The study, conducted by Dr Demid Getik, explores how mental health is related to income make-up within couples by examining the link between annual income rises for women and the number of clinical mental health diagnoses over a set period of time.
The study finds that as more women take on the breadwinner role in the household, the number of mental health related incidences also increases.
As wives begin earning more than their husbands, the probability of receiving a mental health diagnosis increases by as much as 8% for all those observed in the study, but by as much as 11% for the men.
Oh for fucks sake. No wonder this study is ridiculous. It’s an economist trying to make inferences on mental health. The only actual data he had is a correlation in mental health diagnoses and women earning significantly* more. (Number not defined)
He has no evidence for causation. He does no work to get rid of confounding factors like toxic masculinity’s famous dislike of therapy. He just sees a rise in the pure number of diagnoses and says women earning more is bad for the mental health of both people in a marriage. He doesn’t even bother to check what the diagnoses are, or look for any kind of severity. For all we know the finding here could be that women who earn more and men who are willing to be with them seek counseling earlier than couples where the man makes more.
This is shit science.
Yep. The guy got a large publicly available dataset (or one his university had access to) and mined it for interesting results to get a publication.
Yes, the link is this:
When all the adults in the household have to work 40+ hours a week, plus commute, plus all the adulting…they get sad since this is fucking toxic.
Also no one has time for civics.
Also no one has time to parent, so the kids are sad too.
If we’re looking at mental health problems, lets look here first.
You missed manly man not manly enough and now sad too.
You’re right, patriarchal demands are toxic on men too and that’s where the stress comes from.
Could have said that instead of being dismissive about it though.
Perhaps households where women earn more money are also made of people where the male partner feels more comfortable seeking mental health resources. Or perhaps they have better insurance and can afford it.
I would suggest that “Wives earning more than husbands” isn’t the issue so much as “Cost of living is outpacing household earnings and men have been conditioned through generations of patriarchy to believe this is a personal failing rather than a broad economic shift”.
If your wife is bringing in seven figures, I doubt the husband will lose much sleep. But if you’re looking at a $30k paycheck to your wife’s $40k paycheck, and you both acknowledge the total isn’t enough to live on, there’s a lot of anxiety to go around in that situation.
Agreed. I don’t think it’s about wives earning more than their husbands at all.
Why is there an increase in mental health diagnoses recently?
Looks around at the state of the world. Tyranny on the rise; human right being violated across the globe; climate crisis set to boil humanity alive; tech companies funding dictators.
My hypothesis is that it is the fault of women.
It certainly doesn’t help that men and women are more adversarial than they have ever been. The cause may be just, but at the end of the day everyone is just lonely and miserable, and afraid of the other.
I’ve experienced a man in my life being really fucking salty and super dickish about my successful career. It isn’t a husband or SO, but my stepfather. The man who, until recently, has been a great father figure.
I can’t talk about work around him without his mood immediately souring. Idk if he’s jealous that I have some disposable income and that I am making a little less than he is and I’m only 3 years into my career as opposed to his 25, but it’s really discouraging.
Finances are very tight for him and my mother and it’s almost entirely his fault because he is terrible with money. It’s really sad to see him act this way. According to my mom, he has bitched to my grandma (his mom) about me taking up horseback riding and doing things with my new friends because it can be expensive. My grandma yelled at him over it and said that me doing new things and socializing is very good and she supports it. Idk why he thinks my finances are his business either. Ugh. The man is so frustrating.
Sorry for ranting. Guess I really needed to get all that out lol.
Well I hope there was some catharsis to your comment! That sucks you’re being subjected to it. Good for grandma having your back!
This is really sad, tbh.
I personally would be freaking stoked. Would love to be a stay at home hubs, too.
It’s genuinely upsetting. The option to be a house wife/husband is becoming rarer. Everyone needs to work to provide enough for the household. House hubbies are lucky men.
oh yeah but I would not want that much pressure on my wife. Would want to make enough to at least get us by in a pinch.
Dude, me too, and I would kill at it.
Sadly, based on skills and the job market where we’re at, I can make more working.
Same. My skillset and interests align with being a house spouse, not making money. Single tho, and trying to make a beautiful home while working full time leads to many compromises
That’s what we found out.
My wife enjoys her work, finds it rewarding, etc. etc. and has never been really content as a homemaker. My job is alright, but I don’t feel any real passion for it, and I don’t need a work atmosphere or to be around a lot of people to stay engaged. I’m happy just keeping things organized and running smoothly in my own little corner of the world.
I make just a little less than we need for her to stay home, and she makes peanuts in comparison.
It really hacks me off. She works in education, what she does is far more important to the well-being of society than what I do. If our paychecks were reversed, and they honestly should be reversed, I’d be happy to stay home or work part time but it’s just not financially feasible.
Was talking to a cute girl at a New Years Eve party, and it came out that while I made a nice amount for doing very little work, she made even more but had to do a lot of work. I went straight to daydreaming about being a stay-at-home Dad so hard I almost fell off my chair.
Dudes, more money means more money, why on earth would having more money upset you???
I’m willing to bet it’s selection bias. They have more time for therapy and openness to the idea. It’s one of those studies that just looks at the numbers at the top of everything. X couples got divorced, Y people sought counseling, etc.
