Desperate Housewives and Happy Working Mothers: Are Parent-Couples with Equal Income More Satisfied throughout Parenthood? A Dyadic Longitudinal Study

Abstract

Are parent-couples with equal income more satisfied as their children grow up, than those who prioritize the father’s career (specialize)? For the first time, 384 German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study couples were categorized into life-course coupled earnings types, by tracing how earnings were divided within couples between the ages of 1 to 15 of their youngest child. Multivariate, multilevel analysis showed that, unlike mothers pursuing an (eventually) equal earnings division, mothers in an (eventually) specialized arrangement experienced a strong decline in life satisfaction. Hence, particularly high-status mothers (having invested heavily into their career) were eventually up to two life satisfaction points less satisfied if they prioritized their partner’s earnings, than those who shared earnings equally with their partner. Paternal life satisfaction was not significantly different between patterns of earnings (in)equality. For most couples, earnings equality led to a win-win situation: mothers’ life satisfaction was higher than for specialized mothers without negatively affecting paternal satisfaction.

Keywords

couples earnings Germany income equality life course life satisfaction linked lives panel data parenthood SOEP

Introduction

Parents wonder which couple-level strategy offers better long-term life satisfaction: a pattern of ‘specialization’, with one main earner and one financially dependent main caregiver, or a pattern in which both partners have equal earnings power within the couple?

Whether or not maternal and paternal life satisfaction follow a different pathway if parents pursue equal earnings versus if they specialize, has been surprisingly understudied. We know that parenthood has demands (e.g. childcare hours required, costs) and rewards (feeling useful, loved), which counterbalance one another across the life course, resulting in divergent levels of parental satisfaction (Angeles, 2010; Glass et al., 2016; Hansen, 2012; Nomaguchi and Milkie, 2003; Pollmann-Schult, 2014). This article extends this literature by arguing that the satisfaction derived from parenthood evolves differently depending on the different coupled earnings types (Equal Earnings versus Specialization). The article further argues that the satisfaction derived from the same coupled earnings type may shift as children grow older as parental demands and rewards shift again.

When children are young, specialization may be the better alternative: demands in terms of both time and energy commitment are thereby reduced, tasks are clearly divided (mostly men would do paid work and women unpaid work), rather than having to be re-negotiated on a daily basis depending on each partner’s work commitments, and maternal role conflict (employee versus mother) is reduced. Motherhood may still fill the lost employee identity, and social and time structure (Jahoda, 1982).

Yet, as children grow older, for mothers who gave precedence to their partner’s career, this ‘peace at home’ comes at the cost of increasing financial dependence – on the partner and the state (Oppenheimer, 1997). The quality and quantity of time spent with the child declines (Meier et al., 2018). Mothers may wonder how to fill this emerging void. The resultant underbenefiting in relation to their partner in turn may lead to lower levels of life satisfaction later in life (Guerrero et al., 2008).

High-status mothers may be particularly torn between the two alternatives: their high-status partners are more likely to pull them out of employment, favouring intense mothering over maternal employment as it supports familial status maintenance. Their partner’s high earnings make their employment optional and possibly a comfortable life with domestic help may make a return to work harder to justify (Stone and Lovejoy, 2019). However, specializing high-status mothers’ life satisfaction drops dramatically: considerable investments into their own careers, high financial independence and a strong work identity are lost. This sense of what one could have become with one’s skills may be harder to digest than for low-status mothers whose investments were lower and/or who financially never had a choice. Consequently, this article explores the experiences of low and high-status mothers.

Germany has moved away from mainly supporting the male breadwinner model (specialization), and towards policies aimed at equalizing parental life-course earnings in order to foster both partners’ financial independence from one another and the state (Deutscher Bundestag, 2006). The underlying rationale is an acknowledgement that one can no longer afford to underuse female human capital (defined here as earnings) because of: (1) skills shortages; (2) an increasing old-age dependency ratio that leaves too few working-age people to support social security systems; (3) the realization that reduced labour market commitment during motherhood leaves women impoverished in old age; and (4) the aim of reducing gender inequality (OECD, 2012, 2013). While German policies may indeed make earnings within couples more equal (Langner, in press), understanding the effect that these policies have on couples’ well-being is also crucial to understand whether – once provided with this option – couples will eventually want to pursue an Equal Earnings pattern.

To capture these ideas methodologically, a new coupled life-course earnings typology, which distinguishes between couples who maintain equal or specialized earnings patterns, and those who move from earnings specialization back to earnings equality and vice versa, is required. The latter two dynamic types often remained hidden in previous short-term measures, but are important, because they reveal whether the same (rather than different) individuals diverge over time, under different coupled relative earnings types. After all, moves in and out of work hour specialization throughout parenthood have been observed in Germany previously (Langner, 2015). Thereby, recent calls to analyse diversity in linked lives ‘explicitly’, rather than just theoretically, were addressed (Umberson et al., 2010).

