Marriage and Masculinity: Male-Breadwinner Culture, Unemployment, and Separation Risk in 29 Countries

Abstract

Scholars argue that gender culture, understood as a set of beliefs, norms, and social expectations defining masculinities and femininities, plays an important role in shaping when romantic relationships end. However, the relevance of gender culture is often underappreciated, in part because its empirical identification remains elusive. This study leverages cross-country variation in gender norms to test the hypothesis that gender culture conditions which heterosexual romantic relationships end and when. We analyze the extent to which male-breadwinning norms determine the association between men’s unemployment and couple separation. Using harmonized household panel data for married and cohabiting heterosexual couples in 29 countries from 2004 to 2014, our results provide robust evidence that male-breadwinner norms are a key driver of the association between men’s unemployment and the risk of separation. The magnitude of this mechanism is sizeable; an increase of one standard deviation in male-breadwinner norms increases the odds of separation associated with men’s unemployment by 32 percent. Analyses also show that the importance of male-breadwinner norms is strongest among couples for whom the male-breadwinner identity is most salient, namely married couples. By directly measuring and leveraging variation in the key explanatory of interest, gender culture, our study offers novel and robust evidence reinforcing the importance of gender norms to understand when romantic relationships end.

The effect of unemployment on couples separating in Germany and the UK

“…The experience of unemployment thus increased the risk of the couple breaking up by 50%. Our results are in line with earlier studies for Sweden (Eliason, 2012), the UK (Doiron & Mendolia, 2012), and a host of Western countries (Gonalons-Pons & Gangl, 2021;Solaz et al, 2020) which all find that unemployment increases the risk of divorce. However, our findings run contrary to the results provided by Charles and Stephens (2004) who did not find for the United States any significant effect on divorce after plant closure.…”

“…In Germany and the UK, the risk of separation was no larger for couples where men became unemployed than for couples where women became unemployed. Our results are consistent with the notion that where support for the male‐breadwinner norm is weak, men's and women's unemployment is equally likely to lead to union dissolution (Gonalons‐Pons & Gangl, 2021). In this sense, results for Germany and the UK over the last decade echo those of the Scandinavian countries with no gender difference in the impact of unemployment on union dissolution (Eliason, 2012; Hansen, 2005).…”

“…The extent of gender equality in work and family likely affects the extent of gender differences in the association between unemployment and union dissolution (Strandh et al, 2013). Gonalons‐Pons and Gangl (2021) show that in countries with more prevalent male‐breadwinner norms, the male partner's unemployment increases the risk of union dissolution more than does the female partner's unemployment. In a similar vein, unemployment seems to lead to an increase in divorce if witnessed by men, but not by women, in Denmark over the period 1979–1985 (Jensen & Smith, 1990).…”

“Appreciate the Little Things”: A Qualitative Survey of Men’s Coping Strategies and Mental Health Impacts During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Unemployment is often framed as a catalyst for distress among men, potentially due to men’s tendency to assume the social role of primary provider and/or breadwinner as a result of, at least in part, masculine socialization ( Courtenay, 2000 ; Seidler et al., 2021 ). In support of this notion, unemployed men are more likely to experience relationship breakdown and associated distress in countries that exhibit greater endorsement of male-breadwinner norms ( Gonalons-Pons & Gangl, 2021 ). Experiencing unemployment can therefore manifest as failure to provide for one’s family, and by extension, failure as a man ( Oliffe et al, 2011 ).…”

Felt deficits in time with children: Individual and contextual factors across 27 European countries

“…For reasons of data availability (see section on ‘Measures’), we measure gender attitudes based on the question ‘A job is alright, but what most women really want is a home and children’ (European Values Study 2017). Gender attitudes have been described as multidimensional (Grunow et al., 2018) and we acknowledge that a single‐item measure cannot cover them comprehensively, yet some recent work does use only one item to assess gendered contexts (Gonalons‐Pons & Gangl, 2021).…”