Politics Forbes to Men: “Whatever You Do, Don’t Marry A Career Woman.”
UPDATE Forbes has taken the article down. However, here’s a link to the complete text, via BoingBoing. Also, here’s the discussion board on Forbes about the story. Damn, I love the Internet.
Or, How To Marry A Doormat in Nine Easy Steps!
Yes, the article itself (actual headline: “Don’t Marry Career Women”) is a scream. (Best unintentionally hilarious line: “The more successful she is, the more likely she is to grow dissatisfied with you.”) But if you want to get to the really scarily retrograde heart of the story, by all means skip straight to the slideshow of reasons to avoid “career girls,” which is, yes, how Forbes refers to working women.
1. You’re less likely to get married to her.
Among white women, anyway,
(1) success in the labor market makes it harder for women to make a marital match, (2) women with relatively high wages and earnings search less intensively for a match, [and] (3) successful women have higher standards for an acceptable match than women who work less and earn less.”
In other words, get `em while they’re unsuccessful and desperate, because anyone with “higher standards” wouldn’t give you the time of day.
2. If you do marry, you’re more likely to get divorced.
For this, Forbes digs up a two-year-old study, which found that
Women’s work hours consistently increase divorce, whereas increases in men’s work hours often have no statistical effect.
Nice correlation/ causation flip. Women’s work hours “increase divorce”? More likely, women with their own incomes are more able to leave bad marriages than those who are financially dependent on their husbands. And even that study, Forbes grudgingly admits, was contradicted by numerous other studies that found that “working outside the home actually increases marital stability, at least when the marriage is a happy one. But even in these studies, wives’ employment does correlate positively to divorce rates, when the marriage is of “low marital quality.”
In other words, bad marriages (those of “low marital quality”) correlate to divorce. Which should be no surprise to anyone.
3. She is more likely to cheat on you.
According to a wide-ranging review of the published literature, highly educated people are more likely to have had extra-marital sex… “The work environment provides a host of potential partners, and individuals frequently find themselves spending a great deal of time with these individuals.”
That’s right: Women who work outside the home might be exposed to people they like more than you. Keep them inside, poorly educated and financially dependent, and they’ll never be tempted by any other “potential partners.” Note that employed women and men are more likely to cheat; but Forbes apparently doesn’t regard men’s cheating as a problem.
Here, by the way, is Forbes’s depiction the “cheating wife.” Note the diamond-festooned finger and the vacuous stare. “If only I hadn’t taken this well-paying job, I would have never found myself spending a great deal of time with this individual!”
4. You are much less likely to have kids.
The problem [of childlessness]—and it is a problem because the vast majority of women desire children—is much more extreme for career women. According to Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist and the author of Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children, only 51% of ultra-achieving women (those earning more than $100,000 a year) have had children by age 40. Among comparable men, the figure was 81%. A third of less successful working women (earning either $55,000 or $65,000) were also childless at age 40.
Yes, but so were a quarter of all “less successful” working menhardly the vast baby gap Forbes’s panicky slide show implies. Isn’t the problem here supposed to be men’s inabiltiy to have children? Because according to those statistics, they’re doing just fine. And isn’t the answer here more equality and support, not financial dependence on men?
5. If you do have kids, your wife is more likely to be unhappy.
A 2003 study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family concluded that wealthier couples with children suffer a drop in marital satisfaction three times as great as their less affluent peers. One of the study’s co-authors publicly speculated that the reason is that wealthier women are used to “a professional life, a fun, active, entertaining life.”
And that’s a bad thing?
6. Your house will be dirtier.
If your wife has a job earning more than $15 an hour (roughly $30,000 a year), she will do 1.9 hours less housework a week. Of course, this can be solved if the husband picks up a broom.
Ha. That’s a good one.
7. You’ll be unhappy if she makes more than you.
It’s obviously true! Just look how sad he is!
You aren’t going to like it if she makes more than you do: “Married men’s well-being is significantly lower when married women’s proportional contributions to the total family income are increased.”
So by all means, cling to your idiotic insecurities and forgo the financial security of a second income. You may be in debt for the rest of your life, but at least keeping her in her place will give you something to feel good about!
8. She will be unhappy if she makes more than you
Reason? “Husbands who are successful breadwinners probably give their wives the opportunity to make more choices about work and family—e.g., working part-time, staying home, or pursuing a meaningful but not particularly remunerative job.”
Sure, sounds logicalwe’d all love to have the opportunity to work a meaningful job without worrying about whether we can pay the bills. But wouldn’t that also apply to men, contradicting Point No. 7? Hmm.
And finally,
9. You are more likely to fall ill.
That’s right, having a wife who works more than 40 hours a week
has “substantial, statistically significant, negative effects on changes in her husband’s health over that time span.” The author of another study summarizes that “wives working longer hours not do not have adequate time to monitor their husband’s health and healthy behavior, to manage their husband’s emotional well-being or buffer his workplace stress.”
Because as everyone knows (and as Point No. 6 makes clear) men are helpless, emotionally crippled, delicate creatures who have never been taught how to “monitor” their own health, manage stress, and take care of themselves. That, like raising the kids, cleaning the house, and maintaining men’s delicate self-esteem, is women’s work.
i can't believe this was published in forbes.