The growing rate of women’s employment and the ensuing effect on family structure has become one of the most controversial demographic issues in the United States. Although an increasing number of studies have been published recently that show a direct correlation between female employment and the increasing rates of divorce and separation occurring in American families, the issue received very little attention until the 1980’s. As a result, we have little long-run evidence to support the relationship between female employment and divorce rates. The majority of the studies conducted on marital stability have focused on the impact of socioeconomic forces rather than cultural effects, which also play a very significant role in the strength of a marriage. Therefore, it is difficult to obtain a complete understanding of the situation without taking into account all of the factors contributing to the rising rates of divorce and separation. In spite of this, studies do show that, over the past one hundred years, women who worked were far more likely to be divorced or separated than women who did not work (Ruggles, 456).
In 1981, Becker published a study, which stated that the chief benefit of marriage is the interdependence of men and women. He observed that this interdependence arises from the segregation of gender roles, which place women in the role of domestic production and men in the role of market production (Ruggles, 455). Generally, families that maintain this segregation of gender roles experience relative marital stability, while those who deviate from this pattern, such as families where the wife/mother obtains an independent source of income, are more likely to suffer instability, because the incentive for the woman to stay in the relationship declines with her increased independence (Ruggles, 455). After the publication of this study, many other economists and demographers began to publish studies on the relationships between labor market experience, socioeconomic background and marital dissolutions since the mid-twentieth century. These studies often focused on the escalating levels of female involvement and experience in the marketplace, and the growing levels of female income, which all have significant effects on the stability of modern marriages.
This trend of increasing marriage dissolution has been purely a product of the twentieth century, stemming mainly from the introduction of women into the labor market during the depression and World War II. In 1867, only 5% of marriages ended in divorce (Ruggles, 455). By 1967, the failure rate of marriages, which has a direct correlation with the rate of female workforce participation, had increased to over 50% (Ruggles, 455). According to demographer Steven Ruggles, the overall percentage of divorce and separation among whites increased by 500% between 1880 and 1990 (Ruggles, 457). Cultural factors played a central role in the growing frequency of divorces in America. Traditionally, families where the wife did not work received widespread social support from parents and friends, and, therefore had a higher level of stability than families that did not follow social norms (Tzeng, 330). Although marital stability is still closely linked to familial support, the social stigma surrounding divorce has diminished significantly and has resulted in a higher social tolerance for separation (Ruggles, 455). This negative effect on marital stability initially appears pessimistic, but when one considers that in the past many women who have not had the ability to work have had to stay in bad marriages due to lack of opportunity one will realize that the scenario is not entirely negative. Quite often the ability to work allows women to escape from marriages that may be detrimental to their mental or physical health (Ruggles, 455).
The market-labor participation of both women and men increased tremendously over the course of the early twentieth century, but the steady growth of women’s participation has had a deep impact on the nature of the American business world. Market-labor participation can be defined as the age-standardized percentage of married persons (with spouse present) who are not in school, are aged between 20 and 59, and are employed in market labor (Ruggles, 458). The average market-labor participation of women rose from 13% in 1940 to 42% in 1970, and has increased almost forty fold for white women since the turn of the century (Ruggles, 462). The more experience a woman gains in the marketplace often results in increased market skills, and, therefore, higher wages and expectations (Smith, 10). Interestingly, the gradual increase in women’s wages over the second half of the twentieth century has been accompanied by a gradual decline in the growth of men’s wages (Smith, 11). Both the higher wages and the increased expectations on women’s time and dedication have a negative effect on marital stability because they offset the traditional American spousal patterns.
These expanding employment opportunities have provided women with the unprecedented option of leaving a bad marriage and supporting themselves. In past decades, monetary support played one of the focal roles in a woman’s decision to get married. The improvement in the labor market for women has reduced the monetary gains of marriage, and therefore, many women choose to either put off marriage, or leave unhealthy marriages. In fact, the rising female wages encourage increased workloads, which inhibit both fertility levels and marriage. Therefore, women in high paying positions are more likely to suffer marital instability than women who earn low wages or do not work (Smith, 22).
Women who work also often experience a stronger sense of autonomy, identity, self-confidence and personal growth than women who stay at home, and quite often these changes in personality and attitude have a negative effect on marriage (Tzeng, 331). This change in women’s roles alters the pattern of gender relations and expectations in marriage, and many couples find it difficult to manage (Tzeng, 331). Quite often competition, which can seriously affect a marriage, arises between spouses when both the husband and wife work (Tzeng, 331). Unfortunately, marriages in which the wife’s salary or position equals or exceeds that of her husband have a higher chance of ending in divorce or separation than marriages where the wife does not work or has a lower wage job than her husband (Tzeng, 344).
