Successful Wives Make Insecure Husbands?

Goodness. As if women didn't have enough to worry about. According to "new" research reported by The Wall Street Journal, women should think before making more money than their husbands about how it could negatively influence their marriage.

One would think that these sorts of insecurities would take a back seat in a recession. However, even tough economic times can't unseat stifling gender roles where women have to be seen as "less" than men in order to fit into "traditional" society.

From the Wall Street Journal:

It turns out, not too surprisingly, that men really do like making more than their wives. The study found that men who earn a lot more than their wives report significantly higher career satisfaction than men who earn about the same as their spouses, according to Ms. Tolbert and her co-author, Ronit Waismel-Manor of Israel’s Netanya Academic College.

“Husbands feel concerned when wives make more than them,” says Ms. Tolbert. “We still have these kinds of models in our head.”

But, interestingly, although pay levels affect husbands’ career satisfaction, money doesn’t seem to matter much when it comes to the home-front. Whether men earn less, the same or more than their wives has little effect on their reported level of family satisfaction, which tends to be high, the researchers found. The reasons for that are open to speculation, they added.

Meanwhile, women who earn the same as their husbands report significantly higher levels of career satisfaction than do women in traditional couples, but significantly lower family satisfaction.

The resolution to this madness? Apparently, Ms. Tolbert says "if people recognized that equal-earner couples are a very typical family form, that might make them feel better about their family and work life.”

Or perhaps society needs to grow up and realize that women can be equally, if not more successful than men - and this is not a bad thing in the least.

Photo Credit: Anne Taintor