Women's Employment, Time Expenditure, and Divorce

Past research on the relationship between wives' employment and divorce has focused on two types of explanations: those positing changed motives regarding divorce and those suggesting changed opportunities. Without discounting totally the path from income to opportunity, we focus here on a somewhat neglected alternative, that leading from time constraints to changed motives toward maintaining a marriage. We argue that time spent by the wife working outside the home impedes the completion of tasks necessary to the maintenance of the household and hence increases the probability of divorce. Using data from the Young and Mature Women samples of the National Longitudinal Survey, we find that among employed women, hours worked has a greater impact on marital dissolution than do various measures of wife's earnings. In partial support of our hypotheses, the relationship between wife's hours worked and the probability of divorce is strongest for middle income families and families in which the husband disapproves of his wife's employment.