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Comment by koolba | Hacker News Reader

> The big factor, Harvard sociology professor Alexandra Killewald found, is the husband's employment status. For the past four decades, she discovered, husbands who aren’t employed full time have a 3.3 percent chance of getting divorced in any given year, compared with 2.5 percent for husbands employed full time. In other words, their marriages are one-third more likely to break up.

Interesting. I'd be curious to see how the hours spent at work impact that number.

Specifically, do longer hours away at the office lead to a more stable marriage? Will having a second (or third!) job increase my chances of maintaining a nuclear family?

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I imagine there are a lot factors.

Time spent together skyrocketing, financial instability causing stress, and the fact that a lot of men tie their identity to their employment so strongly.

Becoming unemployed is immensely turbulent in pretty much every way.

>and the fact that a lot of men tie their identity to their employment so strongly.

That's a really interesting point, especially in light of the study pointing out that it's moreso job status that's a risk factor than money problems.

One would normally think the two would go hand-in-hand in terms of a divorce autopsy. But as you (and the study) point out, there's very much distinct.

> a lot of men tie their identity to their employment so strongly

I wonder if the other side of the coin isn't that wives tend to respect their husbands less when these earn less than they do. It could be because it violates a social norm caused by society's gender role expectations.

Research found that even employed men who earn a bit less than their wives are affected by higher divorce rate.

So we can cast these men as insecure and emasculated, or it could be a mix of both men and women's reaction to the situation, along with many other variables that you've hinted at.

> it violates a social norm

This story hit me pretty hard. While I was in medical school, my wife's family, especially her mother, routinely encouraged her to divorce me.

We had two small kids, and I had gone on job interviews and seen the offers I was getting without a graduate degree, despite a BS in physics and 7 years of experience. It was obvious to everyone that medical school was the right course of action in the long term but it would be hard.

I didn't realize it would get harder when her family started jumping on any opportunity to point out my "temporary financial embarrassment". On a day-to-day basis, she was working 40 hours a week and while med school was paid for, and I had a small stipend, her paycheck was better. And cognitively, she understood that. But her brothers and mother, and eventually her father told her to "get rid of him".

We stuck it out. They wonder why we don't fly across country to visit them much...

Interesting. Clearly there were hardships involved and getting an MD is a non-trivial financial and time commitment. However, at least in popular culture, an MD is a highly respected career path and often the joked about target for 'gold diggers'. Sure, it isn't marry a student, but it is a pretty well regarded track socially, financially and educationally.

Impressed that you and your wife stuck together! Bet your kids will be too.

My father used to quote someone that "the best a man can do for his kids are to love their mother."

And: I feel sorry that this can actually happen to people.

Thank you for that reply!

Wow, it must have been such a pain going through all that! Good job handling the pressure, hope it only gets better from then on.

> and the fact that a lot of men tie their identity to their employment so strongly

At least this part is nothing new. Men have always (up until now and I'd argue that this is still true today) tied their identity, masculinity and even self-worth as a human being to their profession as society expected men contribute the necessary resources to their families in order to support wife & children.

If a man couldn't provide the resources anymore he usually lost his value and function to his family and society.

Will your kids still love you even though you can't provide for them? Will they look down on you because they're starving and you are not competent enough to feed them?

When they look around, they see other dads being able to feed their own kids, and they ask themselves, "Why is it that my dad can not feed them?" Will your kids look down on you because of this?

Is the patriarchy forcing men to tie their identity to their ability to provide for their own kids?

Or do men understands naturally that if they can't provide for their kids, then they must be pretty incompetent, and then they feels bad about it, naturally, because they love their kids. And then their kids look down on them, because "all the other dads can feed their children, when can't my dad feed me?"

I was wondering why men tie their identity to employment so much. Is it because society expects them to be providers, and ridicules men who don't ?

I'd assume so. As much as HN likes to ridicule the notion of "the patriarchy," this is a component of it that's awfully harmful to men.

Yes absolutely. Sexism harms everyone.

There is a vast difference between ridiculing something and not accepting it on faith solely because very passionate people make assertions about it.

Sure, but that's my point. I think a lot of men on here have probably felt this effect. If it's not from "the patriarchy," or something similar by a different name, then what is it from?

You don't have to think that, say, women's fashion changes faster than men's fashion because "the patriarchy!", but it takes some serious aloofness not to see that male dominance in society trickles down to some very strange places indeed. As an example: that a man's employment status is the largest factor in his marital success.