Literature review

This review outlines how parenthood shapes life satisfaction, before turning to the hypotheses regarding how divergent relative earnings patterns and maternal status may further alter the trajectories of parental satisfaction. Since mothers – due to social norms and/or often to lower earnings than their partners – are primarily the ones who give precedence to their partner’s career, the study focuses on them as caregivers (Dex, 2004; Dotti Sani, 2015; Gershuny, 2000).

From studies conducted on parenthood, evidence reveals that parenthood has benefits (companionship, feeling useful/loved, meeting social expectations, life structure) and burdens (time and energy demands, financial concerns), which may counterbalance one another (Angeles, 2010; Glass et al., 2016; Hansen, 2012; Nomaguchi and Milkie, 2003; Pollmann-Schult, 2014). Cross-sectional findings are inconclusive as to whether rewards outweigh demands earlier or later in the parental life course (Clark and Georgellis, 2010; Nomaguchi, 2012; Umberson et al., 2010). One of the few longitudinal studies found that German parental life satisfaction declined throughout parenthood, particularly for mothers. Time-specialized mothers experienced greater life satisfaction than dual-earner mothers (Pollmann-Schult, 2014). However, it remains to be seen whether the same relationship holds if we follow mothers with divergent relative earnings patterns across the parental life course.

On the one hand, upon entering parenthood, a pattern in which the higher-earner specializes in paid work (having a comparative advantage), and the other partner in unpaid work, maximizes the couples’ joint financial output, leads to less work–life role conflict and to less time strain (Becker, 1991; Hochschild and Machung, 1989; Nomaguchi et al., 2005). Qualitative research suggests that, particularly early in life, motherhood can replace the lost functions of employment, such as a sense of identity, time structure, social contacts, feelings of usefulness and meaning in life (Jahoda, 1982; Jahoda et al., 1972; Rao, 2020).

However, this article argues that the advantages to specialization decline across the parental life course, as the balance between rewards and demands shifts. Over time, the caregiver’s earnings potential declines, resulting in increased financial dependence on the main breadwinner (Oppenheimer, 1997). Eventually, main earners may defer the less rewarding, unpaid work to their partners, simply because of their higher financial bargaining power (rather than both proactively wanting to defer the unpaid work to the mother) (Lundberg and Pollak, 1993). The extra load at home, in turn, becomes an obstacle to the caregiver’s re-employment. Furthermore, qualitative and cross-sectional US studies show that caregivers’ sense of purpose, time structure and relationship satisfaction with their children, and time spent with children, decline as they age (Meier et al., 2018; Nomaguchi, 2012; Rao, 2020). Consequently, the caregiver (mother) increasingly underbenefits. Underbenefiting has, in turn, been shown to result in anger and sadness (Guerrero et al., 2008). Hence:

H1: Mothers’ life satisfaction will decline if they pursue an (eventually) unequal earnings (Specialization) pattern.

By contrast, for Equal Earnings mothers, demands outweigh rewards early in the life course. Qualitative and quantitative studies confirm: even when out-earning their husbands, mothers – unlike fathers – work a second unpaid shift alongside their career, as they are socialized into ‘doing gender’ with ‘gender trump[ing] money’ (Bittman et al., 2003; Hochschild and Machung, 1989; West and Zimmerman, 1987). Moreover, it is mostly mothers who face normative expectations surrounding good mothering (Collins, 2019). Hence, particularly during early parenthood, when time and normative demands – and, as a result, the opportunity costs for being at work – are still high, employed mothers in Equal Earnings couples may feel work–life conflict and guilt over not meeting normative expectations surrounding good motherhood (Blair-Loy, 2003).

Yet, as children grow up, they require less maternal time investment, with school – unlike nursery attendance – becoming compulsory. This results in greater social acceptance for mothers to work and parenthood becomes less stressful and time-demanding (Nomaguchi, 2012; Steiber and Haas, 2010). At this point, the decreasing day and social structure which motherhood used to provide is maintained or increasingly filled through employment (Jahoda et al., 1972: ch. 7). Financial independence makes mothers feel less of a burden in the relationship and the maintained worker’s identity may provide an important void-filler of an increasingly empty nest (Oppenheimer, 1997). Equitable outcomes in a relationship result in higher marital satisfaction (Guerrero et al., 2008). Hence:

H2: Mothers’ life satisfaction in an Equal Earnings pattern will not decrease. As a result, in late parenthood, it will be higher than the life satisfaction of mothers in a specialized pattern.

Moving from Specialization to Equal Earnings may become financially attractive as the comparative advantage may shift again: the returns of an additional hour spent on childcare decrease as children become more independent. The main earner may have reached the highest career position, and hence – unlike the caregiver – may have little room to further increase his earnings.

