Posted on 10/10/2008 12:18:48 PM PDT by reaganaut1
[W]ives don't need income to wield power in their marriages. And mothers don't have much reason to fear losing power if they're not bringing home an equal share of the bacon. A Pew Research Center study released a couple of weeks ago found that when it comes to decision making in the home, wives in a majority of cases either rule the roost or share power equally with their husbands, regardless of how much money the women earn.
...
[C]onsumer research shows that with the exception of what car to buy and when to buy it, men rarely claim strong enough feelings to override their wives.
"Across all decision-making realms, it tilts to the woman," noted Rich Morin, the Pew study's lead author. "I was surprised by the percentage of men who made none of the decisions in any of the areas. A significant percentage were just bystanders." Not surprisingly, one reason men say they are willing to acquiesce in their spouses' wishes is that their wives usually have greater knowledge of the day-to-day activities and needs of the home than they do. They trust their wives' choices the way they would any specialist's. But what is rather unexpected is the deeper (and much sweeter) reason men have for giving in to their wives: They want them to be happy, or at least they don't want to be responsible for making them unhappy.
The general consensus of sociologists is that, whereas a woman's marital satisfaction is dependent on a combination of economic, emotional and psychological realities, a man's marital satisfaction is most determined by one factor: how happy his wife is. When she is happy, he is.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Oct 26th is our wedding anniversary as well as Bosses Day...
I usually get my wife two presents. :)
I’m the head of my house and my wife lets me say so too!
Darn good thing the date is on the inside of the wedding ring.
I could post a picture of the one little thing that gives ladies all the power but I'd be banned for life.
This is news? Sheesh...she doesn’t wear my eagles, but otherwise, I’m just fine with her choices (because the vast majority of the time and on the majority of topics, it matters more to her than it does to me).
Colonel, USAFR
That’s exactly the way it works in my home. My husband chooses the car, I choose almost everything else (well, I buy him a bag of chips once in a while, LOL). Seriously, he doesn’t really care about the other decisions, and he knows I would never choose anything he hated or felt strongly about. But he never does feel too strongly about household decisions, in the domestic realm, as long as I don’t buy dinky foo-foo furniture that he’d be uncomfortable in.
My hubby goes to work and either weed wacks or mows.
I do everything else and homeschool my kids.
All decisions in the house are on Dad’s final word. But most of them I make myself.
He is King of the Castle and should not have to worry about the little things.
The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Whose hand is rocking YOUR child’s cradle?
Working mom's too. If I've learned one thing in almost 25 years of marriage it's this: If momma ain't happy, ain't nobody going to be happy.
In my household my wife makes all the small decisions, and I make all the big decisions.
She decides where we will live, what kind of house we are going to have, what kinds of cars we are going to drive, where our kids will go to school, where we will vacation, and how much money we each need to make to afford all this. You know, the small decisions.
I make all the big decisions, like my family’s position on world peace, and whether we will send an emmisary to the Vatican, and whether the Kyoto Protocol is something we can sign up to. The big decisions are all mine.
ping
“A man’s marital satisfaction is most determined by one factor: how happy his wife is. When she is happy, he is.”
You have that right!
My husband’s only concerns about purchases for the kids decisions: how much does it cost?
Only exception is medical - when the questions are “how much did it cost?” and “Do you have to go back?” and “how the *$%&* did that happen to you, kid?”
Same here.
I let my wife handle all the day-to-day decisions. I save my clout for the big stuff. :)
My DH tends to agree with Bill Cosby. He’s seen the bosses job, and he doesn’t want it. And we all know that if momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy....
Sheesh. As if this is breaking news. These people need to get out more.
You obviously have a true sense of your worth!
Raucous applause for you.
It’s been statistically shown that men’s incomes go way up after they’re married, because they have the support structure at home to take care of the day to day stuff while they advance their careers.
Stay at home moms may not “bring in” the income, but they sure enhance it, and they control more of the spending decisions than the man does. I’d say I decide less than 10% of our budget.