I think plenty of people agree that Traditional Gender Roles cause problems for men and women who don't conform to them. But not everyone agrees that Traditional Genders Roles should be called "the patriarchy", because that has connotations that men (even the men being hurt by Traditional Gender Roles) are in control, which feels like blaming the victim.

>...that a man's employment status is the largest factor in his marital success.

Well, if he can't provide for his kids, then what's the point of staying married to him? For love? Love can't feed your starving kids. Might as well go remarry some other dude who are competent enough to provide for your kids. Unless of course, you want to take the easy route and rely on government food stamps. Or, be those like stressed out single mom who has to do everything by herself, single handily doing BOTH the jobs of a man and a woman.

This idea really has nothing to do with the concept of patriarchy. It would only be one idea out of many that patriarchy represents.

HN ridicules the notion of patriarchy because the word itself implies it's somehow men's fault. Which it isn't. Social toles are enforced by most of the society, so we might as well call it "matriarchy", but that would piss feminists off, so we don't.

It implies no such thing. "patriarchy" is a descriptive term in social science and it has nothing to do with fault or blame. We don't choose the society we're born into and obviously we're not responsible for those things that are out of our control. We should of course be held accountable for the choices we make, especially when those choices hurt others.

It's also a wrong term. "Patriarchy" means a system where women are owned by men (husbands, fathers, brothers), cannot own property, etc. The only reason why feminists chose this term to describe the current social order (which is clearly not a patriarchy in the literal sense) is to elicit negative emotions.

Uh, no it doesn't.

Patriarchal societies are ones where elder males are the heads of households (generally true) and descent (such as surnames) are passed through the males (generally true).

There are matriarchal societies – including many Native American ones. Those are called matriarchal societies. They're notably different from what we have. I think they're less common today than they ever have been, but patriarchal societies are also "less patriarchal," i.e. males don't own females, as you stated.

Feminists, and everyone with an education, use that term because we do live in a patriarchal society.

Edit: In response to your comment below, you're literally in the comment section of an article discussing the repercussions of men "failing" in their expected social role of head of household.

So... your argument that we do live in a patriarchal society is (1) we get surnames after dads (I mean, really, who cares), and (2) the unsubstantiated assertion that men are the "head" of the household (what does that even mean? that they spend less time with kids? that they earn more money so the wife can spen more? that they're less likely to keep the kids in event of divorce?)? Oh, well, now you've convinced me, of course it's a patriarchy!

What society is the Sikh?

Women are surnamed Kaur (princess) and the men are surnamed Singh (lion).

Patriarchal and matriarchal?

Language evolves so words take on new meanings all the time. It's tedious to invent new words for everything, so you have to use context to figure out which definition is being used. This is completely standard, so I don't see why this is suddenly a problem when it comes to feminist terminology.

Today's society is one where men make most of the laws, own most of the property, earn most of the money, commit the most violence, set the behavioral norms and so on. Everything of importance is controlled by men, white men in particular. Using the word patriarchy to refer a society like that makes perfect sense to me.

Most of those points are moot. Women are > 50% of the population, so they could choose different lawmakers. Men work more, so it seems fair that they earn more money. More violence is caused by biology so we can't really help that (consequently, men also receive the majority of punishment), but statistics say that (1) men are also more often victims of violence, and (2) e.g. in relationships, violence is equally likely, but women get hurt more (which is kind of obvious, as men are stronger). I don't agree that men set most behavioral norms - if anything, I'd say that a lot of media is influenced by women and catered to women's desires. Your remark about whites is unnecessarily racist, whites are the original setlers of "the West" and still the majority of the population (but e.g. in Asia, most positions of power are held by ... drum roll please ... Asians!).

The only valid point is ownership of property, and I agree with it - although I don't want it to be more fairly distributed across sex, but rather across the whole population (the fact that owners are the 1% gives them much more power than the fact that they're white).

> The only valid point is ownership of property

Except it's not true: http://www.businessinsider.com/women-now-control-more-than-h...

They control most of the wealth according to that non-academic report (the report is an advertisement for wealth management services), and I couldn't find an academic study that came up with a similar number. I should also note that the report doesn't say US women possess 51% of the wealth, they just "control" it, whatever that means.

Women do not accumulate wealth at an equal rate to men, one reason is that their salary is much lower (wage gap). A second reason is that most single parents are women and that pushes the wealth distribution for women further down.

In terms of ownership it's closer to 36%.

http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/shortchanged-women-and-...

It's especially bad for unmarried women who have about half the wealth of unmarried men. When you take race/ethnicity into account the gap is even wider.

http://globalpolicysolutions.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/...

