September 28, 2007 9:49 PM

The new rules of relationships for women: Don't outearn men, and do all the housework
Posted by Diane Danielsonat 9:49 PM

I've been a bit out of the loop lately dealing with some issues, so in doing my catch-up of relevant stories, I found the following stories from the New York Times both interesting when read separately, but a bit disturbing when read together as they paint a grim picture of what "dating/marriage means for working women."

The first article focused on the trials and tribulations of dating men when you outearn them.  I'm actually used to hearing this from my Gen X and Boomer colleagues, but following up on studies where 20-something women are outearning their male peers in major cities like New York, it's clear that it's affecting the younger set now.

FOR Whitney Hess, a 25-year-old software designer in Manhattan, the tension that ultimately ended her recent relationships was all right there, in the digits on her pay stub.

The awkwardness started with nights out. She would want to try the latest downtown bistro, but her boyfriends, who worked in creative jobs that paid less than hers, preferred diners.

They would say, “Wow, you’re so sophisticated,” she recalled. A first look at her apartment, a smartly appointed studio in a full-service building in TriBeCa, would only reinforce the impression. “They wouldn’t want me to see their apartments,” she said, because they lived in cramped surroundings in distant quadrants of Brooklyn or the Bronx.

One of them, she said, finally just came out and said it. “Look,” Ms. Hess recalled him saying, “it makes me really uncomfortable that you make more money than me. I’m going to put that out on the table and try to get over it.”

But he never got over it, she said.

Then this week, the New York Times ran an article about the potential happiness gap between women and men when it comes to time use. 

Not surprisingly, men and women often gave similar answers about what they liked to do (hanging out with friends) and didn’t like (paying bills). But there were also a number of activities that produced very different reactions from the two sexes — and one of them really stands out: Men apparently enjoy being with their parents, while women find time with their mom and dad to be slightly less pleasant than doing laundry.

Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist working with four psychologists on the time-use research team, figures that there is a simple explanation for the difference. For a woman, time with her parents often resembles work, whether it’s helping them pay bills or plan a family gathering. “For men, it tends to be sitting on the sofa and watching football with their dad,” said Mr. Krueger, who, when not crunching data, enjoys watching the New York Giants with his father.

This intriguing — if unsettling — finding is part of a larger story: there appears to be a growing happiness gap between men and women.

Now, I definitely feel that it's hard to run male/female studies without looking at subgroups.  And, particularly, it seems to me that this happiness gap might be true for married couples, but not so true for singles.

Mr. Krueger, analyzing time-use studies over the last four decades, has found an even starker pattern. Since the 1960s, men have gradually cut back on activities they find unpleasant. They now work less and relax more.

Over the same span, women have replaced housework with paid work — and, as a result, are spending almost as much time doing things they don’t enjoy as in the past. Forty years ago, a typical woman spent about 23 hours a week in an activity considered unpleasant, or 40 more minutes than a typical man. Today, with men working less, the gap is 90 minutes.

These trends are reminiscent of the idea of “the second shift,” the name of a 1989 book by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild, arguing that modern women effectively had to hold down two jobs. The first shift was at the office, and the second at home.

But researchers who have looked at time-use data say the second-shift theory misses an important detail. Women are not actually working more than they were 30 or 40 years ago. They are instead doing different kinds of work. They’re spending more time on paid work and less on cleaning and cooking.

Now, I can't really discuss the happiness factor of married women.  Being a single mom, I adopt the "slummy mummy" attitude and feel no guilt in not meeting the standards my married peers may ascribe to.  But, despite the fact that we may do less housework than our mothers, many women still attempt to do housework in the same manner as our mothers did (albeit after a 40+ week at the office and participating in constant one-on-one interaction with children; neither of which was required by many of our mothers).  At the same time, the traditional "men's housework," i.e.  washing the car, caring for the yard, painting the house, are all outsourced (even grilling is done by the flick of a button now).

So, what's the message here?  Men don't like women who outearn them; yet, are happier when married because they get to offload housework.  Not sure what to think of that except it's going to be a rocky road for gender relations until everyone starts to adjust to changing gender roles.