Read this WSJ.com article right now.
The WSJ reports on a soon-to-be-published study, which states that women with MBAs are twice as likely to get divorced or separated as their male counterparts. The odds for a successful marriage aren’t much better for women with other graduate degrees, either.
Check out these findings, yo. Do they make sense to you?
- Women with MBAs described themselves as divorced or separated more often than women with only bachelor’s degrees (12% of female MBAs compared with 11% of women with only bachelor’s degrees) and more than twice as often as men with MBAs (5% of whom reported being divorced or separated)
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Women with law or medical degrees divorce less often than those with only bachelor’s degrees, but are still more likely to divorce or separate than their male counterparts (10% of women with law degrees and 9% of women with medical degrees, compared with 7% of male lawyers and 5.1% of male doctors).
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The study also found that female professionals (*implying high wage earners*) abstain from marriage at double and sometimes nearly triple the rate of men.
I’ve read this article several times, and the data seems elusive, sketchy, and contradictory. I would be interested in reading the study itself, but at this point, I’m totally uncomfortable with the social implications made from the data. The author of the study implies that successful women struggle to provide the TLC and support that high-earning men need — and only uneducated and less-successful women who are focused on raising kids (& not on their careers) can provide.
Christ.
Really, I just want to pee on myself when I read the wrap-up advice from the professor who conducted the research.
- “Well-educated, highly compensated women should be targeting particularly loving and supportive men.”
The rest of us? Apparently, we can suck it.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Actually, the way I read it, “particularly loving and supportive men” seems like a euphamism for telling career women to find the male equivalent of “uneducated and less-successful women who are focused on raising kids (& not on their careers)”. In other words, a career guy shouldn’t marry a career woman if they want a lasting relationship?
I… Still don’t really know the deeper meaning though, or why anybody would plan their relationships around a WSJ article anyway!
I think the answer to this is pretty simple. Women who are high wage earners and highly educated don’t have to settle for a man. There is less financial interdependence in the relationship so she might be less likely to stay when she discovers her husband is really a piece of shit.
I am sure the statistics reflect that high wage earning men probably have a higher rate of divorce, than their non-high wage earning counterparts as well.
Unfortunately, money is often the tie that binds us. This is probably a glib outlook, but true nonetheless.
My advice to Prof. Wilson is to get a job in the real world instead of staying in school for 40 years and rotting your brain. She probably got her “data” from her “divorced women’s group” like Laurel had in Jerry Maguire.
I agree with HR wench. And I would like to see some more valuable research … such as the likelihood that married high wage earning men will dabble with prostitution rings.
@Neil — I didn’t see it that way, but you’re right. I’m a successful woman who made a decent salary. I’m going to divorce my successful husband and find a loser.
@Bryan — Not glib & totally true. Women who divorce before 35 are 50% more likely to plunge into poverty. Money is important for all the wrong reasons. (PS — My advice? Stay married until you’re 36 and then divorce the asshole.)
@Wenchie — I love Bonnie Hunt, and I think Jerry Maguire is the highlight of Ms. Zellweger’s career. That movie breaks my heart.
@Cols — I think there’s a 45% higher rate of married high-wage-earning men dabbling with prostitutes in New York City.
Money = power. More money is more power, and women with power are scary. I want to be scary. My husband wants me to have power so I can buy him more computers, and his idea of being coddled is when I offer to re-heat some leftover pizza for him so he can continue to nestle with his laptop and a cat.
Clearly there’s a money-making idea here – run a matchmaking service pairing up female executives with male computer geeks.
@Perrik — Clearly, you’ve put some thought into your second career after you get fed up with Human Resources.
I agree with everyone’s statements so far, and there’s no straight answer. Although I do believe both sexes will do anything they can get away with or feel they deserve.
At the end of the day, we are all products of a personal understanding. A need to believe that we make the right decisions to facilitate every single private belief system our brain allows us to accept.
Basically what I’m try to get across is most men have a tendency to be unmistakably simple like a little boy stuck on a playground, overly emotional and needy or man of the household syndrome. And women often use their physical appearance to accomplish their means and others lie to themselves to make decision easier, either why they are treated so poorly and its okay or the exact opposite and why they
@Chad — I’m not sure if this is a gender issue, a biological issue, or just a crappy academic study.
Another example of a wasted education trying to justify the money her “daddy” probably spent. Junk, not worth the words.
@HR Jeff — I might agree that it’s junk, but not fo’ the same reasons.
This appears to be a case where men have to decide whether they want a woman who wants to do what her mother did, or a woman who wants to do what her father did.
Frankly – I don’t think I would do well in a marriage where my wife said that she wanted me to act a little more like her mom, so she could be “more like her dad” career and mission wise. Women taking the authors advice and seeking a sufficiently “under achieving” man to fill the traditional wife’s supporting role to her huge career doesn’t seem to be anything more fair than a role reversal.
Best bet – acknowledge that men and women are equal but not interchangeable. So in the end, men acting like women, or women acting like men fail at a higher rate than those operating in their traditional roles.
Since divorce is so frequent (50%) and so financially painful – I would rather bet my future [and that of my kids] on the model MOST proven successful. Dad at work – Mom at home, at least till after the kids get in school. This precludes the huge career for mom obviously. If she chose career first over kids, then my future kids would be better served with a mom who chose them as a FIRST choice.
For women too selfish to have kids in their 20s and too selfish to be alone in their 30’s – I can’t see what any man would miss out on by NOT being married to them.
Women
I recommend that women go after that good career. Every seven to ten years, a man will trade you in on a newer model. Just like mine did. It is better to have a good career when he does than be left broke. Actually, prison is a better deal than marriage. At least you have a roof over your head and 3 sqaures.