
Careers and Marriage - swombat
http://www.forbes.com/2006/08/23/Marriage-Careers-Divorce_cx_mn_land.html
======
jacquesm
If you're worried about your spouses career 'coming between you' then I think
you have other issues.

To single out 'career women' as the ones to avoid is simply stupid, some of
the best marriages I've seen are the ones between two career people.

If your spouse leaves you for someone else they met 'on the job' that's only
because your relationship has been found wanting, if you think tying someone
to the couch is going to make them stay you're simply wrong.

Statistically the chance of them staying may be larger, but that's a shitty
way of saying 'if there is no competition I can win'. Better get your act
together then.

And beware of that neighbor...

Women have been on the receiving end of their men 'trading up' for years, the
equality game has its downsides, but this isn't one of them. Keep in shape,
keep your woman happy and I doubt you've got much to worry about, career or
not.

If you're a slob, that's a different thing of course.

~~~
crk
I would think tying your spouse to the couch would be more likely to result in
divorce/open hostility. If your spouse wanted to be at home with the kids, you
wouldn't need to tie them to the couch.

Being a stay at home mom is one of the most miserable jobs if you're not cut
out for it. People understand a bad day at the office, but they seem to think
staying at home with a kid means it's like a vacation day all the time. You
can't vent to anyone without them reminding you that you should be grateful to
your husband.

My husband doesn't see a problem with it, so couples counseling is off the
table. Honestly, he doesn't have to worry about another guy - I don't want
someone who is going to make more demands on time I just don't have. But If I
were him, I'd start worrying that being alone seems like it would be less
stressful than staying with him.

~~~
scott_s
In all sincerity, I think you need to have a serious talk with your husband.
You just joined this community, and you're telling strangers that you're
considering divorce. I see that as a sign of real unhappiness.

------
lionhearted
A thought: No one - male or female - marries or gets into a relationship
thinking it's going to break down into a lazy, unkempt, mildly hostile
situation with minimal affection and no sex life with. Likewise, no one hires
someone who they expect to half-ass it, break more things than they fix, and
be a terrible coworker. Yet, bad hires are made and bad
relationships/marriages are gotten into.

I've studied quite a lot of social science. It's really, really dangerous to
say, "Blah on statistics - I'm not average." Everyone thinks that. Better to
understand them, really fully understand the natural pressures and challenges
that come along with something, and if you don't like the consequences - fight
them with your eyes open. If you're in love, you'll rationalize that your
partner is perfect and that everything that applies to "all those other folk"
don't apply to you. That's a bit dangerous for obvious reasons.

That article's got a couple interesting points, and some ridiculous
conclusions/extrapolations. Just keep in mind - when you see a statistic that
you don't like and immediately go to dismiss as "not applicable to you" -
well, don't dismiss it so fast. The older I get, the more I realize I'm part
of all those statistics and commercials do, in fact, work on me like they do
with everyone else.

------
patio11
This news, like all news about relative percentages of marriages which end
badly, is of intense interest to anyone here who intends to marry a simple
random sampling of women.

I once knew a guy who considers himself a bit of a hopeless romantic. One of
our friends, who is not, started a sentence with "The average woman who".
Friend #1 broke in: "Stop right there. I have no intention of dating the
average woman."

~~~
swombat
More than that, even... I am an arrogant prick, when it comes down to it. I
need to be able to respect my significant other. If she's not an intelligent,
driven woman who goes out to get what she wants, then how can I respect her?
If I don't respect her, it is bound to show eventually.

If I recall correctly, in Blink Malcolm Gladwell mentioned that one of the
biggest predictors of divorce likelihood, for both sexes, was if one mate felt
superior (in a dismissive way) to the other. I imagine that would have an even
greater effect on a marriage than any of the statistics mentioned in this
article.

~~~
tolmasky
I'm not sure why a woman (or man) who chooses to be a housewife/husband would
not be someone intelligent, driven, and getting what he/she wants. Raising
children is an incredibly difficult task worthy of a lot of respect. I don't
know when the idea developed that spouses who stay at home are somehow
necessarily lazy or stupid.

~~~
time_management
It's certainly possible for a housewife/husband to keep intellectually and
socially active, but in practice, it seems to be fairly rare, especially
considering the low incomes that single-earner couples tend to have, and the
constraints that this lack of means will place on social functionality. When
there's a single earner making a lot of money, then income's not a problem,
but the working partner tends to be in a "martyr your family" job, so the non-
working partner tends to become a supporting actor in the other's career.

There's a reason people of both genders are very averse to this lifestyle.
It's possible to be a housewife or househusband and not rot away, but it's
difficult and fairly uncommon in practice.

I don't think that being a subservient housewife is more damaging than the
median, braindead cubicle job. They're both pretty awful options, and the
subordination that follows from either situation is going to lead to lethargy
and atrophy. But most of us are going to be marrying people with better career
options than the uninspiring, dead-end cube job.

~~~
wheels
You don't have to work insane hours to make lots of money. Middle management
at a large corporation will do the job and will earn more than national median
income for two people.

