan Peterson?
If it's true, so what?
It must be stopped?
Back in the day, I attended a lecture by Margaret Meade late in her career, and after a survey of the highly varied divisions of labor between men and women that she had observed in dozens of cultures she had studied around the world, she arrived at three generalizations: (1) All human cultures divide labor by sex; (2) The particular tasks assigned to each sex vary widely from one culture to another, indicating that the assignments are not based on any innate fitness or aptitude objectively corresponding to sex; (3) Within each culture, the set of tasks performed by males is regarded as more important. The nature of work may have changed in the modern era, but that doesn't necessarily mean the nature of humans will change, or that it will change fast enough to keep pace. We should be trying, and we should be hoping for success, but we should recognize that success requires more than a proclamation and sincere effort.
We stand on the shoulders of those who have come before us, especially those who have made significant contributions to our culture.
Ha! I see I made Margaret a member of the esteemed house of Meade.
"Manning Up and Womaning Down: The Chelsea Manning Story"
My father loved being a “kept man.” Kept joking about it, get to work woman!
I made more money in the beginning. Neither of us cared, we enjoyed ourselves then worked towards home ownership.
My wife will make more than me the day I retire - she's a bit younger and plans to work longer. I'm down with that.
I'd have been happy, at any point, for her to have earned more than me as we'd have had more money to go on vacation. In shorts. As tourists.
_XC
What a moronic comment in the NYT. It's really getting old, this schtick the left has that people who vote Republican are voting "against their own interests." It's incredibly patronizing and bigoted. It fundamentally denies agency to millions of people. Sad how many otherwise intelligent people are utterly blind.
There was a long period when my wife made more than I did. I would comment on it once a year, when I was making out our taxes. And my wife would try to downplay it! “Oh, that’s because my W-2 includes my benefits.”
“No, hon, you just make more than I do.” She was an analytical chemist for a major soft drink company and damned good at what she did. If I wanted to rationalize the situation, I could tell myself that 1) she had been with her employer longer than I had been with mine, and 2) her company had not gone through a near-fatal bankruptcy in the recent past.
Actually, I didn’t care. I didn’t feel her earnings were undermining my masculinity at all.
Three years ago, her employer involuntarily retired her. Her supervisor was shocked. His manager was also shocked. Nobody would ever admit to selecting her to be downsized. I suspect she was selected by an algorithm on a computer in the HR department for being a combination of older / highly paid / health issues / no doctorate. The company had had a down year and the CEO wanted to show investors he meant business, by laying off a few thousand people. (He’s gone now, too.)
Given her / our age, she looked a long time to find another job. She did and is advancing along a different path, but her skills are way underutilized. Being let go like that was a terrible blow to her self-esteem and she misses the people she worked with. I wish she was still back at her old job, making more money than me. She’d be happier.
We could use that extra money, too.
I swear the entire commentariat at the NYT is 85th percentile IQ. Smart enough to have Big Ideas, but not smart enough to take more than one or two logical steps beyond these Big Ideas to understand what they mean.
Ugh.
Liberals get the bullet too. This is why.
Sex norms. Men and women are equal in rights and complementary in Nature. Reconcile.
Why are they assuming that relative status, financial or otherwise, only matters to men?
Gahrie: "Where is the discussion of the reasons that the women lied about their incomes?"
I agree. The women were certainly complicit.
From the article: "Marriage therapists say marriages can become shakier when women earn more than men if men feel insecure or women lose respect for them.
Sounds like the women have concerns about masculinity, too. Treason to the Sisterhood!
Blokes are threatened when the wife earns more, but what do guys, chaps, dudes, lads, gents, bros, and fellas think of it?
So, "women lose respect for them" when they make more money than blokes. That is the crux of the problem. Women are highly status-conscious, and their status is established by the quality of the man they can land.
Just don't talk about it. It should not be an imperative for a couple's synthesis. Before women were encouraged to become taxable commodities, they should have been treated as equals in the relationship. At home, barefoot, pregnant, or whatever, and equal in rights. The same is true for men in relationships. Each should be a productive member. Reconcile.
I'm semi-retired and my wife makes a lot more than I do.
My friends are jealous as hell.
Why are they assuming that relative status, financial or otherwise, only matters to men?
Because, as every denizen of Althouse knows, if it matters to women, then its a good thing.
Sad how many otherwise intelligent people are utterly blind.
Where is this evidence for "otherwise intelligent"?
See Krugman today on the ideology of right-wing politicians despite what their constituents vote for or want.
When did a paid shill for Enron, oh yeah, and stock prognosticating version of "Wrong Way" Riegel, become a source of holy writ?
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