Dominance and the Working Wife

Abstract

JN RECENT years the proportion of families in America with working wives and mothers has markedly increased. The increasing frequency of the working-wife family makes more urgent the answer to the question: What effect does such a shift in the wife's role have on other aspects of family life? The present study was designed to help answer some parts of this broad question. Its primary focus has been on the effect of the wife's working on the decision-making process in the family. Unfortunately, most of the existing studies on the effects of the working wife on family life have been based on predominantly middle-class cases. The dearth of studies of the effects on family life of the working-class working wife is especially untoward because a far larger proportion of working-class families than of middle-class families are working-wife families. Therefore, it was decided that in the present study explicit attention would be given to comparing the effect of the working wife on family decision-making in the working class with its effect in the middle class. The existing literature contains three previous studies which have dealt with the effect of the wife's working on family decision-making. Kligler, in a predominantly middle-class sample of respondents from the New York area, showed that the working mother influenced family decisions on major purchases, loans, savings, and investments to a greater extent than did the nonworking mother. This difference was statistically significant at beyond the .05 level.' Fougeyrollas, in a study of respondents in a suburb of Paris, France, demonstrated that the working wife had greater authority in making decisions in a variety of areas. The sample contained respondents from all social classes but results were not published showing the effect on decision-making of the wife's working for different social classes separately.2 The third existing study relating the effect of the wife's work status to family decision-making came to publication when the present study was in progress. In a reanalysis of their data comparing 500 delinquents with 500 matched nondelinquents, Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck show that for both the delinquent and nondelinquent sample, the working mother is more apt to dominate family affairs than the nonworking mother.3 The Gluecks do not explain how they decided that either the mother or the father dominated family affairs. Apparently for the most part the information was obtained from the coding of unstructured interviews usually with the mother alone, sometimes with the father, with both parents, or with one of the boy's older siblings or a relative. We are also told that we had the judgment of the psychiatrist which was made following his interview with the boy.4