Wife's employment and quality of marriage

This paper explores how wife's employment and the gender-role attitudes of both spouses affect perceptions of marital quality of husbands and wives. Data are analyzed from a sample of 452 married couples in which the husband was employed at the time of the survey. Findings suggest that gender-role attitudes are more important than wife's employment characteristics in determining the perceived quality of marriages. Gender-role variables interact with wife's employment characteristics such that the potentially negative effects of higher earnings or higher occupational status of the wife relative to the husband is moderated by the attitudes of spouses.