Wives’ Part-time Employment and Marital Stability in Great Britain, West Germany and the United States:

TLDR: In this article, the effects of wives' employment on marital stability across the countries of the United Kingdom, West Germany and the United States were investigated. And the results highlight the importance of the socioeconomic context in structuring the optimal employment participation of both partners.

Abstract: Many hail wives’ part-time employment as a work—family balance strategy, but theories offer competing predictions as to the effects of wives’ employment on relationship stability. We use panel data to test these competing hypotheses among recent cohorts of first-married couples in Great Britain, West Germany 1 and the United States. We find effects of wives’ employment on marital stability var y across the countries. In West Germany with its high-quality part-time employment, couples where the wife works part time are significantly more stable. In the more liberal British and US labour markets, neither wives’ part- nor full-time employment significantly alters divorce risk. In the United States, however, mothers working part time have significantly lower divorce risk. West German and British husbands’ unemployment proves more detrimental to marital stability than wives’ employment. These results highlight the importance of the socioeconomic context in structuring the optimal employment participation of both partners.

Figures

TABLE 2: RISK OF DIVORCE FROM YEAR OF MARRIAGE IN WEST GERMANY, UNITED KINGDOM AND THE UNITED STATES

TABLE 1: DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS OF MARRIED WEST GERMAN, UK AND U.S. COUPLES FROM FIRST YEAR OF MARRIAGE UNTIL SEPARATED OR CENSORED (SD NOT REPORTED FOR DICHOTOMOUS VARIABLES)

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City, University of London Institutional Repository
Citation: Gash, V. and Cooke, L. P. (2010). Wives’ part-time employment and marital
stability in Great Britain, West Germany and the United States. Sociology, 44(6), pp. 1091-
1108. doi: 10.1177/0038038510381605
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Permanent repository link: https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/5405/
Link to published version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0038038510381605
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© 2009 Lynn Prince Cooke and Vanessa Gash. All rights reserved. This paper is for the reader’s personal use
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L.P.Cooke@kent.ac.uk
Women’s Part-time Employment and Marital Stability
in West Germany, Great Britain, and the United States
Running head: Women’s Part-time Employment and Marital Stability
*DRAFT* AS OF 28
TH
OF THE 8
TH
, 2009
Dr Lynn Prince Cooke Dr Vanessa Gash
School of Social Policy, Sociology CCSR, School of Social Science
& Social Research Kantorovich Building,
University of Kent University of Manchester
Canterbury CT2 7NF Manchester M13 9PL
United Kingdom United Kingdom
+44 (0) 1227 823 624 phone +44 (0) 161 275 0271 phone
+44 (0) 1227 827 005 fax +44 (0) 161 275 4722 fax
L.P.Cooke@kent.ac.uk Vanessa.Gash@manchester.ac.uk
Word count: 8,062
Acknowledgements: This work has benefited from feedback from participants the TransEurope/European
Consortium for Sociological Research annual conference, Groningen, The Netherlands, 1-2 September 2007;
and participants at the Fifth Annual European Divorce Network Conference, London School of Economics, 17-
18 September 2007. Special thanks go to Torkilde Hovde Lyngstad for his detailed suggestions on the
modelling.

Women’s Part-time Employment and Marital Stability 1
Women’s Part-time Employment and Marital Stability
in West Germany, Great Britain, and the United States
Many hail wives’ part-time employment as a work-family balance strategy, but
theories offer competing predictions as to the effects of wives’ employment on relationship
stability. We use panel data to test these competing hypotheses among recent cohorts of
first-married couples in West Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. We find effects
of wives’ employment on marital stability varies in its socioeconomic context. In West
Germany with its high-quality part-time employment, couples where the wife works part-
time are significantly more stable. In the more liberal GB and U.S. labour markets, neither
wives’ part- nor full-time employment significantly alters divorce risk. In the United States,
however, mothers working part-time had significantly lower divorce risk. West German and
British husbands’ unemployment proved more detrimental to marital stability than wives’
employment. These results highlight the importance of the normative context in structuring
optimal household employment participation in post-industrial economies.
Key words: divorce, international comparisons, longitudinal analysis, work-family balance

Women’s Part-time Employment and Marital Stability 2
Women’s Part-time Employment and Marital Stability
in West Germany, Great Britain and the United States
Introduction
Dramatic increases in female employment have placed work-family balance
1
atop
personal and policy agendas. In the United States, policy makers are reluctant to interfere in
either the private sphere or the market, resulting in little state assistance for balancing work
and family obligations (Gornick and Meyers 2003; Jacobs and Gerson 2004). In European
countries, however, policy makers often encourage part-time work as one avenue towards
work-family balance. Part-time employment enables more women to join the labour force,
increases households’ financial security by facilitating dual-earning, and in turn reduces child
poverty (Fagan and Walthery 2007; Kamerman et al. 2003). Consequently part-time work
might be regarded as a panacea, providing benefits to employers, employees, and the state
through workers’ tax contributions and reduced claims for transfers.
Most research on part-time work explores gendered labour demand and supply
factors. Part-time jobs are overwhelmingly taken up by women rather than men, with
women comprising 80 percent of part-time workers in OECD countries (OECD 2002). But the
quality and popularity of part-time employment varies across national contexts (Kalleberg,
Ruskin and Hudson 2000; O’Reilly and Fagan 1998). High-quality part-time employment can
facilitate women’s further career development, whereas poor-quality part-time employment
represents an impediment (Joshi, Pachi and Waldfogel 1999; Drobnič, Blossfeld and Rohwer
1999). Part-time employment frequently offers inferior wages (Gornick and Jacobs 1996;
McGinnity and McManus 2007), limited occupational progression (Bardasi and Gornick
1
The term “work-life balance” is increasingly used in GB over “work-family reconciliation” to indicate
the multiple spheres in which we participate (Cummins 1996) and to underscore the potential gains
for all spheres when balance is obtained (Voyandoff 2005; Greenhaus and Powel 2006). Yet it also
implies that work is not a part of life, so we use the term work-family balance instead.

