Women Resenting and Dumping Their Househusbands

It would have been nice to see some numbers on the divorce rate for couples where the male stays at home compared to the rate for couples where the woman stays home and couples where both partners work. The headline implies that there is some sort of divorce epidemic caused by stay at home dads going on but without the numbers, all the article really shows is that 3 particular couples couldn't handle that situation.

Adam is right. Without that data, this is essentially meaningless. In fact, it's not clear that even WITH the numbers for the three groups Adam listed it would be all that meaningful. There's a fourth group: couples in which NEITHER partner works. Is the divorce rate even higher for that group? Can we make the conclusion that the divorce rate is due entirely to the ONE factor of who (if anyone) is working and who (if anyone) is not? It may well be that the personality types that lend themselves to one or another situation make divorce more or less likely. I would hope that divorce is (at least MOST OF THE TIME) not a one issue thing.

For the record, I know three men who are "house husbands" ("stay-at-home dads" is perhaps more common terminology) and they are all in very stable (and long-term) marriages.

Wow. These poor guys had a very hard lesson to learn. There's nothing worse than being separated from your kids like that.

The lesson here is an age-old one: we all have behaviours that are more hard-wired into us than we'd like to believe. Women tend to want to be taken care of by a dominant male. Deep in their innermost logic loops most women want us to bang on our chests and tell them that we're the boss, but also that we'll worship them at the same time.

My father gave me this advice when I was a boy: paraphrasing, he said, "Women will want to change you -- don't let them, because if they succeed, they'll hate you for it." Sage advice.

Now if you'll excuse me, it's worship time, and the garbage needs to be taken out. :)

The argument is not that all relationships that have a man at home will fail; that's silly.

All I'm saying is that there are natural truths that define us as humans, and that pretending those truths don't exist is an exercise in fantasy. Having a woman go out and travel and meet aggressive, driven, alpha-males while her husband stays at home and does housework and watches children is NOT consistent with female happiness. This is all I'm saying.

I'm not saying it can't work; I'm just saying it *usually* won't. What's even more interesting, though, is the fact that women actually agree to this in the beginning and don't realize how it will effect their feelings for their husbands.

And that's my point (a recurring theme for me): what women say they want and what they ACTUALLY want are often two different things. This is due to the dissonance between human primal and logical desires. It's not bad. It's not wrong. It's not something to get angry about. It's just a reality that must be acknowledged in order to have better relationships.

"I’m not saying it can’t work; I’m just saying it *usually* won’t."

I guess my point was that, without some statistics comparing the failure rate of stay-at-home-dad marriages to others sorts of marriages, you can't even make that more narrow claim. (Well, except in the general sense that relationships in general *usually* don't work. ;) )