Furthermore, this article argues that high-status mothers’ parenting and career demands are intensely more competitive. Consequently, maternal status may play an important role in how mothers deal with earnings (in)equality. Early in the parental life course, Equal Earnings high-status mothers face higher opportunity cost: often being partnered with equally high earners, their employment may become an optional ‘luxury’ (Rao, 2020). US qualitative work showed that for high-status families, mothers staying out of the labour force was judged more valuable to families than mothers returning to work as it enabled status-maintenance through intense parenting (Stone and Lovejoy, 2019: 173). Quantitative studies confirm the link between high status and more intensive parenting (Altintas, 2016; McLanahan, 2004). Unsurprisingly, mothers pursuing intensive parenting, felt more guilt when working (Collins, 2019). However, as the child grows up, mothers’ employment is seen as less harmful to a child’s development (Steiber and Haas, 2010). In contrast, low-status mothers’ employment may be an economic necessity for the family.

Specializing high-status mothers, with their high career ambitions, may find it harder to manage the higher ‘status’ loss in the work sphere, along with the loss in their financial independence. They gain less, finding parenthood/motherhood less fulfilling, and are more likely to feel stuck in their role as mothers than low-educated mothers according to US studies (Blair-Loy, 2003; Nomaguchi and Brown, 2011).

Consequently, it is expected that:

H3: In late parenthood, mothers with a (formerly) high-occupational status will experience a bigger divergence in life satisfaction patterns than low-status mothers.

Fathers are normatively expected to be the main providers, and over-benefiting or equitable benefiting has not been associated with divergent marital satisfaction (Guerrero et al., 2008). Hence:

H4: For fathers, there will be no difference in life satisfaction between the Equal Earnings pattern and in patterns where he is (eventually) the main earner (Specialization) in late life.

On the methodological side, besides adding the life-course angle to short-term quantitative studies focusing on early parenthood, the article moves beyond the above small-N non-random qualitative samples often employed to study this topic. It moves beyond the predominant US focus, by looking at how relative earnings affect couples in a conservative normative regime.

West Germany between 1984 and 2005

This article focuses on parents whose youngest child was born into a fairly conservative normative regime (between 1984 and 2005, with only 12% of the sample born post-2001). Agreement with the statement ‘family life suffers when women have full-time jobs’ increased from 59% in 1988 to 62% in 1994, and only gradually dropped to 48% in 2002 (and to 39% in 2012). Agreement with ‘a pre-school child suffers if the mother works’ decreased from 72% in 1988 to 56% in 2002 (and to 37.6% in 2012) (ISSP, 1990, 1997, 2016). Yet, importantly, the expectations of maternal availability – and hence the strain associated with conforming these expectations – diverged across the parental life course: in 2002, 52% said women should stay at home for children under school age, but only 16% posed this as a requirement when children were at school (International Social Survey Programme: Family and Changing Gender Roles III; ISSP, 2002, 2013). The research was being conducted at a time when West Germany’s familial policies were still largely focused on ‘complementary gender roles fostering the idea of male breadwinning and female home-based care for smaller children’ (Ostner, 2010: 212) – before generous paid parental leave and a right to low-cost childcare was introduced (Deutsche Bundesregierung, 2017; OECD, 2017). Childcare participation for ages 0–2 was 9% in 2001, increasing to 32.2% only in 2014 (OECD, 2017). In this environment of low national family policy support, parents are generally less satisfied than non-parents (Glass et al., 2016). In a recent cross-country qualitative study, a deficient work–family policy was also related to mothers feeling less satisfied with their work–life balance (Collins, 2019).

Methods

Data and sample

This article used the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP; version 34, spanning 1984–2017 for West Germany, and even though East Germany has historically been more supportive of maternal employment and had a different division of work, sample sizes were too small to compare the two sides), an annual household panel study. The data (DOI: 10.5684/soep.v34) were made available by the German SOEP study at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW). It surveys every household member above age 16 (Frick and Grabka, 2014: 8), and the analytic sample was restricted to parents with minor children in the household, with only heterosexual couples surveyed. Moreover, to investigate long-term changes, only couples who had a relative earnings observation when the youngest child was between 1 and 3 years and 12 and 15 years old, along with having been allocated to the groups of interest (Permanent Specialization, Eventual Specialization, Eventually Equal, and Permanently Equal couples), were included. To capture periods of unemployment among the specialized couples, the non-working individuals were kept and recorded as having zero earnings.¹ This resulted in a subsample of 384 couples and 5094 couple-years.

Dependent variable: Life satisfaction across the parental life course

The dependent variable used was: ‘How satisfied are you with your life, all things considered?’. The annual measure ranged from 0 (‘completely dissatisfied’) to 10 (‘completely satisfied’). It has been demonstrated to have a .74 test-retest reliability in the SOEP (Lucas and Donnellan, 2012: 328). Domain satisfaction was not used because satisfaction with family life may have excluded satisfaction with employment decisions. Work satisfaction assessments exclude periods of unemployment. In addition, both were available only from 2006 onwards.

