If housewives should develop money-making skills, "just in case"...?

Question

...shouldn't working women develop better relationship skills, just in case? There is a danger to not being able to support yourself, but isn't there also a danger in taking your relationship for granted? Since dual-income couples are more likely to divorce, shouldn't a working wife spend some time learning the skills to save her relationship?

One benefit of being a housewife is having the luxury of having plenty of time to work on family relationships. Indeed, women were once advised to "cultivate" their marriages. Shouldn't busy working women be advised to learn some anti-divorce skills, just as housewives should learn some anti-poverty skills?

(This is not to say that working for pay means you haven't got any relationship skills, or being a housewife automatically means you do.)

LOL... don't housewives have more TIME to pursue intellectual challenges? Surely you don't think it's a simple case of smart vs. dumb?

brwn97 - you are right that educated spouses are less likely to divorce, but it has also been shown by several sources that two-income couples are more likely to divorce. WHY this might be is certainly up for debate. But a woman is statistically at greater risk for divorce if she is working full-time.

Divorce itself can also be very devatstating. I would only say that avoiding it "doesn't matter" if you don't really care about your spouse - probably not the case for most women.

A housewife spends her time on relationships, a working woman spends some time on relationships and some on working for pay.

It is quite unremarkable to assume that housewives are going to have problems because they haven't "practiced" money making skills. Is that any different from speculating that women who aren't practicing their "relationship skills" as often as housewives might be headed for trouble? It seems to me that it is the other side of the same coin.

Answer 1

I agree with you in spirit, insofar as I think people need to be more 'well balanced' to truly be and truly feel successful.

That is to say, you should be able to pursue both directions.

Some people (most men, some women too) absolutely need to have the feeling of self sufficiency. Some women (and many men) find the feeling of 'belonging' to be more important, as a gauge of success.

It's all up to the individual, but I don't think that it is too much to expect everyone to have some recourse to care for themselves, spouse or no, divorce or no.

Having any level of absolute dependency on anyone is a scary prospect. Not many people can really trust someone else that much. Given how things often turn out, is that too much responsibility to place on another person's head? Probably.

Answer 2

One thing is that at the time I think everyone assumes all will be fine 20-30 years later. I have alot of friends ....men and women who did not plan for the future and it is coming back to haunt them now. As we are nearing retirement age (50's..and believe me time goes faster the older you get) the lack of preperation by the married folks for finances if one did not work and the single people who have the financial part sewed up but lack a companion is very real now.
I really think that you should do whichever makes you happy...be it a housewife or have a career or both....but life is full of surprises and you cannot predict where you will be in the future. We are all so busy with the life we choose that we rarely think of doing anything else.

Answer 3

Yes. In my area local high schools offer adult education night classes and they cover everything from decorating a cake to managing a house efficiently ( it is about cleaning, shopping the whole bit). Also in the 1950' and 1960's many publications would run articles and how to like this. So that source would be a library and/or internet. Hint on the night school. Call around. In may area there are several and they offer different courses. These classes are open to people without regard to gender and/or orientation. You do not have to live in the district to go and best of all they are low cost. A good housekeeper knows how to be thrifty!

Answer 4

Your questions seems to assume that the reason that dual income couples divorce more because the woman lacks "relationship skills." There is also data that suggests that the more educated each person is going into the marriage, the less likely the marriage will end in divorce. If we assume that more educated women are also working, then presumably they have good relationship skills if their marriages are lasting longer. Note...this is speculation on my part.

I think each person should be prepared for the worst in learning about finances, etc.

Edit: Then perhaps studies are needed that investigate what it is exactly about two income families that lead to a higher rate of divorce. Data also suggests that families with full-time SAHMs in general tend to be more religious. Thus, divorce may just not be an option.

Answer 5

What exactly are anti-divorce skills? They would vary for every relationship. I think everyone needs to learn to stop considering divorce over small things, which would certainly help a lot of people. Both the wife and the husband should do what they can to keep their marriage healthy.

However, you have to admit that being able to support oneself financially is more important than being able to support a relationship; people are capable of getting on without one of those.

Answer 6

Women who are homemakers should develop those skills. I've heard it argued that when they do, they're doing so with the expecation that their marriages will fail and that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. This isn't just about divorce. What happens if he loses his job and he either can't find another one right away or has to settle for one that pays a lot less? How about if he gets demoted? How about if he gets sick or injured and is no longer able to work at his current job? How is the family going to survive financially without his income?

Answer 7

Unfortunately, both working women and home-makers get divorced. And if no one has the market cornered on holding marriages together, then it's got to come down to the individual taking responsibility.

As you alluded to, being a home-maker doesn't guarantee you maturity or emotional stability -- just as being a working woman doesn't guarantee self-esteem or automatic empathy with your working husband. People who rely on such generalizations seem to find themselves blindsided by their own marriages.

Any woman, at any time, no matter what she's doing, needs to make sure she's not ignoring what's going on with her marriage.

ETA: I would never presume that a housewife has more time on her hands than I do, for extraneous intellectual pursuits or otherwise...raising kids is an overtime job!

Answer 8

Oh yes. The "just in case" scenarios can happen to ANYONE, even those who think they are on sold ground. I saw a really shocking show a while back re: a surgeon's wife, had the fabulous house, luxury cars, trips to Europe, etc and one day he met a younger woman and she was out in the cold, literally. No kids so he left her with nothing and she ended up living in her car for months until she got help from a woman's shelter and got job skills and was able to recover. Her mistake was the Cinderella complex; the woman has the rich successful husband, lives in a dream world and thinks she is safe with her Prince; but that husband can and will leave at any time he finds someone younger and prettier...and with no kids, it's even worse.

Answer 9

You are under the assumption that the reason for divorce is the working woman's lack of "relationship skills". I'm not buying into this theory.
There are too many reasons for a couple's marriage to fail. Placing all blame on a working woman's poor relationship skills is at least very naive

Answer 10

Whether we are just SAHMs or Women who work for a living we all have our relationship battles, that's a fact. Divorce is devastating no matter how friendly or bitter; it speaks of a sense of loss. Anyways I like to dabble in interior design myself; don't know about the money making part, still I dabble here and there.