The "wage gap" has been debunked many times over. Can we please put an end to using it in arguments? Here's one of many examples: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/whats-the-real-gende...

On the topic of ownership of property, yes, the guy owns the property. That is, until she divorce him, then she owns half his properties. LOL.

In other word, she already owned half his property, he just didn't realized it until she divorced him. Hahaha.

I don't think there's that implication at all. I think what's happening is that this component of patriarchy isn't really a rallying point for many people. That is, there are a lot of people who are vocally upset about other components of patriarchy in which men actually are the primary antagonists, e.g. rape culture. That does not, however, imply that man are the antagonists, nor that women are the victims of every component of patriarchy.

I think more people should be pissed off about this component, too. A man shouldn't feel obligated to be masculine, nor a provider, nor a protector, nor anything he doesn't want to be. Truthfully, more of HN should empathize with this as well. I would be surprised if a very large portion of us didn't grow up being called a variety of epithets for being less athletic, more booky, less masculine and therefore less valuable than the general population.

Ironically enough, it's exactly this component of patriarchy that leads to the aggressive anti-feminist views seen all over this board.

You can call it matriarchy if you want, I don't really care, except that a) no one will know what you're talking about and b) we don't live in a matriarchal society so it doesn't make sense.

What's happening is that, as you point out, people who claim to be fighting the patriarchy are not in fact interested in fighting against problems where men are the ones being hurt rather than the antagonists. However, they lump both categories together under one "patriarchy" label as a way of demanding that they be treated as though they were tackling both, arguing that because men's problems are caused by the patriarchy and they're attacking it, they're the ones really trying to solve those problems.

In fact, I've seen them go even further and accuse people who make a fuss those problems of being the ones who don't actually care about them, because if they really cared they'd recognise that feminism was the movement that was actually trying to solve those problems and copy its approach of refusing to do anything about them. That, in fact, this proves that said activists are misogynists who are just out to attack feminism.

That's fair. I've never felt that I was being blamed for anything and every feminist I know (including myself) explicitly includes these types of issues in their scope of problems.

Obviously it seems Tumblr-inas get awfully large soapboxes to stand upon, but my personal experience indicates they are outliers.

>A man shouldn't feel obligated to be masculine, nor a provider, nor a protector, nor anything he doesn't want to be.

Well, if a man doesn't want to provide for his kids, then who should provide for his kids? Should a man force his wife to provide for his kids while he sits around doing nothing? Or should a man force the government to provide for his kids?

Other options include (1) not having kids, and (2) finding a partner (possibly a woman) who's willing to provide.

>Is it because society expects them to be providers, and ridicules men who don't ?

No. It's because his starving kids expect their father to bring home the food. Because how else are his kids suppose to get food?

Well, there's been at least one study purporting to show that longer commute times correlate with a higher chance of relationship breakdown, so that would tend to push the other way.

http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/1/2/longer-c...

My interest lies in why is the baseline so high in the first place?

2.5%/y sounds like an unacceptable risk , considering how devastating divorce is for men by design (in the USA, at least)

An unacceptable risk, compared to what? Never marrying?

Living comes with a 100% chance of dying.

Yes, compared to never marrying, maybe paying child support but not alimony, or compared to getting sterilized.

I don't think that 2.5% is evenly distributed (as in, every year each couple pulls a ball from a lotto machine with 39 green and 1 red ball in it).

I know my own chance isn't 0%, but I'm confident that it's lower than average. I choose to be married to my wife and to raise our kids in that framework. It's not easy every day, but it's absolutely an acceptable risk, IMO.

i heard there's a lot of truth in the '7 year itch' milestone, but I havent seen the #s

Yes but there's no alternative to living, so it's not a factor to consider.

That the average for all marriages, but certain groups account for a disproportionate amount of divorces. The rate is a lot lower if you take out groups like that: under 20 when married, shotgun weddings, the already divorced, poorly educated, etc. IIRC, latinos who marry under the age 18 have an 80% 5-year divorce rate.

I'd heard people say a 20% lifetime chance of divorce if you are a middle class, educated, non-divorcee, and over 25. But I can't vouch.

I've seen similar numbers. I'd be curious to see how becoming an entrepreneur affects this. Practically every entrepreneur I know over the age of 40 has divorced.

Entrepeneurship killed a significant relationship of mine. It was entirely about money, she felt that I should continue to pursue my former profession, which provided meager, but stable income.

I was thinking about her and my future, which would require more than meager, stable income could provide.

Society hates entrepreneurship and that is why it is not a popular track: you need really thick skin to pursue it.