Key independent variable: A new typology of coupled relative earnings dynamics

Instead of using static single-time-point measures or averages, across several years (Blom et al., 2017; Stutzer and Frey, 2006), this article uses a dynamic relative earnings typology, which allows couples to switch between different forms of specialization. The time-axis, along which these dynamics were followed, was the age of the youngest (biological or non-biological) child observed in the data. The youngest child was chosen, for the time-axis, because it is the child which requires most parental time, and is, hence, likely to determine when parents move away from specialization. To create this typology, first, a dyadic couple-level measure of relative earnings was created:

\begin{array}{l} H i s S h a r e i n M o n t h l y D e f l a t e d I n c o m e = (H i s M o n t h l y I n c o m e) \\ / (H i s + H e r M o n t h l y I n c o m e) \end{array}

Values above 50% indicated that the father earned more in time t. Then the lowest share, in joint earnings, the father had achieved between ages 1 and 3, 4 and 12, and 12 and 15 of the youngest child, was calculated.

Subsequently, four types of couples were distinguished (Figure 1): (1) ‘Permanent Specialization’, meaning couples always prioritized the father’s career (father’s share of earnings always 100%); (2) ‘Eventual Specialization’, meaning couples moved from an equal earnings arrangement into investing predominantly in the father’s career (father’s share of earnings below 100% initially and 100% at the last observation); (3) ‘Eventually Equal’ couples moved from prioritizing the father back into an equal earnings arrangement during the observation period (father’s share of joint earnings above 60% between ages 1 and 3, and moving to a 40%–60% share); and (4) ‘Permanently Equal’ couples maintained equal earnings throughout parenthood (lowest share of joint earnings ranged between 40% and 60% across all three periods). These categories explicitly capture changes across the life course. The article focused on the most extreme forms of equity and specialization, since they offer maximum challenge at various stages, but also maximum rewards (i.e. high pressure but high equality versus low time pressure but eventually loss of maternal financial independence and career prospects). They are akin to categories created by sequence analysis, in that heterogeneity is modelled, before influences on the various types are explored.

Figure 1.

Example of couples’ earnings patterns across parental life course.

Third, these four types were used as an independent variable to understand how a mother’s and a father’s life satisfaction evolved differently across the parental life course, depending on the type of earnings pattern pursued. By tracking both the independent and dependent variables by the youngest child’s age, one could see how parental shifts in satisfaction related to (a) the child’s life course, (b) the parental coupled earnings types and (c) the two sexes.

Among all types of couples, it is assumed that they will move into the category with which they are most satisfied (e.g. move into inequality if equal arrangements were too dissatisfying and vice versa). This is exactly the reason why the distinction between ‘Eventually’ and ‘Permanently’, among the two patterns, was made. After all, among the Eventual Specialization couples, the same couples were observed pre- and post-specialization. If compared to Permanently Equal couples, Eventual Specialization couples’ life satisfaction is only lower towards the end, suggesting that the specialization was, indeed, the likely driver for dissatisfaction. Following the same individuals further captures the life satisfaction start and end points of these individuals over time (which a one-point-in-time analysis would not).

Time-invariant controls

The reforms of the 1990s, which extended maternity leave, have been shown to affect maternal labour market attitudes towards maternal employment and maternal labour market behaviour (Gangl and Ziefle, 2015). Accordingly, the child’s birth cohort was categorized based on changes in family policy: pre-1988; 1989–1991 (15–18 months’ parental leave); 1992–2000 (156 weeks’ parental leave); and 2001–2005 (third year of leave to be taken separately before the child’s eighth birthday). Furthermore, maternal and paternal age at the child’s birth (age < 26; 26–30; 31–35; 36+) were controlled, because older parents experienced a slightly stronger increase in happiness through parenthood (Myrskylä and Margolis, 2014). It further captured the parents’ career investment stage when their youngest child was born. Relative education, which may affect relative satisfaction, derived from either arrangement, was also controlled for (mother tertiary, father tertiary, both tertiary, none tertiary).

Time-varying controls

Time-varying controls were included as current values because within-person mean and deviation from the within-person mean would have implied ‘an effect from events that occur in the future’ (Snijders and Bosker, 2012: 258). To understand each partner’s dual burden, weekly housework and childcare hours on an average weekday (weekends were not measured in each wave) in t, and actual working hours in t, were added together. Furthermore, the number of children (excluding grandchildren) aged 18 and below, living in the household during the first point of observation (1, 2, 3+), may affect both the time pressure faced by parents and the financial costs of raising a family. Household income quartile in t may further affect the couple’s satisfaction with time invested in work and rewards received. Resources to outsource household tasks may counterbalance stress, resulting from high work-hour investment. Because couples’ joint taxes vary, the deflated net household income was chosen as a measure and was divided into year-specific quartiles.

The analysis further controlled for demographics affecting life satisfaction and/or labour market outcomes in general: marriage has been shown to have a positive effect on satisfaction (Brown, 2004). Therefore, a dummy capturing marriage during the observation window, along with a variable for years of marriage, were included to control declines in satisfaction over time. Health may affect both satisfaction and work (Kalmijn and Monden, 2012; Pollmann-Schult, 2014). Subjective, rather than objective, rating of health is likely to affect life satisfaction. The variable was split into low (0–4), medium (5–7) and high (8–10) health satisfaction. Both individual and spousal health were included, as one partner’s low health may affect the other’s work-hour investment and life satisfaction.