My dad was a stock broker at a regional Merrill Lynch office (read: nothing
like a Wall Street hustler) and he pretty much never worked crazy hours and
was paid well enough. My mom, despite being a "housewife" was the more driven
of the two and did a whole lot of volunteer / nonprofit work.

------
sanj
I would think twice about taking relationship advice aimed at Forbes's
readership.

Scratch that. I would think about it once and then actively ignore it. The
poor tender egos that they have to coddle and actively shelter from smart,
talented, driven women have absolutely no relation to mine. Their worldview is
so alien as to be antithetical.

These are the _B_ players that hire _C_ players: in work as in family.

My advice? Surround yourself with brilliance, talent, drive and passion in all
aspects of your life.

~~~
ajju
_Surround yourself with brilliance, talent, drive and passion in all aspects
of your life_

Well put! As always with surrounding yourself with brilliance, talent, drive
and passion, you will find that your life after that will _not_ be _easier_
but it will definitely become more fun, more challenging and you'll grow
faster (not physically :P)

------
radu_floricica
I think this is a bit American-centric. At least in former communist Eastern-
Europe (my place) all women work more then 35 hours - or about as much as men.
Young children are looked after by a combination of maternity leave,
grandparents and kindergardens. How is in your country?

~~~
vaksel
in USA? TV raises kids...well nowadays you also have the internet

~~~
dgabriel
Hardly. Marginally clever, but unhelpful, answer.

Young children are generally placed in daycare or with extended family, then
the public schools. That's how I grew up, and I'm ok.

~~~
BigZaphod
"That's how I grew up, and I'm ok."

Says you... :P

------
wheels
Numbers make sense, causes aren't really looked at. People with social /
financial mobility are more likely to get out of situations they're not happy
with and be less satisfied with mediocrity.

I can't survive more than a few months in a relationship with somebody who's
_not_ a workaholic.

------
alabut
Their definition of career women is overly simplistic and seems to only focus
on alpha types that are hell-bent on their jobs and on outearning their
husbands. Who'd want to be with someone like that, of either gender?

My definition is a bit different - my wife loves her career as a nurse and can
see herself loving the field of reproductive health forever. As a result,
she's pretty grounded and we balance each other out well.

~~~
ewiethoff
I've noticed it's pretty typical for the engineering and science guys I've
gone to school with or worked with to marry nurses, physical therapists,
religious educators, or HR gals. Think fem careers that are in demand wherever
the two of you might live. And these marriages seem to last.

------
dominik
Interesting that the _don't_ article has multiple citations whereas the _do_
article has none.

The article itself dates to pre-economic crash times, as it came out August
23, 2006...

~~~
kirse
Good point, that is pretty interesting how the career woman who wrote the
article made her case from an emotional appeal (her story wrapped up with
this):

 _So, guys, if you're game for an exciting life, go ahead and marry a
professional gal._

While the career man made his case primarily from an evidentiary standpoint.
It doesn't invalidate either argument, but it certainly reinforces the
differences in thinking between men and women.

In my experience, convincing people begins with good evidence and mixes in an
emotional appeal - the evidence forms the basis for a good intuitive feeling
that helps to win people over.

~~~
dominik
I saw that as well, though I wouldn't generalize so far as the differences in
how men and women think just from a pair of articles.

Also, an _exciting life_ is not necessarily a pleasant one...

------
tritchey
Heck, it is only because my wife has a career, and a steady job, that I've
been able to spend time exploring startup opportunities. I can do my work
anywhere as long as there is a decent internet connection.

------
DaniFong
Instead of suggesting that they find ways to adapt marriage and family life
for career oriented women, they suggest simply, on the basis of statistics,
that those women with a shot and mind for independence simply be avoided.

How's that for social responsibility. Get back in that box.

 _ugh_

Housework and child-rearing traditionally and statistically falls on our
plates. This has changed little as women have entered the workforce, and many
women, particularly those with young kids, are completely overwhelmed. The
two-spouse nuclear family is insufficient as a social unit during the toughest
times of raising kids: either more people need to come in, as in extended
family households of old, or help needs to be hired.

For a much better article, read Penelope Trunk:

"Advice from the top: Marry a stay at home spouse or buy the equivalent"

[http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2008/04/10/advice-from-the-
top...](http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2008/04/10/advice-from-the-top-marry-a-
stay-at-home-spouse-or-buy-the-equivalent/)

"Jason was telling me that his wife went out of town for five days. She told
him he had to take time off from work. He said he didn't want to use up
vacation. He said he'd be fine.

But by the second day, he was going nuts. He said, "Penelope, it's
unbelievable. I am telling the kids I'll be there in a minute and then I send
an email. And I instant message chat while I'm driving. And I take phone calls
when the kids are in the other room waiting for me. This is crazy. It's so
hard."

But I have been doing this every day for years. That's really what convinced
me to hire the house manager. Because Jason was doing my life for four days
and he thought it was crazy. And Jason is the type of guy I'm competing with
in business. He has a housewife. They are a good team."