I sell books. 90% of my customers are women. They don’t just buy for themselves, they buy for the whole family.
My sister is married to an Army guy and she makes nearly all the finacial decisions. They don’t fight about money too much and when they do I gotta laugh it is usaully over something small not the huge purchases.
I save my clout for the big stuff. :)
...like whether to take out the trash or mow the lawn?
His kids (my two step-sons) are grown and married, so no kid decisions to make anymore. The only disagreement we ever had was that I’m a neat freak and he’s a bit of a pig, which I can deal with except in the bathroom, so we have separate bathrooms now. I got the master one, he gets the small one near his office :)
All he wants is a comfortable, peaceful home, and that’s my forte.
A man gets to choose who to make his wife. After that, most of the decisions are hers. :)
At their core, people are actually very simple.
Women want to feel appreciated, secure, and desired.
Shocker..men want the same thing.
The couples that actually give those things to each other (or at least work towards it everyday) live happily ever after. Those who don't...don't.
And yes, stress to your baby girl to wait until she's married. It's worth it.
I’ll have to be a nonconformist on this. I encourage my husband to make as many decisions as possible, because it wears me out having to be responsible for them all. I don’t mind doing the work, but I want him to take ownership the family’s on decisions bigger than, “Do I get 50 rolls of toilet paper or 100?”
For example, he took our 14-year-old son to the education consultant, and they decided together on our son’s 9th grade curriculum. I have no feelings about it - I just check the work. He asked me this morning if I wanted to meet for lunch today, and when I decided I did, I asked where he wanted to meet. He started listing options (as if I didn’t know) and I repeated, “Please tell me where to meet you.” It’s so much quicker than discussion every piddly little thing, and if I really care about a specific choice, I’ll say so immediately and in detail.
> You obviously have a true sense of your worth!
(big grin!) She even lets me be the Man of the House and wear the pants to prove it!
I like to wear a dress, myself.
But seriously, you’re an example of a real man who’s not afraid of women. It’s very attractive, in a strictly philosophical sense, of course. Pictures? ;-)
Then again, how would you tax something (like being the hand that rocks the cradle) that is priceless....
Well, especially in netmil’s case - homeschooling takes children out of their fascist indoctrination programs - they gotta hate that.
http://www.teara.govt.nz/NewZealanders/NewZealandPeoples/TheVoyageOut/11/ENZ-Resources/Standard/5/mi
Very nice. I’d trust you to formulate a position on the Kyoto treaty, too :-). And your wife has lovely red hair!
We are very fortunate Stay-At-Home-PARENTS. We both work from home. Our twins have never been away from us except once when my husband was on the Warped Tour for 3 weeks. I run the entire household from paying bills to cooking and cleaning. He draws cool pictures all day and mows/weeds every other week. It’s a perfect situation!
later....
“If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody going to be happy.”
That’s funny! I sure needed a good chuckle to end this miserable week with.
She’s a concert pianist, and when we met it was one of those impossibly-romantic whirlwind romances that they make chick-flick movies out of...
It's our tenth anniversary today, too!
And, if you stop and think about it, completely true.
I did not choose that huge 4000 dollar monster tv that takes up half the living room.
My husband goes to work everyday and I stay home. On payday I give him about $5 to last two weeks. I keep the rest.
it is really an issue of the following:
In a marriage the man wears the pants and the woman wears the dress...
Happy anniversary? Many more!
Oh poo!
Make that
Happy anniversary & Many more!
Not accurate. As one man wrote to Dr. Laura, and mentioned in her book, TPCFH, "If I'm not horny, make me a sandwich." Men are pretty simple.
I question the “decision” issues of this article.
It seems most of the financial decisions they may be talking about are the “don’t care” or “whatever” type.
If it really matters to the man he will speak up IF it is something he cares about. (ie different food, clothes smell too perfumy from the detergent, pink curtains...)
the old media is confusing TEAMWORK of a husband and wife for power.
a husband has no power without a wife.
a wife has no power without a husband.
united they have power over their household.
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