Model: A dynamic-dyadic approach to gendered parental life-course effects

This study seeks to understand whether earnings inequality within couples can be a major driver of dissatisfaction, and if its effects can be mediated by maternal status, across the parental life course.

To understand whether life satisfaction trajectories evolved differently across the parental life course, depending on the coupled career type, a two-level dyadic model for longitudinal data was used (Raudenbush et al., 1995). In its most basic form, the model consists of two growth curves – one for the father and one for the mother, over time. The responses of each member of the couple were the Level 1 units, which were nested within the Level 2 unit, the couple (dyad) (Lyons and Sayer, 2005). A random couple-level intercept, along with a covariance between the male and the female slope within the couple, accounted for within-couple dependencies over time, resulting in more accurate standard errors (Lyons and Sayer, 2005).²

In the analysis, satisfaction in t was the dependent variable, and the four parental career investment trajectories of interest (Eventually/Permanently Equal, Eventual/Permanent Specialization) were the main independent variables.

In the baseline model, on Level 1, the within-couple variation in satisfaction is described:

Y_{i t} = {(f e m a l e)}_{i t} [π_{f 0 i} + π_{f 1 i} {(l i n e a r)}_{i t} + π_{f 2 i} {(q u a d r a t i c)}_{i t}] + {(m a l e)}_{i t} [π_{m 0 i} + π_{m 1 i} {(l i n e a r)}_{i t} + π_{m 2 i} {(q u a d r a t i c)}_{i t}] + ε_{i t},

where $i$ represents the dyad (couple) and $t$ the age of the youngest child, which was centred at the birth of the youngest child. $Y_{i t}$ represents the life satisfaction at a given time; $π_{f 0 i}$ / $π_{m 0 i}$ the female/male intercept at age 0; $π_{f 1 i}$ / $π_{m 1 i}$ the female/male linear change as the child ages; and $π_{f 2 i}$ / $π_{m 2 i}$ the quadratic change.

On Level 2, the variation between couples in these parameters is shown, which already included the four coupled earnings types in the baseline model (Specialization versus Equal Earnings couples), as this was the main variable of interest:

π_{f 0 i} = β_{f 00} + β_{f 01} {(C o u p l e d C a r e e r T y p e)}_{i}

π_{f 1 i} = β_{f 10} + β_{f 01} {(C o u p l e d C a r e e r T y p e)}_{i} + μ_{f 1 i}

π_{f 2 i} = β_{f 20} + β_{f 21} {(C o u p l e d C a r e e r T y p e)}_{i}

π_{m 0 i} = β_{m 00} + β_{m 01} {(C o u p l e d C a r e e r T y p e)}_{i}

π_{m 1 i} = β_{m 10} + β_{m 11} {(C o u p l e d C a r e e r T y p e)}_{i} + μ_{m 1 i}

π_{m 2 i} = β_{m 20} + β_{m 21} {(C o u p l e d C a r e e r T y p e)}_{i}

Further details on the model can be found in Lyons and Sayer’s study (2005). To understand how the coupled career type–parental life satisfaction relationship was shaped by maternal status, an interaction with the highest status the mother ever achieved, during the observation period (noting that the variable in the SOEP is coded as the ‘last achieved’ rather than current class), was included in the fixed part of the model. To this end, the highest observed Erikson–Goldthorpe–Portocarero class indicator distinguished mothers in a managerial or professional position (classes I and II) from the rest (classes III–VII). This allowed maternal earnings potential to be captured without having to reduce the sample size further, by considering actual pre-parenthood earnings.³

Results

Descriptive statistics

Table 1 shows the significant variations in the independent variables (insignificant variables across groups could have still affected satisfaction over time and, therefore, were still included in the model) across the different relative earnings trajectories. Compared to Eventual Specialization and Permanent Specialization couples, Permanently Equal and Eventually Equal couples’ mothers were significantly more likely to: be in a managerial position, have their youngest child in the most recent birth cohort, not belong in the top quartiles of household incomes, and belong to a more educated demographic.

Table 1.

Descriptive statistics: Final observation year (except children).

