We’ve been talking a lot about wives who work from home. This is a subject that is near and dear to my heart. After all, I’m a wife who works from home. I’ve been a wife who works outside the home. I’ve been a wife who works at home. I’ve been a stay at home mom and I’ve been wife and mom who went to school. I have great things to say about all of the above.
Working May Help Your Marriage
Let me be honest about something, I enjoy being a mom. I enjoy being a wife. I love my husband and my daughter very much and they always come first for me. But when I was just a stay at home mom and my days were filled with diapers, housework, errands and interacting with the baby, I felt like something was missing.
I went back to school and that helped, but I still missed something and I wasn’t sure what it was. When I started freelance writing from home, I found what I was missing. I found that personal satisfaction I get from doing a job and doing it well. It’s wonderful to be appreciated as a wife and a mother, but it’s also great to be appreciated for just doing your work well.
Apparently, Pennsylvania State University conducted a study that agrees with that assessment. They found that marriages with wives who work (outside the home in this case) were more likely to last than marriages where one partner was a homemaker only.
The study found that when couples both worked, there was more equity in decision-making, housekeeping, parenting and income decisions. Sociologist Stacy Rogers details her findings in the book: Alone Together: How Marriage in American Is Changing.
Rogers sampled over a 1,000 couples between 1980 and 2000. She found that husbands appreciated their wives working and the increased income it added to the family. They also adapted to the needs of creating more equity in who handled what obligations.
That part of the study doesn’t surprise me. While I don’t want an office job and I don’t want to be tied to a schedule from 9 to 5 every day and I like the flexibility of being at home with my daughter, I do enjoy working from here where I get the best of both worlds.
The part of the study that did surprise me were the numbers that suggested that childless couples were happier overall during the 20 years of the study than couples with children. I suppose I can’t imagine what life would be like without our little girl, though I admit, we did have a great time before she was born – we’ve continued to have a good, albeit different, time since her birth.
Do you think working from home helps you to have a happier marriage?
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