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By Keith Mulvihill
NEW YORK, Mar 23 (Reuters Health) - A man who places a high value on the amount of his salary may find himself feeling down if his wife brings home a hefty paycheck, results of a study suggest. And the husband's attitude towards the situation may have an impact on the couple's marriage, researchers report.
"The idea that men's identities are tied to salary is only partially true," Dr. Rosalind Chait Barnett of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, told Reuters Health. "As a whole, men's perceptions of their marriage are not affected unless the man holds on to certain aspects of more traditional gender roles. For these men, the amount of money they earn is very important compared to other people around them."
In contrast, women seem to feel no differently about their marriage if they are making more or less than their partner, Barnett noted.
In the first study of its kind, Barnett and colleagues followed 286 dual-earning married couples living in suburban Massachusetts over a 2-year period.
About one third of the men in the study had less traditional notions about gender roles compared with their wives. For example, the men were less likely than the women to feel that the husband should be the sole provider and the wife should stay home and take care of domestic tasks.
The rest of the men in the study tended to hold more traditional beliefs than their wives did. Such men, particularly if they placed a high value on their own salary, seemed to be at greater risk for marital unhappiness, Barnett explained.
The men in this group tended to have more negative response to questions about their marriage if their wife made more money than the husband did. Such men were more likely to be worried that their wives might be having an affair or that something else was amiss, according to the report published in the February issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.
The report indicates that about 23% of wives in dual-earner couples in the US earned as much or more than their husbands in 1997. That percentage was slightly higher in the current study--32%--because the researchers required both couples to have full-time employment, Barnett pointed out.
"In terms of actual earnings, these wives earned between $1,000 and $75,000 more than their husbands," the authors write.
This situation "can become a problem for the men who have a high regard for the amount of money they earn," Barnett said. "These men who still hold on to more traditional attitudes are more vulnerable to marital unhappiness," she added.
"The good news is that attitudes are modifiable. These men may want to rethink their views and focus instead on the joint earnings of the couple," Barnett stated.
Men should also take comfort in the fact that their wives probably do not care as much about money as they think.
"Women's attitudes about marital happiness tended to be more swayed by the amount of time the husband helps with childcare," Barnett told Reuters Health.
In addition, the current study does not support the idea that traditional gender roles are the key to a happy and healthy American family.
"If we found that most men and women were worried about the state of their marriage because women made as much or more money than their husbands, this would support those attitudes. We don't find any support for that at all," she concluded.
SOURCE: Journal of Marriage and Family 2001;63:168-182.
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