	Permanently Equal Earnings	Eventually Equal Earnings	Eventual Specialization	Permanent Specialization	Total
Mother ever in managerial position**
No	52.38	48.03	61.67	75.00	55.78
Yes	47.62	51.97	38.33	25.00	44.22
Total	(63)	(127)	(60)	(44)	(294)
No. of children (not grandchildren) in household during first observation**
1	31.75	24.80	17.24	17.29	22.16
2	58.73	48.00	51.72	42.86	48.55
3+	9.52	27.20	31.03	39.85	29.29
Total	(63)	(125)	(58)	(133)	(379)
Got married during observation period*
No (0)	96.83	92.91	96.72	98.50	96.09
Yes (1)	3.17	7.09	3.28	1.50	3.91
Total	(63)	(127)	(61)	(133)	(384)
Youngest child’s birth cohort***
< 1988	49.21	35.43	63.93	38.35	43.23
1989–1991	14.29	12.60	9.84	12.03	12.24
1992–2000	15.87	34.65	21.31	42.11	32.03
2001+	20.63	17.32	4.92	7.52	12.50
Total	(63)	(127)	(61)	(133)	(384)
Net household income quartile*
First (lowest)	12.90	16.54	23.33	29.32	21.47
Second	29.03	34.65	31.67	27.07	30.63
Third	33.87	35.43	30.00	20.30	29.06
Fourth (highest)	24.19	13.39	15.00	23.31	18.85
Total	(62)	(127)	(60)	(133)	(382)
Relative education***
Both tertiary	16.13	10.57	6.56	5.47	9.09
Mother tertiary	14.52	6.50	6.56	0.78	5.88
Father tertiary	6.45	7.32	3.28	19.53	10.70
Neither tertiary	62.90	75.61	83.61	74.22	74.33
Total	(62)	(123)	(61)	(128)	(374)

Notes: Values refer to last observation except for number of children and the time-invariant managerial position measure. Chi-squared test: *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.

Source: SOEP, v.34.

As expected (Table 2), mothers in the Equal Earnings patterns bore a very high share of weekday childcare, housework and paid work hours (56–57 hours). These amounted to 18–27 hours more than mothers in an (Eventual) Specialization arrangement. In contrast, fathers worked about 49–52 hours across all patterns. The dual maternal burden in couples with Equal Earnings was further reflected in mothers spending 4 hours more than men on housework, childcare and paid work during the week (this only accounts for the final year of observation, when children were no longer very young). Childcare decreased from between 6 and 10 hours down to 1–2 hours per weekday for mothers from the first to the final observation (results available upon request).

Table 2.

Descriptive statistics.

	Permanently Equal	Eventually Equal	Eventual Specialization	Permanent Specialization
Mother’s weekly housework (weekdays only) + childcare (weekdays only) + paid work hours
Mean	56.47	56.53	29.49	38.26
(SD)	(10.97)	(18.76)	(15.61)	(25.42)
Total	59	118	59	129
Father’s weekly housework (weekdays only) + childcare (weekdays only) + paid work hours
Mean	52.57	52.46	48.69	48.74
(SD)	(12.67)	(12.46)	(11.65)	(11.12)
Total	53	116	56	118

Note: Values refer to last observation.

Source: SOEP, v.34.

The fact that Eventually Equal couples sorted differently into various coupled education patterns, underscored the importance of distinguishing between Permanently and Eventually Equal couples across the parental life course. The differential sorting among the characteristics within coupled career types, underlined the importance of including them as a control. The likelihood ratio test further showed that removing the controls significantly decreased the goodness of fit.

Multivariate results

The first goal of the study was to explore how each of the four coupled career types shaped the life satisfaction trajectory of mothers (Figure 2). Owing to the number of interactions, tables would have been hard to interpret. Therefore, predictive margins were used to plot the various curves. Since the patterns were so different, the figure distinguishes between low-status and high-status mothers in a managerial/professional position.

Figure 2.

Mothers’ current life satisfaction by coupled earnings type and mothers’ occupational status – predictive margins.

As expected (Figure 2), mothers, irrespective of status, who pursued an unequal Specialization pattern (grey curves), experienced a decline of 0.5–2 in life satisfaction points. The controls reduced some of this decline in life satisfaction. However, particularly for high-status mothers, a significant 1–1.4-point decline was still observable. Similarly, low-status mothers who pursued an Eventual Specialization pattern, experienced a significant 1.2-point decline. Interestingly, and against expectations, Permanent Specialization was associated with no significant decline for low-status mothers.

In contrast, as expected, the life satisfaction of mothers in an Equal Earnings pattern did not decline significantly: high-status mothers followed an upward or u-shaped life satisfaction trajectory, while it remained visually stable for low-status mothers.

Formal significance tests in Figure 3 (by examining the contrasts in predictive margins) confirmed the third hypothesis, that a mother’s status further affected how strongly her life satisfaction differed between Earnings Equality or Specialization: high-status mothers were significantly more satisfied in Eventually and Permanently Equal Earnings patterns (black curves) and, by the age of 15 of the youngest child, life satisfaction was between 1 and 2 points higher than for mothers in Specialization patterns (grey curves). As expected, when the couple moved in and out of specialized patterns affected when they were comparatively more satisfied: Permanently Equal Earnings were associated with significantly higher life satisfaction from age 3 of the youngest child onward, when compared to Permanent Specialization, yet only from age 8 onwards when compared to Eventual Specialization. Similarly, the reverse held true: for those moving into an Equal Earnings pattern, life satisfaction was higher only later in the parental life course (age 10–13 onwards).

Figure 3.

