Working Wives and Marriage Happiness

A woman's freedom to choose among alternative life styles in an important predictor of happiness in marriage. Both partners are lower in marriage happiness if the wife participates in the labor markert out of economic necessity than if she participates by choice. This finding holds across educational levels, stages in the life cycle, and part-time and full-time employment. Among the less educated, the strain comes from an increase in tensions for husbands and a decline in sociability for wives; while among the better educated, husbands and wives both experience an increase in tensions and a decrease in sociability. A woman's choice of the labor market over the home market strains the marriage only when there are preschool children in the family. At other stages in the life cycle, the choice between the labor market and the home market makes little diffrence in an individual's assessment of his own marriage happiness. However, the labor market choice is generally associated with a higher balance between satisfactions and tensions for both husbands and wives.