Men, Women, Divorce and Employment: If She’s the Breadwinner

Since about the Industrial Revolution (though, oddly, not much before that!), it’s been a standard in the Western world that men are the breadwinners and women are the homemakers. Even in marriages where both spouses work, it’s still a ‘safe’ assumption that the husband brings in more than the wife. In Michigan family court, the software used to calculate spousal support (a.k.a. alimony) requires the input of each spouse’s educational level, prior jobs held, and other factors to create an “ability to earn” factor — which is almost always higher for the husband than it is for the wife, leading to the vast majority of spousal support being paid to the wife by the husband.

The extraordinary normalcy of this situation causes problems when the pattern is disrupted. In a divorce, for example, one of the common-law doctrines the law relies upon is called the “status quo,” in this case meaning that the divorce should, in general, maintain the same financial circumstances as existed in the marriage (at least, for a period of time.) But the very words “status quo” hearken to the society-wide notion that women should be the ones being supported, and the men should do the supporting.

The result is that surprisingly often, what we see in a situation where a woman has been the breadwinner for years is blatantly unfair. The judge will look at the wife’s long history of paying martial expenses and declare that assigning spousal support to the wife would be “punishing past good deeds.” Because if a man pays martial expenses, that’s normal, but if a woman does it, it’s “good deeds.”

Men, Women, Divorce, and Unemployment
While this is more of a cultural note than a family law one, it’s worth pointing out as it’s directly related to the point above. According to a study conducted by the University of Michigan, among heterosexual couples, men are modestly more divorce-prone if they move from full employment to part-time employment – and dramatically more likely to get a divorce if they move from full employment to unemployment.

That’s not all that surprising, really: financial troubles are a strong predictor of marriage trouble. What is surprising is that the opposite is not true for heterosexual couples wherein the wife is the breadwinner. A female provider’s likelihood of divorce is almost completely independent of changes in her work status.

Perhaps equally importantly, the study showed that women who work full-time are generally no more divorce prone than women who stay at home, or those who work part-time. (Similarly, while there was once a relationship between a woman’s rejection of housework and her chance of getting divorced, that’s no longer the case — a woman who demands the man keep house is no more likely to get divorced than a dedicated housewife.)

The takeaway here is simple but sexist: as a culture, we’re getting to be completely OK with a woman who puts a career above being a homemaker — which is great! But we’re completely not making the necessary change on the flipside: we’re still not willing to give a man the space to be a homemaker and the ‘dependent’ spouse (and parent!), even if he and his wife agree that everyone is better off that way, and that’s…a lot less great.