Working Women Are Happy (And So Are Their Husbands)

By Rebeldad Brian Reid

It's been awhile since we had a nice balance brouhaha, but I knew there was one boiling when I saw this headline at the BBC: "Mothers 'are happier' having job." The folks over at Salon picked up on it, too, running a piece that declared "The whole 'working mother' thing actually works." Of course, I couldn't trust the media to get all the facts right, so I dug up the research, from the UK's Institute for Social and Economic Research.

According to the study, satisfaction with life is lowest for women who don't do paid work; those who work full-time have the highest ratings. I'm not a social scientist, but all of this seems compelling and seems to stick a pin in the idea that working women are caught in a life of two-sphere drudgery. On the flip side, it's not fair to label at-home parents miserable across the board -- the differences in satisfaction scores were statistically significant but not enormous, and there is great danger in assuming that because something is true for a population that it is true for all individuals.

There's plenty to debate right there, but what really caught my eye was the findings on men. As it turns out, men's life satisfaction tends to increase if their wives work. Even though men come off as cads in the survey -- which found that having kids doesn't boost happiness for guys -- this conclusion does a great job of cutting down the dangerous and misogynistic idea that men really, really want traditional marriages and a clear-cut division of responsibilities in the household.

This conforms to my longstanding bias: I think that equality in marriage makes for happier kids and a more stable union. The even better news is that the data for the study was gathered between 1996 and 2003, meaning that the study authors were looking at an older set of fathers than are walking around my neighborhood. I'm optimistic that the next generation will be even more equality-minded.

While I'm sure I'll get an earful on whether working women are actually more satisfied with their lives, I'd love to hear about your working spouses. Are you happier when your better half is out in the workforce?

Brian Reid writes about parenting and work-family balance. You can read his blog at rebeldad.com.

By Brian Reid |  December 20, 2007; 9:30 AM ET  | Category:  Conflicts , Dads , Division of Labor , Research
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