Sadly, women’s income and wages play an important role in the stability of many modern marriages. In the years between 1920 and 1980, women’s wages grew 20% faster than men’s wages, significantly decreasing the wage gap between the sexes (Smith, 14). Although, in 1986, the average woman still only made 65% of the average man’s salary, younger women’s wages equaled 86% of men’s wages, implying that the woman’s position in the workplace will only continue to improve with each successive generation (Smith, 15 and 16). While these advancements in women’s income will greatly help women in the workplace, some studies have shown that for every $5,000 increase in a wife’s income, the odds that her marriage will end in divorce increase by around 5% (Tzeng, 344).
Interestingly, while discrepancies in spousal income in favor of the wife often hurt the marriage, salary discrepancies in favor of the husband often strengthen marital ties in traditional families (Tzeng, 336). In the majority of marriages, when the husband has a high income, the wife does not work in favor of raising the children and performing domestic duties (Tzeng, 331). Traditionally, such situations where the wife is economically dependent on a husband with a relatively high income result in stable marriages and often experience very low rates of divorce and separation (Tzeng, 331). Inversely, if the husband does not have a high income, many wives with children find that they must work rather than staying home, which often results in marital instability and poor family life (Tzeng, 331). It is also important to note that changes in the wife’s socioeconomic position, such as a raise or promotion, during marriage often affect the stability of marriage, while changes in the husband’s position will not and may even help to strengthen the marriage (Tzeng, 344).
Although income is certainly the most controversial issue concerning the relationship between the growing prevalence of women in the workforce and marital stability, both the number of hours worked and the amount of work experience a women has have strong effects on the composition of the modern family. Over the past few decades, female workforce participation rates have increased drastically, especially among highly educated women (Smith, 16). In the year 2000, a 45-year-old workingwoman had five and a half more years of work experience than her counterpart in 1980 (Smith, 16). The growing expectations placed on women as a result of this changing trend have had a serious impact on the time women have been able to dedicate towards their home and marriage. As labor market careers of women have been becoming more like those of men, women, like their male counterparts, have been investing more time and effort into acquiring heightened market skills, and, therefore, less time and effort into the family (Smith, 17).
Traditionally, wives have been expected to leave the work environment when they begin to have children. But with the increased opportunities offered to workingwomen, many wives choose to remain at work rather than stay home to raise their children, thereby eroding the traditional family structure (Tzeng, 336). As women continue to dedicate more time to work and less time to the family, marital instability becomes more prevalent. According to some studies, a five-week increase in a wife’s annual weeks worked increases the odds of marital dissolution by about 2%. Sadly the closer the wife’s annual number of weeks worked comes to her husband’s, the more unstable their marriage becomes (Tzeng, 345). For each five-week reduction in the gap between the amount of time each spouse dedicates to work per year the odds of marital disruption increase by 3% (Tzeng, 345). Not surprisingly, increases in the amount of weeks worked for both husbands and wives have negative effects on marriage, as a result of the decreased time spent at home and dedicated to the relationship.
As a result of the growing instability of the American family, a new feminization of poverty has emerged in conjunction with the advances in the female labor market. For many years, poverty had been essentially sex-neutral, because people had been classified by their families rather than as individuals (Smith, 18). In 1940, over 90% of all families included both a husband and a wife, and therefore, the sex differential in the poverty measurements was small (Smith, 19). By 1980, the situation had changed drastically with almost one in seven families headed by a single mother. The conditions were even more extreme for African-Americans, where more than four out of every ten black families were run by females (Smith, 19). As a result of this increase in female-headed families, many of the poverty statistics that had once been gender neutral have now become feminized. The rising number of poor women can also be attributed to lower wages offered to women, and the fact that most children live with their mothers and accrue many costs that mothers are responsible for (Smith, 20). This feminization of poverty has become so severe that by 1980 more than 62% of poor adults were women and the number continues to increase with the growing amount of single mothers (Smith, 20).
