Gender‐role attitude and psychological well‐being of middle‐aged men: Focusing on employment patterns of their wives

In this study, the relationships between husbands’ attitudes towards gender roles and their psychological well‐being were examined in 244 middle‐aged men who had a working wife. Employment patterns of the wives were separated into full‐time employment and part‐time employment, and a model showing relationships among factors, such as attitudes towards gender roles, workplace satisfaction, and subjective well‐being of the husbands, was created and analyzed using a structural equation model. Attitudes towards gender roles comprised gender conception and the view on gender‐based division of work. Husbands with a wife employed part‐time that held a stronger gender conception had a lower subjective well‐being, mediated by their lower workplace satisfaction. However, the view of husbands with a wife employed full‐time on gender‐based division of work was directly related to subjective well‐being. That is, the husband's subjective well‐being was lower when support of gender‐based division of work was stronger.