~~~
cgranade
Really, we should be _embarrassed_ as a society that those who openly espouse
the subjugation of women to be no more than child-raisers are not immediately
laughed out of town. Instead, we give these misogynists a podium from which to
preach their idiotic and oppressive doctrines. We should give no more quarter
to misogynists than to racists, homophobes or others of a similar bent.

It is especially despicable that people like Michael Noer get to use
prestigious magazines such as Forbes to launch their screeds from. I would
live to think we've progressed past idiocy like "whatever you do, don't marry
a woman with a career," but apparently not.

------
cgranade
No. There's a correlation/causation problem to this argument. Are two-career
marriages unstable _because_ of something inherent about marrying someone else
with a career, or is it that there is some other correlative factor? Noer's
response to those studies (which he doesn't provide detailed citations for;
only the names of journals) is about as reasonable as giving children foot-
growing medicine to help their math skills.

I don't buy for a minute Noer's analysis that two working spouses produce a
marriage of lower "value" (which is ill-defined in this context anyway).
Missing is any kind of discussion of heterosexual marriages where the man
stays at home, or of homosexual marriages of any kind. His analysis is limited
enough in scope that trying to draw the kind of broad conclusions that he does
is ridiculous at best.

------
Zarathu
Heh, tell me about it.

Then again, I suppose it depends on your philosophy regarding women. Are they
there to serve you or should they be prioritizing their career over you?

As much as I love startups, technology, and therefore, my career, I _always_
put my relationships with people before my career. I know that I'll always
have money in the bank, and my emotional state of well-being is very important
to me.

While I believe that there's a nice balance between focusing on her career and
making time for me, I do expect the same courtesy.

If not, "there are always plenty of fish in the sea." No hard feelings. We're
all entitled to our own beliefs.

~~~
jacquesm
"Are they there to serve you or should they be prioritizing their career over
you?"

I think there must be more options than just those two.

------
anamax
FWIW, the increase in high earners marrying other high earners instead of high
earners marrying low earners is one of the big drivers in increasing income
inequality.

------
kzar
I read this as "Don't do/marry career women" to start with.

------
Fuca
my 2c: a woman YOU find attractive, who knows how to be happy on her own and
its crazy about you.

Good luck

------
omouse
pg can add this to his list of shit that has a low barrier to entry for
opinions.

------
time_management
Most men who marry subservient housewives are unhappy and gradually lose
interest in their marriage partners as social and intellectual atrophy set in.
On the other hand, anyone who marries a "career" person in the traditional
corporate sense is signing up for misery.

Ascendancy in a corporate management hierarchy requires a martyred family.
You're expected to spend long days at the office, attend and throw parties
where no one has a good time, neglect your children, and relinquish all
control over where you live, moving across the country if the company asks for
it. No man with enough means to be self-sufficient wants to marry this type of
"career woman". On the other hand, I can't imagine that a woman who has other
options would marry this type of man either. This is why "alpha" investment
bankers tend to marry women significantly below them in education and
intelligence.

Also, what I said about social and intellectual atrophy for subservient
housewives also applies equally to those who are trying to climb corporate
ladders, as their social and intellectual lives end up being restricted
entirely to their work. Subordinate status-- whether one is a corporate VP or
a subservient housewife/househusband-- rots the brain.

Best is to marry a woman who has a creative, independent and satisfying career
that allows her to work anywhere in the country, and that pays her enough that
she is self-sufficient.

------
Allocator2008
I venture to say careers and relationships have separate evolutionary roles.
Relationships are for companionship, which increases survival potential (two
can survive in a cave in the dead of winter better than one), which obviously
increases potential for spreading one's own genes, or helping the genes of
one's community to spread. The surviving genes will be more disposed to
forming relationships. Careers (hunting/gathering) are obviously for survival,
for obtaining basic necessities. Careers are the primary driver for survival.
Relationships are more a tertiary, but still important, factor for survival. A
career entails being a good hunter to bring meat, warm fur, and so forth, into
my cave, for example. But having a relationship with somebody helps my
emotional well-being, helps me get better sleep perhaps, which in turn makes
me a better hunter. So I don't think in a relationship two people need the
same careers or whatever. Careers and relationships simply play different, but
mutually supportive roles for the benefit of the genes. Personally I tend to
gravitate relationship-wise towards "artistic" type drag queens, who tend to
not be too high-tech, but talented in other ways, like say karaoke. But that
is fine, because it serves a different evolutionary purpose for the selfish
gene than my own personal career interest in technology. In short, to be a
good (read: successful) "gene-carrying robot", we need not have relationships
that are in the same vein as our careers, rather, to serve the gene, we need
only try to be happy, which increases our survival potential, which helps the
gene. From an evolutionary point of view, the simple rule is to try to find
someone that makes one happy. That is all the gene asks. Not a bad set of
affairs, eh? :-)

------
thepanister
Sometimes it's advantage to marry a woman in your career...