Women’s Part-time Employment and Marital Stability 3
2008), and limited access to benefits relative to full-time employment (Connolly and Gregory
2008; O’Reilly and Fagan 1998). These disparities in part-time work quality have led to a
great deal of scholarly debate as to whether structural constraints and continued
incompatibility between home and market force women into part-time employment
(Crompton 2002; Crompton and Harris 1998; Gash 2008; McRae 2003; Walters 2005), or
whether women freely choose it as a matter of preference for balancing the two (Blossfeld
and Hakim 1997; Hakim 2000).
Here we take the debate a step further to assess family outcomes of wives’
employment level in its socioeconomic context. The dynamics should also apply to partnered
women in de facto relationships so we use the terms “wives” and “partnered women”
interchangeably, although our subsequent analysis will be limited to de jure couples. Some
sociologists have argued wives’ employment increases divorce risk in industrial societies
(Becker, Landes and Michael 1977; Cherlin 1992). Others countered that in post-industrial
societies, wives’ employment enhances family economic flexibility (Fraser 1994;
Oppenheimer 1997), which should lend greater stability to relationships. More recent multi-
country analyses reveal that effects of partnered women’s employment on relationship
stability might vary by the degree to which it is institutionally supported (Cooke 2006;
Liefbroer and Dourleijn 2006). This suggests wives’ part-time employment might enhance
marital stability, particularly in countries promoting it as a means for achieving work-family
balance.
We select three countries with varying institutional support for different levels and
quality of part-time employment. The U.S. unregulated labour market and reliance on
corporate provision of welfare encourages greater female employment participation, but
returns vary widely depending on women’s educational attainment (Western, Bloome and

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the contributions in this paper?

In this paper, the authors assess family outcomes of wives ' part-time employment level in its socioeconomic context. 

Q2. What are the future works in this paper?

Their data provided no measures of job quality, so this possibility must be explored in future research. This suggests another fruitful area for future research would be exploration of class and possibly other group differences in predictors of more or less stable relationships. These areas of inquiry must be left as a priority for future research as suitable data become available within and across more country contexts. The significance of other traditional risk factors also differed across the countries, suggesting that what helps or hurts modern couples varies in its socioeconomic context ( see also Cooke and Baxter, forthcoming ). 

Q3. How many women and men worked under some kind of flexibility arrangement in 2003?

In 2003, 27 percent of employed women and 18 percent of employed men reported working under some kind of flexibility arrangement (Women and Equality Unit, March 2005). 

Q4. Why do British mothers pursue fulltime employment?

Not surprisingly, British mothers increasingly pursue fulltime employment because of rising wages and more generous maternity provisions (Gregg et al. 2007). 

Q5. What is the effect of partnered women’s employment on stability?

Using the UN Family and Fertility surveys, Liefbroer and Dourleijn (2006) found partnered women’s employment (defined with an indicator variable as compared with being out of the labour force) significantly increased the risk of dissolution among couples in Austria, Finland, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, and West Germany; decreased dissolution risk in France and Latvia; and had no significant effect in the Czech Republic, East Germany, Flanders, Hungary, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden. 

Q6. What is the suitable method for assessing these dynamic relationships?

Individuals’ work hours and the risk of divorce vary across the marital life course,making event history analysis the most suitable method for assessing these dynamic relationships (Allison 1984). 

Q7. What is the effect of part-time employment on marital stability?

This suggests wives’ part-time employment might enhance marital stability, particularly in countries promoting it as a means for achieving work-family balance. 

Q8. What did Becker (1985) argue about the gendered division of labour?

Becker (1985) applied a market model to family time allocation to argue a gendered division of labour increases the mutual dependence between husbands and wives. 

Q9. What is the single measure introduced in 2003 to promote work-life balance?

The single measure introduced in 2003 to promote work-life balance is that GB employers are asked to consider requests for flexibleemployment arrangements “seriously.” 

Q10. How many percent of employed women work part-time?

More than one-third of employed West German women work part-time, with the gender wage ratio the highest of the three countries at 81 percent (OECD 2002). 

Q11. What is the effect of the wives’ employment level on marital stability in the early years?

As found by Fisher (1993), marriages in two of the three countries are at greater risk of dissolution in the early years, though the effect is insignificant for Great Britain. 

Q12. Does the effect of a wife’s employment affect the risk of divorce?

Controlling for work hours, wives’ relative earnings also do not significantly alter risk of divorce, as effects are substantively and at best marginally statistically significant.