This past weekend, I talked to a lot of girlfriends from college who once supported themselves and had careers helping to make the world a better place (i.e. studying decreasing frog populations & educating the public on water conservation). As soon as they had their first child, they put their careers on hold. I have done the same thing. They are now stay-at-home moms who have chosen traditional gender roles, such as raising their children and taking care of the domestic chores (I would like to say this is all our "choice," but there are societal factors, such as the cost and quality of day care available). At the wedding, the moms were running after the children and most of the dads were sitting in lawn chairs at the top of the hill. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with this or we would want it any other way, but I have to wonder what will be the long-term costs of giving up our careers in our thirties to raise our children and to make sure our homes run smoothly? I can already foresee lower salaries and delaying retirement.
This article discusses marital satisfaction for a small sample of 24 women aged 52-90. Through in-depth interviews the women discuss how their often troubled first marriages compare with their second marriages which took place after age 50. Some of the women were divorced from their first husband and some were widowed.
So what contributed to a happy first and/or second marriage?
- The women who were able to contribute to the marriage socially, materially and their labor was appreciated by their spouses.
- The women who felt the household chores were divided more equitably and there was a balanced power distribution.
I had a very difficult time understanding why the author felt these two marriages were comparable at all. The women's first marriages were so different from their second simply because of the stress of caring for children (I wish the author had discussed how many children the women cared for). As Clarke (2005) states, "The absence of child-rearing responsibilities in later life may have fostered the appearance of greater equality between the spouses in the later life marriage as compared with first marriages as there were fewer domestic and child-related tasks to fulfill" (p. 39). Since most of the women during their first marriage were probably caring for children, this automatically increased their financial dependence on their spouses and responsibility for the household chores, especially given the historical time.
Being a stay-at-home mom can really be a thankless job and can really mess with your self-esteem, which I feel made some of these womens' first marriages more "unhappy." When they remarried in their 50's they were back in the work place supporting themselves and were not as dependent on their second spouse for support. They weren't socially isolated at home, sleep deprived, covered in spit-up and doing laundry with a screaming infant and toddler like they may have been during their first marriage. They felt more equal to their second spouse and felt more comfortable demanding more equitable distribution of household chores.
The paper uses the concepts of "marriage culture" and "divorce culture." Clarke states that since the 1970's we have entered into a divorce culture, where divorce is a more socially acceptable option. I'm glad that society does not judge divorcee's as harshly as in the past. However, I hope my marriage and those of my friends can endure these tough years when we are raising our children. We may not be the once professionally successful, money, and pension earning women we once were. I hope our husbands don't forget that once we didn't need them to financially support ourselves and and once we were doing more worldly things than changing dirty diapers. Our time will come again, but until then I am grateful that we have the choice to be able to stay home and raise our little ones.
Hurd Clarke, L. (2005). Remarriage in later life: older women's negotiation of power, resources, and domestic labor. Journal of Women and Aging, 17(4), 21-41.
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