Mothers’ current life satisfaction by coupled earnings trajectory type, with high-status mothers – contrasts of predictive margins (95% confidence interval).

In contrast to low-status mothers who pursued (Eventually) Equal Earnings, those pursuing an Eventual Specialization pattern were 1.1–1.2 points less satisfied. Unexpectedly, however, life satisfaction curves for Equal Earnings mothers were not significantly different from those following the Permanent Specialization pattern. However, this confirms that life satisfaction reactions to earnings (in-)equality may be less pronounced for low than for high-status mothers.

When directly contrasting the life satisfaction curves for the Equal and Specialization coupled earnings patterns, as expected, no significant differences emerged for fathers later in life (Figure 4).

Figure 4.

Fathers’ current life satisfaction by coupled earnings type and mothers’ occupational status – predictive margins.

Robustness checks

Since education may have been too strongly correlated with the occupational status variable, Figures 3 and 4 were re-run, without relative education. The results did not change.

This article was interested in the most extreme forms of Earnings Inequality/Equality. The first robustness check broadened the sample-definition with another 700 couples, by also looking at couples whose earnings were Permanently or Eventually > 60% and < 80% of the joint earnings (He Career, She Job) and the Permanently or Eventually One Career, One Side Job couples in which the male partner eventually earns 81–99% (see online supplementary material: Figure A1). High and low-status mothers in Intermediate Equality groups also experienced a life satisfaction decline, but none quite so sharply (many changes were insignificant) as the Specialization patterns. Supporting the idea that Specialization leaves high-status mothers less satisfied, they were more satisfied in any other type of Intermediate Equality pattern, late in life, when contrasted with both Eventual and Permanent Specialization. However, the difference in life satisfaction between Specialization and Intermediate Equality patterns was less pronounced (e.g. 1.2 points for the Permanent He Career, She Side Job pattern versus 2 points for the (more equal) Permanently Equal pattern). This was the exact opposite of low-status mothers, for whom Intermediate Equality made no difference when contrasted with the Specialization patterns.

For low-status fathers, life satisfaction was no different even when contrasted with the Intermediate Earnings groups. However, fathers whose partners had obtained a high status, had lower levels of life satisfaction in late parenthood if the couple eventually specialized, when contrasted with Eventual/Permanent He Career, She Job and Eventual He Career, She Side Job (unlike Permanent Specialization where this effect was not apparent) (results available upon request).

A further robustness check was conducted with the use of a simpler model: a two-time-point specification capturing the linear change between ages 3 and 13, thereby excluding the quadratic term and random slopes. In the simpler model spanning a shorter time (age 3 to age 13), only high-status mothers in the (Eventual) Specialization patterns experienced a significant decline in life satisfaction (1.6–1.9 points). Confirming the findings in the main text, again – there was no significant decrease in the simpler two-time-point model among mothers pursuing an Equal Earnings pattern. A direct contrast of the t3–t13 slopes showed: unlike for low-status mothers, the decline in life satisfaction for the (Eventual/Permanent) Specialization patterns of high-status mothers was significantly steeper and age 13 life satisfaction significantly higher (e.g. 2.3 points if you contrast Permanent Specialization with Permanent Equality) than the maintenance of (Eventual/Permanent) Earnings Equality (results available upon request).

Discussion and conclusion

Couples seek to understand: Is the grass greener – in terms of life satisfaction attained – on the Equal Earnings side, or are they better situated in an arrangement where one partner is the main earner (Specialization)? What about intermediate solutions? The answer to this question is far from clear and has been surprisingly overlooked.

As expected, mothers who gave total precedence to their partner’s career (specialized), experienced a decline in life satisfaction across the parental life course. In contrast, as expected, Equal Earners’ life satisfaction did not decline, underlining that satisfaction derived from parenthood may evolve differently, depending on the different coupled earnings types (Equal Earnings versus Specialization).

This supports this article’s arguments: early in life, for specialized mothers, motherhood may replace lost functions of employment (identity, feeling useful, time structure, social structure) (Jahoda, 1982; Jahoda et al., 1972; Rao, 2020). Less role conflict and time pressure may be advantageous at this point. However, the article adds to the literature by demonstrating that the satisfaction derived from the same specialized coupled earnings type may decline (within the same couple) as children grow older. An explanation may be that rewards (relationship satisfaction with children, feeling useful) and demands (time and energy demands) associated with parenthood decline (Meier et al., 2018; Nomaguchi, 2012). What is particularly striking is that – while the decrease in life satisfaction resultant from other life-shattering events, such as losing your partner (widowhood), is generally followed by an increase in life satisfaction – losing one’s economic independence vis-a-vis the partner was associated with a permanent decline: life satisfaction did not bounce back (Diener et al., 2013).