It's not about the money or lack of but the risk vs reward. Most males are risk takers where as most females are risk adverse(the why is many fold and not just limited to humans or even mammals).

My wife would hate it if I wanted to start a company, if she couldn't see a solid plan. If she could see the opportunity but more importantly the roadmap she would be on board.

But it's not just the uneducated that have high divorce rates. When I worked on Wall Street people there referred to their first wife as "my first wife" ... when they were still married to her! The expectation that everyone at the firm would eventually burn through 2 or 3 spouses was bizarre to me.

It doesn't seem that bizarre. If I called my current wife my first wife I doubt I'd still be on wife one.

Well, wait, you have to measure that against not marrying in the first place, which I presume also comes with pros and cons. The question is whether ExpectedValue(staying single) > ExpectedValue(Getting married given the risk with risk of divorce).

I assume the answer is different for different people.

Good question, but I'm not sure why you included the gender distinction. Do you think divorce is less devastating for women, or that risk of divorce is more of a factor for men?

I think they mean how resources are split after a divorce, where courts are viewed as being more favourable to women.

For example I think women are more likely to keep children, whereas the men will pay alimony to support them. If there are no kids the resource split might be more equitable.

[edit] Also see further down: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12184148

Courts are more favorable to women in some ways, but the economic consequences are generally worse for women. "Worse" and "better" all depends on what endpoint you're looking at, just like all those studies on cholesterol (do you want to lower cholesterol or not die from heart problems?) -- do you want the alimony now or the overall financial health?

According to the 2010 Census only 3% of Americans receiving spousal benefits were men. This is after splitting the estate "equitably".

So I really don't understand what you mean by economic consequences are generally worse for women? 97% of the time it's the man's wages being garnished.

You are simplifying to wage garnishing. Probably the parent comment is intimating things like loss of socioeconomic position due to the divorce. If marriages are financially unequal in many cases, fundamentally, then divorce shows that too. But the consequences are like, how well you fare after versus before... the schoolteacher and the banker divorce, and which can maintain the social connections?

During a marriage, spouses share equally the family income even if one spouse is actually earning more than the other. At the time of separation, the estate is valued and then split equally.

From that point forward these two people have chosen to part ways. They no longer rely on each other or are bound to each other. They are two individuals existing independently in the world.

But a man is expected to pay the woman every week, until one or the other dies, or the woman remarries.

So an independent single divorced woman, her ex is now a paycheck. Almost never the other way around.

It's not a question of, were they better off married, because the marriage is over. Now as singles, what is the consequence of having been married?

The economic consequence of getting married and then divorced for a woman is a weekly payment. The economic consequence for a man getting married and then divorced is a large percentage of income after taxes is confiscated from him.

Not even necessarily a percentage of actual income either - it can be a percentage of the income the courts think the ex-husband should be earning, because there's this idea that men who are unemployed or underemployed, or even just self-employed and not doing as well as before, are doing it to screw their ex-wife out of the money they should be earning for her. (Little details like the entire industry they were employed in going away, or them being in their 50s and in a line of work with massive ageism, matter less than they perhaps ought. Especially since he probably can't afford a good lawyer.)

Reading news articles of judges telling 67 year old men to "just get a job" was pretty eye opening. [1]

MA passed an alimony reform act specifying that alimony should cease at full retirement age. The courts reinterpreted it to only apply prospectively to agreements after the law was enacted, when the clear meaning was that it should apply to all alimony. [2] These are the economic consequences.

[1] - https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/style/2013/10/19/new-s... [2] - https://www.divorcelawmonitor.com/2015/02/articles/alimony-a...

Here's another way to think of it...The economics of a marriage are just this: two people promising to be equals.

The man and woman give to each other everything they have; economic, socioeconomic, mind, body, and soul. There is perfect economy in this Union.

After such a union is dissolved, from one perspective both have lost half of everything. Both are a fraction of what they once were. The loss is staggering -- decimated five times over. But from another perspective, two souls are parting ways. They unwind their affairs and equitably share them. And walk away.

Except not for the man, for he is still bound by law to support the woman with weekly payments till he or she shall die, or she shall find another to wed.

Is this "chivalry" not deeply insulting to feminists?

It's not chivalry. The concept of alimony is a recognition that house keeping and child rearing is work too, even if not a job, that the stay-at-home spouse performs for the benefit of both parties. It's essentially unemployment benefits owed by the marriage as an association.

Now, implementations vary, it's often hard to know facts about the life of the marriage and there are certainly many biases affecting judgment, but the core idea is definitively feminist: fixing an injustice that overwhelmingly affects women in a gender-equitable way (both men and women should get alimony if they fulfill the conditions).

