Abstract
In this article, I ask: Does the effect of wives’ work hours on marital dissolution change across marital duration? Using the first two waves of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), I find only weak evidence that wives’ work hours are associated with higher marital dissolution. The effect, however, is more positive and significant among long-term marriages. In addition, this study also tests whether couples’ gender ideology and marital interaction explain this differential effect of wives’ work hours. The results suggest that couples’ gender ideology does not account for this differential effect of wives’ work hours. The more positive effect among long-term marriages, however, is reduced to insignificance as soon as a marital interaction measure is introduced into the model. This study contributes to broader research in two ways. Despite the weak effect of wives’ work hours on marital dissolution, the buffering effect of marital duration challenges the prior assumption that the effect of wives’ work hours is invariant across marital duration. Second, this study suggests that the more positive effect of wives’ work hours on marital dissolution among long-term marriages can be attributed to couples’ marital interaction in these marriages becoming more important in mediating the effect of wives’ work hours. Given these results, this study suggests that future research should consider the buffering effect of marital duration in understanding the determinants of marital dissolution.
Highlights
Wives’ employment has long been considered one of the most important determinants of marital instability
This study focuses on the effect of the time aspect of wives’ employment on marital dissolution
This study focuses on married couples and uses couple-level measures of key variables: gender ideology, marital interaction, and control variables
Summary
Wives’ employment has long been considered one of the most important determinants of marital instability. This study focuses on the effect of the time aspect of wives’ employment (i.e., their work hours) on marital dissolution. Schoen, Rogers, and Amato (2006) found that wives’ full-time employment is associated with greater marital instability, and that changes in wives’ employment have no significant effect on how marital quality changes between two waves of data collection. On the other hand, have focused on the possibility of a reverse causal relationship between wives’ work hours and marital dissolution (Austen, 2004; Greene & Quester, 1982; Gray, 1995; Johnson & Skinner, 1986; Montalto & Gerner, 1998; Sen, 2000). Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Montalto and Gerner (1998) concluded that expectation of divorce is positively associated with labor force participation among married women, whereas among men, the probability of divorce was found to reduce given labor force participation
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