I just went through a divorce, so I am the last person to ask about what it takes to have a happy relationship. A new study, however, claims to have divined the hearts of women. Can a survey provide answers to the age-old question, “What do women want?”
If, as Tolstoy said, happy families are all alike, is there a formula for happy marriages, too?
Yes, say two University of Virginia sociologists who found that married women are happiest with a sensitive guy who earns most of the family’s money. Women are also willing to take on more housework if they feel their husbands pay attention to them, and they feel the arrangement is “fair,” if not equal.
“On average, an American wife is happiest when her husband combines elements of the new and the old,” said Bradford Wilcox, a study co-author who is also a resident scholar at the Institute for American values, which promotes traditional marriage. “Having a good breadwinner and sharing a strong commitment to lifelong marriage — the old model if you will — is still important.”
That flies in the face of many other studies that find the best marriages are “companionate” in which spouses equally share tasks like child care and earning an income.
The debate over the ideal marital relationship is being played out against growing concerns about the health of marriage in America, with a stubbornly persistent divorce rate of 43 percent and rising numbers of couples who live together without planning to marry. The federal government included $100 million in programs to promote marriage when it renewed welfare reform legislation in its last session.
I don’t see anything in there about my “I blog, you love me anyway” strategy. I might have to scrap that. But seriously, some of this stuff is a little frightening for us guys.
Women with more traditional views of marriage, whose husbands were the main breadwinners, tended to be happier than women with more “progressive” views and those who worked outside the home, they said. That led the authors to speculate the more traditional wives had lower expectations of their husbands’ contributions at home.
Are all you progressive women really unhappy nags? That can’t be true. Who paid for this survey?
A lot of people are criticizing the study because the results encourage women to lessen their expectations in order to have happier marriages. Of course, results of surveys are just raw data. But one critic says this:
Coontz said it would also be a recipe for later divorce, because women tend to become less satisfied with marriage as time goes on, while men become more contented.
Is that true? Kinda goes against the stereotype of the 40-something man. But, I’m telling you, I know nothing.
I mean, is this woman happy?
Stephanie Sergiou of West Orange said she doesn’t mind if she does 80 percent of the work at home and her husband isn’t always as sensitive as she would like.
“He’s a good man,” she shrugged. “If he doesn’t want to listen to me, I just tell him anyway.”
Maybe she is married to a blogger. Or maybe this blogger hasn’t got a clue.
