Why Sandra Tsing Loh Doesn’t Need A Wife

Newspapers and websites have been buzzing since the weekend with news of the Pew Center’s new study, dubbed “the rise of wives.”  Based on a study of Census data, Pew found that in about a third of marriages now, the wife is better educated than the husband. Women are now the primary breadwinner in 22 percent of couples—up from seven percent in 1970. The times are a’changin that’s for sure–last year women, for the first time in history, became half the workforce.  The most interesting tidbit in all these Pew-related stories is this, from the Tara Parker-Pope’s piece this Sunday in the New York Times:

Over all, the evidence shows that the shifts within marriages — men taking on more housework and women earning more outside the home — have had a positive effect, contributing to lower divorce rates and happier unions.

While it’s widely believed that a woman’s financial independence increases her risk for divorce, divorce rates in the United States tell a different story: they have fallen as women have made economic gains. The rate peaked at 23 divorces per 1,000 couples in the late 1970s, but has since dropped to fewer than 17 divorces per 1,000 couples. Today, the statistics show that typically, the more economic independence and education a woman gains, the more likely she is to stay married. And in states where fewer wives have paid jobs, divorce rates tend to be higher, according to a 2009 report from the Center for American Progress.

Sociologists and economists say that financially independent women can be more selective in marrying, and they also have more negotiating power within the marriage. But it’s not just women who win. The net result tends to be a marriage that is more fair and equitable to husbands and wives.

Of course this is true. One of the reasons financial independence among women was thought to increase divorce was because it gave her power, the power to leave an unhappy or unfulfilling or unfair marriage. In every relationship there is a balance of power and in a marriage, especially one with children and a household to manage, much of that power is economic. The person who earns more has more power and in many marriages, that powerful person is the husband, who does far less of the domestic drudgework than his wife, who is often also working .  That kind of inequity builds up a lot of resentment over the years, so it’s no surprise, actually, that when a woman’s power within her marriage increases—because of her rising income and/or higher education—she feels she can demand certain things. Things like having her husband  clean up after dinner rather than sitting on the couch watching football. Or he will clean the bathroom, do the laundry, entertain children. Help with the diorama project in English. Etc.

And sure, nothing is that cut and dry. Parker-Pope notes that in her story:

Men, for instance, sometimes have a hard time adjusting to a woman’s equal or greater earning power. Women, meanwhile, struggle with giving up their power at home and controlling tasks like how to dress the children or load the dishwasher

“Today, men need their wives’ income,” says Joshua Coleman, a psychologist in San Francisco who wrote “The Lazy Husband: How to Get Men to Do More Parenting and Housework.” “There is an issue for men of: ‘What is my value here if I’m not bringing in money? I understand you want a communicative, empathic guy who does housework and parenting, but how much pride can I take in that?’ ”

But what about the pride the wife is supposed to take in that “housework and parenting?” Men aren’t expected to find pride in that work, so why is it women are expected to find their own value in it? Men are facing the same issues women face, only women—who traditionally earn less—have fewer choices. You can’t turn away from a dirty bathroom or a crying child because you feel your husband and society at large doesn’t really value what you do, doesn’t value you as an intelligent, contributing human being. Especially when it’s your husband’s name on the bigger paycheck. So you do it.

Parker-Pope also noted that despite sweeping economic changes in marriage over the last 40 years, even among couples where both work, women do about two-thirds of the housework, on average, according to the University of Wisconsin National Survey of Families and Households.

In a forum on the topic printed in the New York Times a few days ago, Kathleen Gerson, a sociology professor at NYU and author of “The Unfinished Revolution: How a New Generation is Reshaping Family, Work, and Gender in America” wrote:

New economic realities may be one factor driving changes in intimate relationships, but another is the strong and growing desire among new generations for equality and balance in marriage. Countless studies, including my own, find that most young people, regardless of gender, race, or the kind of family in which they grew up, support working mothers, want to balance work and caretaking, and hope to create an enduring egalitarian relationship.

An enduring egalitarian relationship is certainly what a lot of the married women I know want. That’s not a scientific study, mind you, just the product of a life spent with a group of women who are close friends, who are high-achievers, and several of whom have always earned more than their husbands, but still shoulder—in almost all their cases—the bulk of the childcare and housework.

And just as you were starting to feel good about the growing equality of roles in marriage, you have Sandra Tsing Loh—a writer I normally look forward to reading in the Atlantic—write an opinion piece in the New York Times on Sunday titled “My So-Called Wife,” where she fantasizes about the role of the 1950s housewife.  Tsing Loh writes:

I don’t know how it’s going for my sisters, but as my 40s and Verizon bills and mortgage payments roll on, I seem to have an ever more recurring 1950s housewife fantasy.

Really? A 1950s housewife fantasy? Tsing Loh talks about the fictional wife Nancy, and her day of socializing with the gals, arriving at the hair salon, some tennis, minimal time with the kids who take care of themselves, essentially, by riding bikes around their preposterously safe neighborhood. Then Nancy drinks herself into a stupor while listening attentively to her husband Brad talks bout his day at work.

Writes Tsing Loh:

Fast forward to 2010. When husbands and wives not only co-work but try to co-homemaker, as post-feminist and well-intentioned as it is, out goes the clear delineation of spheres, out goes the calm of unquestioned authority, and of course out goes the gratitude.

Aside from the irritation of never being able to reach the spatula (men tend to place items on shelves that are a foot higher than women can manage), I have found co-homemaking inefficient. With 21st-century technology, it’s a straightforward matter to run a modern home. Sheep don’t need to be sheared; the wash is not done on a board by the creek; nothing needs canning, because we have Costco. Even someone who works 40 hours a week can keep a home standing, and food in the fridge, by himself.

In the end, we all want a wife. But the home has become increasingly invaded by the ethos of work, work, work, with twin sets of external clocks imposed on a household’s natural rhythms. And in the transformation of men and women into domestic co-laborers, the Art of the Wife is fast disappearing.

I think not. The Art of the Wife Tsing Loh is waxing nostalgically for was a dead-end for women of that generation. In the end we don’t all want a wife, we want a wife’s role to be more equal to the role of her partner. If Tsing Loh had a wife,  she would be a husband. And that wouldn’t necessarily improve things at all.