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.