When She Earns More: How to Navigate a Successful Marriage

In the past, couples where the wife out-earned the husband were more likely to break up. Although there is some evidence that this has changed for recent marriage cohorts in the U.S., other evidence suggests that when women out-earn men in a couple, the couple is still more likely to break up than when spousal roles are more traditional (that is, where the man earns substantially more). There is evidence from the U.S. and many other countries that a break up is particularly likely when the man is unemployed or under-employed. All marriages have to deal with problems, but when the woman has a higher income and perhaps a higher-prestige job than her husband, they may face additional problems that strain the marriage. These problems may include others’ stereotyping of husband and wife or insensitivity to the couple’s arrangement, problems associated with the division of domestic labor, and more. So how can couples make this work? 

Ignore Others’ Insensitive Comments and Focus on Being a Team

The male breadwinner role continues to be dominant in the U.S., and therefore other people may assume and act as if the husband is the primary breadwinner and/or has the most prestigious job. This can be painful for the wife with people who know nothing else about the couple. It is perhaps even more painful when these comments come from family members (for example, both sets of in-laws) who know the couple’s circumstances but still overlook a woman’s occupational prestige and financial contributions to focus on the man’s. This can be doubly hurtful if the woman not only has the higher prestige job but also the higher income.  

For a couple in this situation, communication between partners is essential in order to focus on the needs and expectations of the two people in the couple and not the weight of normative expectations as expressed in insensitive statements. The basic idea of the marital partnership needs to be strengthened. Particularly, if it is the statements of in-laws that are creating hurt, strong statements by the man supporting the woman’s status and contributions are helpful. Further, communication between husband and wife can help both construe the insensitive statements of others as other people’s problem, not the couple’s, and can contribute to the sense of husband and wife acting as a team.

Divide Household Labor Evenly

Resentment about a husband not doing a fair share of domestic work can also create issues in a marriage, particularly when a wife brings more income or more prestige to the family. Studies suggest that in the U.S., when husbands and wives divide household labor more evenly, marriages tend to be more stable. It doesn’t matter whether the domestic work each spouse does is gender-typical or not, but rather whether each member of the couple regards the division of labor as fair. Often, one person will actually prefer some jobs to others (e.g. cooking as opposed to cleaning up). Sometimes, this will be gender typical (e.g. the man doing all the “outside” work), or non-gender typical (the man doing all the cleaning). Sometimes, men and women can split the labor of the household with a shift system, where one does the morning work and the other does the evening work. Regardless of the expectations of others, what matters is that both members of the couple perceive the split as fair. Once again, communication and responsiveness by both spouses is key.

Not only does splitting the chores equally on a regular basis matter for marital stability, but it is also important that the husband be willing to support his wife when she has the higher-prestige or higher-earning job and needs extra help. This includes things like taking on extra responsibilities in the home when the wife is under pressure at work, willingness to run errands, and being able to manage the home solo if the wife has to work late or is out of town. There is evidence that such instrumental support reduces marital instability.

Focus on the Children’s Well-being

Marriage is often the basis of raising children, which is a high investment activity that requires a great deal of time, effort, and money. Emphasis on the couple’s sense of dealing with this as a team is again crucial. There is evidence that husbands and wives tend to support each other in parenting to the benefit of their children, and the result is that over the long term, children benefit from an intact marriage. Children from intact families are about twice as likely to graduate from college and half as likely to end up in prison than children from non-intact but otherwise similar families. Part of the reason for this is that non-intact families are more likely to be poor and often move more frequently than intact families, but these are not the only reasons. The evidence is clear, all else being equal, that children in intact families do better, on average, than children from non-intact families. For a couple, focusing on the well-being of children (a joint marital project) rather than other stressful issues that couples inevitably encounter can help keep a marriage together. 

Participate in a Faith Community

There are many other factors that predict a successful marriage, but one of the more important ones is religiosity and involvement in a faith community. Religiosity and participation in a religious community are associated with higher levels of marital satisfaction, longer marriages, lower levels of marital conflict, and a lower chance of domestic violence.

There are many reasons for this but one is that religiosity promotes marital happiness. Most faith groups are almost universally supportive of marriage and the family, and often provide extra-familial support and services for married couples. Especially for couples that find themselves in non-traditional circumstances, ironically, the tradition of religion can be especially important for helping to maintain their families.

Find Alternative Sources of Status for the Husband

Religious affiliation also provides an alternative source of status besides occupational prestige and/or income for the man, as in many religions the man is the spiritual head of the family. In addition, there are many other ways for the man to achieve status within the community and thus indirectly within the family. These include serving as a great coach for children’s sports teams, volunteering to teach high-level math sessions at the local public school, spearheading community events and fundraisers, and the list goes on. 

There is no magic bullet for dealing with a situation that is non-normative in our society—specifically a breadwinner wife and/or a wife who has a higher-prestige job than her husband. Many ways of dealing with problems that arise will differ according to the particular circumstances of the couple. Nevertheless, for couples in this situation, research suggests that working as a team to deal with the insensitive or thoughtless comments of others and to deal with the tasks of running a household and raising children can help promote marital stability. Participation in supportive communities, such as religious communities, that support the marriage and family is another positive step. Finding alternative sources of status for the man, either through religious roles or leadership roles in the community, can also help maintain marital harmony.  

Rosemary L. Hopcroft is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is the author of Evolution and Gender: Why it matters for contemporary life (Routledge 2016), editor of The Oxford Handbook of Evolution, Biology, & Society (Oxford, 2018) and author (with Martin Fieder and Susanne Huber) of Not So Weird After All: The Changing Relationship Between Status and Fertility (Routledge, 2024).