Are you saying a partner should be reimbursed after the fact for doing that job versus something in the workplace? Also I think the argument for diminished wages is overblown. If one partner chooses to stay at home, if that was their choice, then I don't get it. We all make choices which impact our future job prospects. Unless it's something that one spouse did to the other, why should one spouse pay reparations to the other?

Calling it something like unemployment benefits is a cute line, but a busted analogy. The child rearing did not produce income, but it does cost money. It's an expense which should be shared equally until the children are over 18 absolutely, and the number of hours spent caring for the children should be equally and highly valued. Child support is a different matter entirely. I think alimony by definition is not child support?

Now once the kids are grown a bit, perhaps your skills are now somewhat obsolete. Once the kids are in school full time, 5-6 years old, how many at that point are actually staying at home?

Even if a person is just starting a career, how many years into it does it take to get established? 2-3 years you can get started in almost any industry. Don't tell me the stay-at-home partner just really wanted to be a Doctor and they should be funded to go to that now. So I can absolutely see paying for 2-3 years if the income is there, and it's needed for the ex to get started in their new life.

The best thing for these laws will be gay marriage. When it's two same-sex partners being judged, how the decision making might be surprisingly rational!

> It's essentially unemployment benefits owed by the marriage as an association.

1) You don't get unemployment benefits for life. There is usually a limit. It is a free ride.

2) Women today expect men to share work at home equally. Not every couple does that but many do and most women do return to their jobs a few years after child birth. So what exactly should the women be reimbursed for?

Like I said, implementations vary and I don't mean to defend them all, just the core idea. And I'm not even necessarily a supporter of alimony at all; a system where such spouses got actual unemployment and other state benefits instead is probably preferable.

I could see how the state paying may seem preferable at first glance but as a tax payer I absolutely do not want to be paying to support people post-divorce.

We must change the legal framework so that women cannot effectively marry the state anymore. They are responsible for their own life choices just as any other person so I don't see why they should get a free ride.

It would be interesting to know what percentage of that 97% had child custody. The economic consequences of dependant children are enormous - apart from the cost of feeding, housing, clothing and caring for them, it significantly reduces your employment options.

It depends on the legal framework of the country you live in, but generally in the West I'd answer the question with no, at least from a financial perspective.

For example in the EU country I live in I'd have to pay 40% of my net income to my ex-wife even if there are no children and there was no fault (from a legal perspective) on my side for the divorce.

Considering that 40% of my net income is much more than even 100% of the average males income the risks of marriage by far outweigh the benefits for many men in my financial situation.

I realise of course that many women end up having to deal with financial issues after divorce because not every women can attract a husband with a high income and also women on average, regardless of education, devote less time to their careers compared to men (many choose to work part time to optimise for more time with children) which impacts their own income.

But the fact still remains that within the current legal framework a wife can decide at will to turn her husband into a revenue stream for life, doesn't matter how the conduct of both parties was.

She gets the real estate they've been living in, even if her husband owned it before marriage, she gets the children and in many Western countries she can even prevent her husband from seeing his children without having to face any penalties.

Does that kind of contract sound fair to you?

Based only on intuition, my guess is no. It seems more likely that husbands not working full time are more likely to have financial instability, which would be a cause of stress on the relationship.

From the second paragraph: "A Harvard University study suggests that neither financial strains [...] is typically the main reason for a split."

The headline of the story itself literally reads "Don’t Blame Divorce on Money."

This is a tricky one. Once again it could just be correlation, and "people who can't hold down a job" are more likely to get divorced, not necessarily "some person who gets fired" is more likely to get divorced, non causal as it were...

Presumably, the full-time job's contribution to financial security is the driver of this indicator, rather than its contribution to lack of facetime between spouses. But as these are confounding variables -- they correlate inversely -- it makes testing it difficult.

> Interesting. I'd be curious to see how the hours spent at work impact that number.

I'de more interested in comparing these percent changes with the sample's margin of error.

Extrapolating conclusions based on a deviation of 0.8% sounds an awful lot like grasping at straws.

How does the math go when you compound those rates over 30years?

3.3 percent is still very, very small. That's encouraging.

Statistically, especially for a study of this sort, a difference of 0.8% is not that significant.

>Specifically, do longer hours away at the office lead to a more stable marriage? Will having a second (or third!) job increase my chances of maintaining a nuclear family?

Well, obviously, if you work 24/7, you'll have the perfect marriage. LOL.

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