The Two-Income Trap - Elizabeth Warren [45]
Divorce is another calamity that hits today’s two-income families with greater frequency. Pretty much everyone knows that newly-weds now face a high chance of splitting up (although the risk is slightly less than the 50/50 number that circulates as conventional wisdom).48 But there is a wrinkle to the statistics that hasn’t made the news reports: The Two-Income Trap has wormed its way into the sanctity of marriage.
Many commentators have held out the hope that the divorce explosion will prove temporary and that marriages may actually become more stable as the sexes stride toward equality. She Works/He Works offers this bit of optimism:
The era of the two-earner couple may in fact create more closeness in families, not less. . . . Divorces may decline as marriages become once again economic partnerships more like the ones they were before the industrial revolution. . . . fewer people will be able to waltz easily out of marriage, as they might have in the days when a thriving economy made good jobs easy to come by.49
This theory sounds good, and we wish we could share in the hope-fulness.
Unfortunately, the data show otherwise. During the 1970s, a single-earner couple had about the same chances of splitting up as a dual-income couple. By the 1990s, however, a working wife was 40 percent more likely to divorce than her stay-at-home counterpart.50 No one really knows why the difference has emerged, although sociologists have offered a number of competing theories. Perhaps the combination of working and bringing up the kids makes for a more stressful home life and leaves the two-earner couple with less time for each other. Or it may be that today’s stay-at-home wives embrace more traditional gender roles, which can make for a smoother relationship. Feminist scholars offer their own explanation, arguing that working wives see themselves as less dependent on their husbands for financial support and are therefore freer to leave a bad relationship.51 Whatever the reason, the grim fact remains: The modern two-income family faces a greater likelihood of divorce than the one-income family from a generation ago.
There is yet another wrinkle to the family-breakup statistics that often escapes attention—the couples who never marry. A quick glance at the census figures tells the story: Over the past twenty-five years the number of children whose mothers have never married increased more than 400 percent.52 Many of these women are not really single, as the “never married” box on the census form might imply. Instead, they live for many years with a male partner. Since the 1970s the number of unmarried couples rearing children has increased eightfold. Today, cohabiting men and women represent more than 6 percent of all couples raising children, compared with less than 1 percent a generation ago.53 Although 6 percent may sound like a modest proportion, the odds that a child will live with a cohabiting parent add up over time. According to one estimate, approximately four in ten children will spend some time in a cohabiting family before they turn sixteen.54
What does this have to do with the rising divorce rate? Cohabiting relationships share many of the financial characteristics of marriage since there are two adults to share the expenses and responsibilities of running a single household. When the cohabiting couple breaks up, the consequences are much like those when a married couple divorces. Someone has to find separate housing, and any joint obligations, such as a lease or a mortgage they both signed, must be resolved. If both partners are the children’s biological parents, custody decisions must be settled, and arrangements for visitation and child support must be worked out. But here’s the twist: The logistical