Two-Income Couples​—The Challenges They Face

“I FEEL the man should do the work, and he should bring home the money,” asserts one man. “And when he’s over working, he should sit down and rest for the rest of the day.” Yet, in spite of obviously strong sentiments, his wife works.

Many men are similarly caught in an emotional tug-of-war: economic need versus entrenched ideas about manhood. Observes sociologist Lillian Rubin: “In a society where people in all classes are trapped in frenetic striving to acquire goods, where a man’s sense of worth and his definition of his manhood rest heavily on his ability to provide those goods, it is difficult for him to acknowledge that the family really does need his wife’s income to live as they both would like.” Some men therefore become quite depressed, or hypercritical, grumbling that their wives have become too independent or that their home just isn’t as clean as it used to be.

And when a woman earns more than her husband or obtains a high-status job, what can result? Claimed Psychology Today: “For some underachieving husbands whose wives are overachievers, premature death from heart disease is 11 times more frequent than normal.” The Journal of Marriage and the Family further reported that where wives have ‘higher occupational attainment,’ “such marriages were more likely to end in divorce.”a

Wives, though, must at times fight their own battle with resentment. Though well knowing their husband’s economic plight, they may still wonder, ‘Why should I have to work? Shouldn’t he take care of me?’ Also, she may be plagued by what psychologist Dr. Martin Cohen calls the biggest source of stress among working women​—“guilt over not doing enough—​of not being as good a wife and mother as their mother was.”

Consequently, accepting the economic realities that force both husband and wife to become wage earners may be their first challenge. But, for sure, it will not be their last.

“Yours,” “Mine”​—Whose?

Over a third of 86,000 women polled identified it as the biggest problem in their marriage: money! Said an article in the Ladies’ Home Journal: “The subject of money . . . turns otherwise sane men and women into raving lunatics.” Said one husband: “Our worst problem was money. Just the sheer lack of it, the total overwhelming lack of it.” True, a second income might ease this pressure, but often it also creates new problems.

Explains Ed, a young husband: “When we first got married, Ronda was making about the same amount of money that I was. And when she started making more money than I was, subconsciously I had this she’s-better-than-I-am feeling.” The second salary also seems to tip the “balance of power” more in favor of the wife. She may understandably feel she is now entitled to more of a say as to how the money should be spent.

Men, though, are reluctant to share this control. “He would make me tell him, every day, how much money I needed for that day,” recalls one wife. “And I really hated that.” A husband who is inept with money or who, worse yet, squanders their funds, heightens this resentment. Complained one Tanzanian woman: “The money is spent on drinking, not on us or on the children. We share the work, or do more of it, but he takes all the money telling us it is his​—that he earned it.”

Coming up with an arrangement that satisfies both partners, though, is not always easy. Ed and Ronda, for example, agreed to put both their salaries into one bank account. “But when it came to spending,” recalls Ed, “her eyes were ‘bigger’ than mine. The more money she made, the more she spent.” And some wives would retort that it is their husbands who have the ‘big’ eyes.

Empty Refrigerators and Dirty Socks

“Role sharing.” It sounded great in theory. It was thought that when wives worked, husbands would naturally do their share of the housework.b Perhaps women could at long last enjoy the luxury of relaxing after a day’s work! But, alas, “role sharing” has thus far often proved to be mere theory!

Oh, men say they’re willing to help. In one survey, 53 percent of the men polled voiced no objection to pushing a vacuum cleaner. But how many actually did so? Twenty-seven percent. Their inaction spoke louder than their words.

Researchers in Canada similarly found that “in the families in which women have full-time employment, women still devote approximately three times as much time to housework and child care” as do their husbands. (Italics ours.) Nor is the picture much different in Europe or in the developing nations. Working wives are thus burdened with what amounts to two full-time jobs. No wonder, then, that the authors of Mothers Who Work say: “The most critical issue in working mothers’ lives is time.”

Mornings and evenings can be frenzied interludes for the working wife: waking and dressing the children, fixing breakfast, rushing the children off to school, heading for work​—only to return to hungry children and a hungry husband who may have deposited himself in his favorite chair. Researchers call it “role strain.” She calls it sheer exhaustion. Says one woman: “My life is like a delicate well-built house of cards. One thing goes wrong and it all collapses.” And the larger a family is, the more strain the working wife is likely to feel.

‘Something’s got to give!’ a working woman may feel like shouting. And often what gives is the quality of her housework. Recalls one wife: “It got to a point in our house where there was never enough food in the refrigerator or no one could find any clean socks. My husband was getting angry with me, but I finally threw up my hands, sat down, and cried.”

Even the marriage itself can give. Said another working wife: “My husband and I both find that our relationship suffers not because of lack of love or desire, but simply because after the demands of work and the children have been met, there is often little energy left for each other.” So what is the answer? What is the key to success for working couples?

[Footnotes]

[Blurb on page 8]

Working wives are burdened with two full-time jobs

[Picture on page 7]

It is difficult for some men to cope with the fact that their wives earn as much as they do or more