UF Researcher: “What Does Your Wife Do?” Symbolizes Change

March 13, 2011

GAINESVILLE — The rise in abortions, divorces and women in the labor force represent greater equality between the sexes and not a moral breakdown of society, a University of Florida researcher says in a new book.

“Despite nostalgia about the ‘good old days,’ few people actually want to return to those times as they really were, when divorce was an oddity and women bore lots of children,” said Leonard Beeghley, a UF sociologist and author of “What Does Your Wife Do? Gender and the Transformation of Family Life.”

“Given a choice, women will get jobs, which produce not only income, but self-esteem. Given a choice, couples will have fewer children. Given a choice, men and women will escape wretched marriages.

“Living in an advanced capitalistic economy gives us choices that would have been impossible just a few years ago,” Beeghley said. “One way some people try to cope with change is by trying to bring back the past, where women stayed home to bear children, men earned a living and everyone knew their place. But this appeal to ‘tradition’ won’t work.”

It’s no accident that divorce rates have risen steadily in all Western industrialized societies; they increase wherever modernization occurs, he said.

In the 19th century, when people lived on farms in relative isolation and spouses were economically dependent on one another, notions about a happy marriage were less important, Beeghley said. Even if people’s relationships broke down or were abusive, few were in a position to divorce, he said.

Today, most people live in urban settings and both spouses often have incomes, Beeghley said. The opportunity to see many people — at the office, on the bus, in the supermarket — allows married couples to compare their relationship with others, and their independent incomes allow them to seek divorce if the marriage breaks down, he said.

“Even though we still treat women unequally in divorce and do not protect children well, the ability to divorce signifies greater equality between men and women,” he said.

Modernization also brought an increase in abortion rates. As early as the late 1800s, when birth rates fell as a result of a decline in available farm land — the means to support a family — families became “child-centered” and couples wanted fewer children so they could nurture them properly, Beeghley said.

With no birth control pill available, contraception alone was unlikely to explain the rapidly falling birth rates, Beeghley said. He used the example of “Little House on the Prairie,” in which Laura Ingalls Wilder describes growing up in the Midwest in the late 19th century.

“Her parents had only three children instead of the eight to 10 that would have been typical earlier in the century,” he said. “Although Laura is silent about how this was accomplished, it is probable that the couple practiced birth control; it is also possible that Ma Ingalls had an abortion. Remember, contraception was less effective then, and it only takes one failure for pregnancy to occur.”

Although the abortion rate has risen in all Western societies, it is highest in the United States because public policy does not promote contraception, Beeghley said. In contrast, the Netherlands has a very low abortion rate despite levels of sexual activity among young people equal to those of the United States. The Dutch make birth control pills available without prescriptions and cover the expense in their national health plan, he said.

“The debate about abortion is not just about the embryo,” he said. “It’s about gender relations, the centrality of motherhood to women’s lives, the nature of family life and — most importantly — it’s about equality.”

Those appealing to ‘tradition’ say women’s employment, divorce and abortion signify a decline in morality, Beeghley said. “But equality is also a traditional moral value,” he said. “People who are equal can regulate fertility so that unintended pregnancies are rare.”

While traditionalists may view the growing trend of asking a man what his wife does for a living as a symbol of the family’s demise, he said, “the question actually signifies that a woman who happens to be your wife can also be independent and your equal.”