As for “the cure would be changing social mores, not trying to lock them in place”, the abstract from your second linked study states:
Since much of gender identity is cultural rather than biological, and it’s beneficial to maximize one’s income, this suggests that the cultural identities should change, rather than deliberately keeping income low. And, from Kimstu’s post, we can see that they are changing.
I knew your husband was in school, but not that it was pharmacy! How much longer does he have, and what are the job prospects like in your area?
When I was a pharmacist, I worked with many women who made more money than their husbands, and guess how many times I heard one of them say their husband had an issue with that?
NEVER.
The comments in the OP are a total slap in the face for single moms, and especially widows. :mad:
And really, does anyone think it’s healthy for kids if the mom stays home (and I do mean that literally, with no outside interests) and dad’s working two full time jobs or views her as a live-in babysitter? Trust me, it isn’t.
There are some human societies where the men don’t even do that. I read about one African tribe where the men literally did no work except brewing hooch, and nothing but drinking it and beating each other up, and the women and children too. They didn’t do construction, didn’t hunt, nothing. If they got money, it all went to things like gambling and prostitutes.
It’s also been my observation that the old-fashioned huge Catholic families were rarely happy homes, and were too often like the people I mentioned in the last paragraph; the family’s “poverty” was not because they had so many children, but because the fathers didn’t bring home the money they earned, and the women just felt that it was their lot in life to live this way.
I saw a PBS program about a species of rat where the father does stick around; the mother nurses the babies and the father does everything else. Because of this, the survival rate is 4 times higher than that of other rat species.
I’m currently following a webcam set up by a man who fosters pregnant cats and the resulting litters, and the current litter is 4 kittens who clearly have 3 different fathers. Mama got around, didn’t she?
Hey Piddle Gum, do you think that these things are a result of the natural order being that man earns and woman stays at home and any deviation from this causes problems regardless of the society, or do you think that these things are the result of the society we currently have and these problems are related to the society adjusting to change while certain members of it cling to the old ways of doing things?
I’ve heard about schools that automatically referred all children who were not living with both biological parents, regardless of why, for ADD/ADHD evaluation, seemingly because they think that the kids are automatically headed for a life of crime or something. First of all, ADD/ADHD is NOT about violent, antisocial behavior, and second of all, you can’t tell which kids are being raised in single parent families, nor can you tell which adults were either for that matter. Or, at least I can’t.
As for the second paragraph, that sounds like people who believe that women should not be independent and have their own money. There was once a time when married women’s paychecks were sometimes issued in their husbands’ names. :eek: Ask some senior citizens about this some time.
Your first site say nothing about earnings
Basically if wives work outside the house, there is less time for couples to interact leading to higher levels of divorce. Oh and if a wife works outside the house she may get uppity ideas about gender equality and so experience “role stress”.
I’m also completely fascinated by the fact that it focused on “wife” as opposed to secondary wage earner.
Your second site simply states at the end
So married women working outside the home and earning more than their husbands tend to do more than their “fair” share at home. Colour me shocked that someone would leave that situation.
Everyone’s overlooking the big problem: Dem wimmins ‘r takin’ are JORBS, man! They’re even worse than dem furriners–they already live here and they’re CITIZENS! And they can even VOTE!
It often works the other way around. 
Agreed, I somehow doubt the conservative men on that panel would like it if human men all started acting like bears where as soon as they impregnate women, they simply abandon them.
Or mantids, where the female eats the male, sometimes in the middle of copulation!
I don’t think there is anyway to tell if the problem is cultural, biological, or both. My guess is it is probably 80% cultural and that the culture is going to change quickly and in 20 years it won’t be a problem. However, sometimes cultural change is slow and sometimes it does not happen at all. Even if it does go away the transition will be traumatic to those it affects negatively.
Single parenthood is the real problem and over 60% of the female breadwinners fall into this category. I don’t think this is a cultural problem and it is not going to go away. It can be ameliorated by smart policing and education policies but single parenthood will always be a problem.
What I am concerned about it a bifurcation of mores along class lines. Those at the top will adjust continue marrying people with high incomes and sometimes the wife will earn more and sometimes the husband will and it will be no big deal. At the bottom, because the bell curve for men is flatter than women in terms of skills and marketability, women will have less incentive to get married and will be more likely to have children out of wedlock. Since single parenthood affects boys more than girls in terms of things that affect employment, this will lead to a cycle where single mothers raise boys who are marginally employable and are thus not marriage material. This lack of marriageable men will lead to more single motherhood and the cycle will repeat, getting worse each time.
Only if the hours are greater than the husband’s. Not much chance of interacting when he is at work. I suspect the real issue is that the more hours she works outside the home, the less time there is for household activities, which increases stress levels.
What should the ratio be? It seems to me that ideally the number would be very close to 50%. In a truly egalitarian society there may be slight imbalance in favor of men because of maternity leave. All parents should get the same amount of bonding leave, but a parent who gives birth should also get some appropriate amount of medical leave. The after birth medical leave may be combined with the bonding time, but the before birth should not. This would mean women might average a few months more total lost career advancement compared to men. I am not sure how that would work out in the numbers but not more than 1 or 2 percent would be my guess.
The don’t have to be greater if they don’t overlap. One spouse working 9am-5pm and the other working 6pm-10pm leaves very little together time. But sometimes that is the only way to make it work if you can’t afford child care. When my mother first went back to work she worked the evening shift until she could get a job making enough to cover childcare costs.
I used to believe in strongly divided, traditional roles in marriages. Until my Grandpa died, and the next week Grandma was telling me how she learned how to pump gas for the first time (at age 64).
I know nothing about mantids, but the act you describe is among my favorite. 
The first cite is just…there simply aren’t enough :rolleyes: to describe reading it.
How exactly does single motherhood more negatively impact boys than girls?
Apparently, some studies show that the educational achievement gap between single and dual parent households is wider for boys than girls. I can speak to the truth of that, but here are some cites making the claim: