If you’re a young man and the breadwinner for your family, beware: It could harm your health and well-being.
A new study — presented Friday at the 111th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in Seattle — found that when young men are the family’s breadwinner, it may not be good for them. “We find strong evidence that, for men, breadwinning has adverse effects,” write the authors of the study. “As relative income increases — that is, as men take on more economic responsibility in marriage — psychological well-being and health decline.”
But for women, the study found that as they began making more money, their psychological well-being (though not their health) improved. The study tracked the self-reported health (as measured by asking people about their health) and well-being (as measured by their levels of anxiety and depression) of more than 3,000 married individuals ages 18 to 32 over the course of 15 years.
“For men, there’s a social expectation that they will do whatever it takes [to make money],” says Christin Munsch, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut and an author of the study. “Women are more likely to ask themselves when an opportunity comes up whether they will like it.” Thus, men may be somewhat more likely to end up in jobs they don’t love.
The results of this study are only applicable to young people, Munsch says, and this study has other limitations: It doesn’t look at gay and lesbian couples nor does it look at cohabitating couples. Plus, some research about the impact of women being the breadwinners has shown that it leads women to be less satisfied with their lives, and this study suggests that men are threatened when they end up reporting to women at work.
Still, the results may apply to many people: Last year, in more than one in four households with children under 18, only the dad worked, according to data released in June 2016 by the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit think tank Pew Research Center. While that’s down from roughly half of households in 1970 in which the man was the sole breadwinner, it’s still far more than the number of households in which only the mom works (4%).
Americans feel conflicted about the breadwinner role: Pew data shows that about one in five American adults think that women should be at home with the kids and engaging on other traditional roles in the home, and more than four in 10 think that it is extremely important for a man to earn money for his family, while just one in four say the same of women.
And it isn’t just older people who think like this: “The majority of American men and women across all ages and races still prefer men to be the primary breadwinner,” says Catherine Tinsley, a professor of management and director of Georgetown’s Women’s Leadership Initiative at its McDonough School of Business.
[Source: Market Watch]
