Three Tips For Couples With Breadwinning Wives
Breadwinning wives, defined as women who out-earn their husbands, is clearly on the rise. These wives, as of 2019, accounted for about 29% of the married hetero sexual women in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is up from 18% in 1980 and 6% in 1960. About a quarter of those breadwinning wives are also mothers with children under the age of 18.
Numerous breadwinning women coaching clients, especially the mom’s, use the words: guilt, worry, and exhaustion to describe their experiences. According to a new Institute for Family Studies/Wheatley Institution survey of U.S. adults ages 18 to 50, they fight to combat the happiness penalty, which refers to a lower family-life satisfaction rate, than that of wives who have a lower income than their spouses. Listening to their hardships, as well as reflecting on our personal experiences of being breadwinning wives (who have raised adult children, thrived in long term marriages, and climbed to senior executive positions), supports the need for some clear “survival strategies” for non-traditional earning couples. To that end, try implementing these three tips:
1. Redefine success to “team”. Couples can benefit greatly by first, being clear on their joint goals, and then measuring attainment of those goals based on the team’s performance. The trick here is to throw out the individual measuring stick of “who did what”, and instead measure the total couple’s progress on important achievements such as annual income, childrearing, household responsibilities, and retirement objectives. Communicating this team approach within and outside the household makes it clear to all that the couple is in the same boat, rowing together, successfully toward the finish line.
2. Reset expectations to the “critical few”. Many women suffer from the tendency to want to be perfect. They want to do it all and do it all well. This is exemplified by sharing an experience of a peer executive who in the same week, had an important presentation at work, a daughter playing in a championship soccer game, and a major renovation going on at her house. Mid-week she came home crying because she realized she had forgotten to bring cupcakes to her son’s class! After being consoled by her five-year old son who assured her that, “it’s okay mommy”, she chastised herself for signing up to bring the cupcakes in the first place.
Nature (e.g., differences in hormone levels) and nurture (differences in how men and women are raised) fuel this need for perfection. As a couple, identifying and agreeing on the “critical few” things that must get done and then resetting expectations to mastering only those handful of items, will help women resist the urge to be “perfect”. It also helps wives to become more productive with less effort, thus increasing effectiveness and personal satisfaction (which usually translates to more satisfaction as a couple).
3. Agree on the division of tasks. It is critical that married couples’ share their expectations around the delegation of home responsibilities, such as child rearing and household tasks. Research demonstrates that the division of household labor is associated with couples’ relationship quality. Breadwinning wives need to feel supported at home by their husbands. Communicating honestly and gaining mutual agreement on tasks goes a long way towards avoiding relationship strain. A suggestion is for wives to delegate agreed upon chores/tasks at the start of the week to their husbands with time frames for completion. The key here is to also agree that micro-managing or nagging is “off base”, unless of course, the task is failed to be completed. Wives need to “let go” and provide the freedom to husbands to do it “their way”. They also need to be sure to show genuine appreciation for the given support.
Probably the hardest thing about being a non-traditional earning couple is the pressure that exists regarding social norms. It is easy to fall prey to the societal influence of “others’ expectations”. This makes it even more important to incorporate deliberate strategies such as those above to solidify relationship success.
