Monthly Archives: November 2013

"What Married Women Really Want"

The author puts this mostly hidden divorce statistic up front:

About two-thirds of all divorces in the United States are, at least officially, initiated by women. One of the key factors [they cite] is the emotional quality of their relationships. In other words, if they feel that their marriages are high-quality relationships, they're not likely to seek divorce. If they feel otherwise, however, women are much more likely to head for divorce. One of the implicit concerns of this study was to figure out in what kind of context women are most likely to be happy and then are, of course, indirectly, less likely to divorce.

I get from the article, though, that women file, it's still the men's fault.

The following paragraph is something I've written about here (the accusation that Christians shouldn't discuss "whatever" because Christians are just as likely to get divorced as unbelievers) and you usually need to dig deep if you want to break down the numbers and get at the truth. (Emphasis is mine)

Based on my earlier research, evangelical women tend to be happier in their marriages than other women, particularly when both the wife and the husband attend church on a regular basis. This idea that Christians are just as likely to divorce as secular folks is not correct if we factor church attendance into our thinking. Churchgoing evangelical Protestants, churchgoing Catholics, and churchgoing mainline Protestants are all significantly less likely to divorce.

And gender roles play in:

Women who have more traditional gender attitudes are significantly happier in their marriages. They're more likely to embrace the idea that men should take the primary lead in breadwinning and women should take the primary lead in nurturing the children and managing the domestic sphere, managing family life.

Spouses who share weekly [church] attendance had happier wives. Spouses who share a strong, normative commitment to marriage—that is, who are opposed to easy divorce, who believe the kids should be reared in married households—have wives who are markedly happier. This factor is as strong as who works outside the home or who earns the lion's share of the income. It's also extremely important that the wife considers the division of housework to be fair to her. A sense of equity is extremely important, but equity is not equality. Women want things to be fair in their homes, but they don't equate fairness with equality.

And this bears saying again:

A sense of equity is extremely important, but equity is not equality. Women want things to be fair in their homes, but they don't equate fairness with equality.

I consistently, as Complementarians do, make a distinction between equality of personhood vs. equality of authority.

Within a hierarchy of authority, there is still equality in humanity.

I know two people. One is an elder, who works at a public school, the other an administrator in a public school, who attends the elder's church. In one context, he is the authority, in another, she is. There are two hierarchies, but total equality of humanity.

The dictionary says that "equity" is fairness and justice in treatment.

So, if a woman feels as if she is being treated fairly and justly, while being under the authority of her husband, she is more likely to be happy, and less likely to file for divorce.