The most they can say is there’s an increased correlation in seeking mental help.
more money is not the goal of a long term relationship or at least, ought not be. I hope this person had other attractive qualities in addition to freeing you from working.
well, I mean, she was a cute girl with a steady job, so, already got one up on the ol’ ex 🤷♂️
Remember, this is diagnoses. My guess is that its a “owning a horse make you healthier” thing again.
deleted by creator
[Translation: Correlation does not equal causation.]
Please Lord let me find a woman that makes the same as me and I’ll happily retire a Pinterest mom and support her career. I love my kid, my home, my time, my flexibility, optimizing systems with cart blanche…
This has to depend on the guy. My ex, he always made less $ than me because I went to college after having kids and got a better job, then asked him if he wanted to do the same he said no, and we made enough as long as we both worked, it wasn’t anything we really thought about, only about hours worked by each of us. Now when he was unemployed it all went to hell, but not as long as he worked at all. I valued his work, not the wage.
My husband, he wants to make more than me but sees it as a challenge, he wants me to make more money, because it would motivate him to make more money, he just wants us to have more money. He is very happy for me to succeed, and I’m valued for contributions at home and making money, and (critically important) he does as much as me around the house, and our busy work seasons aren’t at the same time so we are able to support each other during those months. I do think it’s a sexist thing (he does too but still feels it) but don’t actually care, it works fine for us in practice.
My wife easily does 80% or more of the housework. She makes less than half what I do. The thing is, she only works 40 hours or so a week compared to my 60 or so. I’m not glorifying my overwork, I hate that I work so much. I’m also out of town during the week days more than half the time.
I would be thrilled if she made more than me. We could hire a cleaning service and we would be so happy. This shit is insane and probably bad science.
It keeps coming up and ‘experts’ profess this occasionally. I’m too lazy to check the actual science, so I’ll never know.
Maybe this happens because the woman who earns more often emasculates her husband with snide remarks or jabs. Unlike the other way round where men are expected to earn more than their spouse otherwise they’re “less of a man”.
Maybe that’s contributing to the higher mental health issues.
are dudes really upset over this? grow up! jesus.
“women have a higher chance to develop eating disorders when consuming more social media”
are gals really upset over this? grow up! jesus
maybe instead of judging the individual we should look at how traditional societal expectations about gender interact with modern capitalist society and realize that what may have worked to some degree 100 years ago can no longer work today
what may have worked to some degree 100 years ago can no longer work today
Not because there’s a shortage of consumer goods or real estate or daylight hours. Because there’s a shrinking pool of gainful employment and steadily rising costs of living. These are entirely engineered problems, with low wage service sector and gig-work jobs eclipsing higher wage jobs that can sustain a household on a single income.
Yeah lmao people with mental health issues should just get over it
This study doesn’t actually have the data to conclude that. It could simply be these relationships are highly correlated with people who are secure enough to know that seeking therapy is healthy.
More like their “provider status” is now poof & women will discard them for an even higher earning husbands
women will discard them for an even higher earning husbands
Isn’t half the problem that “higher earning husbands” are in increasingly short supply?
Are we predicting a future of patriarchal mega-earners cultivating harems of middle-income working professionals? Or will the skyrocketing cost of living just going to turn the Surplus Males into fodder for our next generation of foreign wars, while an increasing population of lesbians fills in all the office jobs at depressed professional wages?
Why are high-earning men in short supply ?
There’s a shortage of high paying jobs, for starters.
Why is there a shortage ?
Not enough employers offering high wages
Any chance this correlates with finally being able to afford mental health care?
This guy understands how the world works.
That was a great point. I was assuming it adds stress which exacerbated symptoms of mental health conditions that incentivized the couples to get diagnosed.
The study focused on heterosexual Swedish couples of working age who married in 2001 and whose individual incomes measured at just above or just below the equal earnings threshold.
I wouldn’t have thought mental health care was inaccessible due to cost in a country like Sweden.
It’s not free, but it’s not expensive either, max of around $250 a year for all healthcare. But mental health care in Sweden is abysmal, if you’re lucky they’ll give you 12 sessions with a psychologist who is apathetic to your issues and then let you go, because they seem to see it as something that once your sessions are done, should be fixed.
This in a country rife with social isolation, months of dark and cold, hobbies that are too expensive to do and a generally unhealthy society.
It’s not always free in scandinavialand. If you have a referral from a doctor due to a mental illness or the like, it’s probably covered. But if you seek therapy out if own initiative you probably have to pay out of pocket.
Source: As a scandinavian I looked into it once, but upon noticing the hourly rate I figured that it would probably cause more mental distress than it would solve.
Ah, thanks.
It’s not just monetary, it’s also time, and being willing to admit you have a problem and seek help. Some jobs will fire you if you admit to having substance abuse or mental health problems, like airline pilots. (Or even if they don’t outright fire you, it’ll still end your career.)
Fair. I also would have thought, though, that Sweden would have had stronger labor protection laws to protect people who are getting help from retaliatory firing.
With pilots, it’s not Sweden and firing, but EASA and medicals.
After the Germanwings crash, the only reasonable choice was obviously making it so that most mental health issues disqualify you from flying. It does wonders for reporting.
Admitting you need help can end your career, not just lose your current job.
Oh interesting. That’s unfortunate.
IDK who is downvoting, it really is.
It does, and employers are usually very good as supporting their employees with health issues.
