This story from NPR, commenting on a Pew Trust report, reports that an
increasing number of women are marrying men with lower education and incomes than themselves. (I did my Issues, Etc. interview on this topic today.
The podcast should be up in a day or two.)
Pew is pretty fair, and so is NPR. They are just reporting. However, you can hear the subtext: this is the feminist dream come true. Men and women are
equal, except women are better. I mean, it had to happen. We have had a pretty steady drumbeat in favor of women’s acheivement for the last 40 years,
with no comparable encouragement for men. What exactly did we think would happen? All of a sudden, the process of women’s increasing labor force commitment
and educational achievement would cease the instant we achieved gender parity?
But the real question is this: Has this made people happy? Has it made women happy? According to some very provocative research by Dr. Brad Wilcox at the University of Virginia, the happiest wives are those with a combination of traditional
and progressive attitudes. The happiest married mothers are those who stay at home, whose husbands earn most of the income and whose husbands are emotionally
engaged with them. Not those married moms who have made “equality” their top priority.
BTW, the link to Dr. Wilcox’s paper is from the set
of readings we put together for our student conference last summer. I have allowed you into the inner sanctum of the Ruth Institute’s reading list!
(Cue scary music…or something.) Anyhow, you can get more info about our student conference from last summer in San Diego here. Info
about our upcoming student conference at BYU is here.