As we assess the effects of women’s increased labor-market opportunities on the stability of the family, it is important to remember that the changing socio-economic role of men in the United States has also had an effect on the status of the family. In 1994, Oppenheimer released a study stating that the declining market opportunities present for men in society have played a comparably large role in the dissolution of the American family (Ruggles, 455). Since the 1960’s the labor force participation of men has declined drastically causing the average real earnings of young men to deteriorate (Ruggles, 455). As a result of the growing economic failure rate for young men, which has occurred mainly because of early retirement and declining employment at younger ages, there has been a reduction in the pool of desirable husbands, and, therefore, the family structure has suffered (Ruggles, 455). This decline in male participation in the late twentieth century has been especially difficult for African-American men. After 1970, male participation in the workforce declined by 5% among white men and 17% among black men (Ruggles, 459). This male labor-market decline has had serious effects on divorce and separation rates in America, and many demographers hypothesize that the declining participation of black men since 1970 has been the single most important cause of rising economic-related marital instability for blacks (Ruggles, 465).
In any discussion of the American family structure, it is important to distinguish between the socio-economic positions of white and African-American families. Black families have had higher female market-labor participation rates and lower male participation rates than their white counterparts in every census year recorded since 1940, and, therefore, the effects of the workforce on the family will be drastically different across racial lines (Ruggles, 463). The low male participation rates experienced by black men in the mid-century were a direct result of the Jim Crow laws that severely restricted opportunities for both black men and women (Ruggles, 464). These stresses that black families experienced had a severe effect on marital structure that was not paralleled in the white community.
The socio-economic factors that affect black families differ greatly from those that affect white families, and, therefore, there are large differentials between the two races that affect their marital stability rates. Whites, in general, have more formal schooling than African-Americans. Interestingly, while white men generally have more schooling than their wives, black women tend to have slightly more schooling than their husbands (Tzeng, 342). White couples, on average, also have a higher income level than their African-American counterparts, and, unlike the education differential, which is gradually decreasing over time, this income differential has changed very little over the past 50 years (Tzeng, 342).
The interpersonal relations within marriages also differ greatly between the two races. Traditionally, African-American couples are much more egalitarian than white couples, who generally have large differentials between the husband and wife’s incomes and work experience (Tzeng, 342). Between the years 1966 and 1977, the husband’s income in black families grew by $800 more than his wife’s income, but between 1978 and 1987 the wife’s income exceeded the husband’s by $300 (Tzeng, 342). Such a small differential between spousal incomes has never occurred in the average white family, and many demographers hypothesize that if such a differential were to take place, the marital instability for whites would be much higher than the recorded levels for black families (Ruggles, 464).
Although demographers found that white marriages are more susceptible to the socio-economic effects of women in the workplace than their black counterparts, black families have suffered greatly as a result of the increased female participation combined with the decreased male participation in the labor force. In 1950, about 15% of ever-married blacks between the ages 20 and 39 were reported as either divorced or separated. Partially as a result of the increased number of women joining the workforce, this number had more than doubled by 1990 (Ruggles, 458). If one compares these numbers with the white equivalent’s, which were about 3% and 15% respectively, than one will realize that perhaps the more egalitarian nature of many black families may not be beneficial to the family structure (Ruggles, 457).
In addition to the socio-economic issues that I have discussed, there are many other factors that have a significant effect on marital stability in the United States. The age of both the husband and the wife at the time of marriage can have a significant effect on the longevity of the union. Jessie Tzeng, in a study of the cultural effects on marriage stability, found that each year of a husband’s age at marriage reduces the likelihood of martial disruption by 1% and each year of a wife’s age at marriage reduces the likelihood by 5% (Tzeng, 345). The presence of pre-existing children at the point of marriage also contributes to future marital instability; couples with children present before marriage are 50% more likely to experience marital disruption (Tzeng, 345). Couples who have been married at least once before or come from broken homes are also much more likely to experience marital difficulty. These cultural factors, along with changes in the attitudes of the spouses in the years after marriage, play important roles in the make-up of the modern American marital structure and cannot be discounted in a discussion of the socio-economic impacts on divorce and separation.
The changing role of women in the workplace has had an undeniable impact on the structure of the American family. As more mothers continue to join the workforce, American families are experiencing higher levels of divorce and separation, and sadly, the increasing status of women in society has tended to enhance marital instability. Although there are many other factors that play prominent roles in the outcome of modern marriages, the growing capability of women to support themselves independently has decreased their motivation to marry early or stay in an unhealthy marriage. This newfound female independence has also caused many men to develop a strong intolerance for and jealousy of any advancements in their spouse’s career, which has had a negative effect on the stability of the family. Unfortunately, few demographers see a solution to the growing tendency for divorce in American society. If divorce and separation truly correlate directly with the advancement of women in the marketplace, as the evidence suggests, than social and cultural change that promotes the acceptance of women excelling in the workplace will have to occur in order to ensure marital stability in the future.