As assumed, particularly high-status mothers became increasingly dissatisfied in a specialized pattern as their child grew up. The 1.4-point drop in life satisfaction, which high-status specializing mothers experienced, is far from trivial: it is slightly larger than the effect of life-shattering events, such as widowhood, on life satisfaction (Diener et al., 2013; Langner and Furstenberg, 2019). This information, combined, suggests that increasing economic marginalization vis-a-vis your partner can prove to be particularly dissatisfying if combined with a high-status loss. As children grow older, the satisfaction derived from the sense of purpose and time structure of childrearing may gradually disappear – as a qualitative US study on college-educated mothers shows: ‘motherhood becomes a less desirable means of [replacing] these latent functions of employment. Mothers often long to return to employment’ (Rao, 2020: 312). The findings are in line with quantitative research showing that a decrease in relative income decreases women’s well-being and marital happiness (Rogers and DeBoer, 2001), and corroborate findings showing that women’s underbenefiting is associated with sadness and higher depressive symptoms (Guerrero et al., 2008; Kalmijn and Monden, 2012).

In contrast, when children were older, high-status mothers who maintained equal earnings were comparatively ‘Happy Working Mums’, even if they only pursued Intermediate Equality (aka a one-and-a-half earner model). Though the less equal the earnings within the couple, the less satisfied they were.

Consequently, high-status mothers who specialized had significantly lower levels of life satisfaction than those who maintained or regained an Equal Earnings pattern later in parenthood. This remained the case, even when controlling for their dual burden, in terms of work and family commitments, and for the financial burden in terms of number of children and household finances. Even attaining Intermediate-Equal Earnings was associated with higher life satisfaction later in life than the pursuit of an (eventual) sole male-breadwinner model for high-status mothers.

In contrast, for low-status mothers, life satisfaction trajectories were not significantly different between the Equal, Intermediate-Equal and Specialization patterns. Moreover, one intriguing exception to the increasingly desperate housewife phenomenon was found: low-status mothers who remained housewives throughout the period of observation did not experience a drop in life satisfaction. Possibly, low-status mothers derive more satisfaction from motherhood, and may feel less maternal role captivity, as some studies suggest (Nomaguchi and Brown, 2011; Stone and Lovejoy, 2019). A lower level of achievement may be the result of lower career ambitions early in life, resulting in fewer earnings losses when unemployed. A lack of alternatives due to financial constraints (maybe childcare options were too expensive) may further have meant no regrets. The different experiences of low- and high-status mothers demonstrate that we need to move beyond elite-experiences, which many qualitative studies focus on.

When directly contrasting the life satisfaction curves for the Equal and Specialization coupled earnings patterns, no significant differences in life satisfaction emerged for fathers later on in life.

Of course, like all research projects, this study has some limitations. For the analysis, a long observation was preferred over shorter observation windows with larger sample sizes: this was necessary in order to examine life-course coupled earnings patterns, and to enable a comparison of early to late life satisfaction among the same couples. Internal validity of the relationship at hand was favoured over wider generalizability for this article. Low-income couples may be more dependent on one another and hence less likely to divorce. However, the life satisfaction patterns were similar for low-status and high-status mothers and actually more (rather than less) pronounced for the latter, suggesting that these are conservative estimates. The article looks at associations – some unobserved variable may also be driving the results. Future studies could look at other countries to see if the same relationship holds.

From a policy standpoint, policies aimed at fostering more equal earnings, do indeed have the potential to make couples more satisfied in the long run: mothers in Equal Earnings arrangements were more satisfied with their lives than those who eventually gave precedence to their partners’ careers. Since fathers were relatively unaffected or even more satisfied (e.g. in the Intermediate Earnings patterns) than in the Specialization patterns, it suggests that raising earnings equality can come at no overall life satisfaction cost to the couple.

This article selected couples whose children were born under the male breadwinner regime, with little support for dual earners. Given recent shifts in German policies (combating within-couple specialization by incentivizing both parents to work part-time, extending paid parental leave only if both partners take it, establishing the right to childcare at relatively low costs), one can suspect that equal earner couples may be even more satisfied in the future (Deutscher Bundestag, 2006).

Supplemental Material

sj-pdf-1-wes-10.1177_0950017020971548 – Supplemental material for Desperate Housewives and Happy Working Mothers: Are Parent-Couples with Equal Income More Satisfied throughout Parenthood? A Dyadic Longitudinal Study

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-wes-10.1177_0950017020971548 for Desperate Housewives and Happy Working Mothers: Are Parent-Couples with Equal Income More Satisfied throughout Parenthood? A Dyadic Longitudinal Study by Laura Langner in Work, Employment and Society

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Jonathan Gershuny and Professor Anette Fasang and the Writing Workshop at Humboldt University / WZB, Berlin and the reviewers for their excellent comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research is part of Dr Laura Langner’s Future Research Leaders project ‘What Makes Dual Career Couples Work?’, supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (grant number ES/N001575/1).

ORCID iD

Laura Langner

Supplementary material

Supplementary material is available online with this article.

Notes

Laura Langner is an Associate Member at the Department of Sociology, University of Oxford. She researches solutions to how parent-couples can thrive in their career and private life – particularly during the ‘rush hour’ when children are young and time is scarce.

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