Contented Housewives

Getting a fair bit of play in the media just now is this study by sociologists at the University of Virginia, "What's Love Got to do With it? Equality, Equity, Commitment and Women's Marital Quality." National Review Online has an interview by Kathryn Jean Lopez with W. Bradford Wilcox, one of the study's authors. Among the conclusions reached is this shocker: Women in strong, committed marriages who have the emotional support of their husbands are happier than women who do not!!! Here's another: You can't have it all!!!

Lopez: Could the subtitle of your study be "Betty Friedan was wrong?"
Wilcox: Not quite. I think that Friedan was right to point out that a lot of married women at home — especially well-educated women — experience very real frustrations. Being at home with small children is challenging for anyone, especially someone who has enjoyed a rich and rewarding career outside the home. But I don't think Friedan really understood how difficult it would be for women to combine childrearing, a full-time career, and a marriage. There are only so many hours in the day. One of the things that our study shows is that working wives spend less quality time with their husbands, probably because they are juggling so many balls in the air.
Lopez: What do your findings mean for women? She's gonna be unhappy if you work outside the home, period?
Wilcox: One thing that has gotten lost in media coverage about whether or not the wife works outside the home is that marital commitment matters more for her happiness than does her labor-force status. So even feminist-minded wives who work outside the home can be very happy in their marriages if they share a strong commitment to the "till death do us part" model of marriage with their husbands. Our study also suggests that the marital happiness gap between working wives and stay-at-home wives may be strongest for married women with children at home. So it may not be true that working wives in every stage of the life course are less happy than stay-at-home wives.

Here's the whole thing.