Do Millennial Men Want Stay-at-Home Wives?
Using a survey that has monitored the attitudes of high school seniors for nearly 40 years, the sociologists Joanna Pepin and David Cotter find that the proportion of young people holding egalitarian views about gender relationships rose steadily from 1977 to the mid-1990s but has fallen since. In 1994, only 42 percent of high school seniors agreed that the best family was one where the man was the main income earner and the woman took care of the home. But in 2014, 58 percent of seniors said they preferred that arrangement. In 1994, fewer than 30 percent of high school seniors thought “the husband should make all the important decisions in the family.” By 2014, nearly 40 percent subscribed to that premise.
A different survey found a similar trend, in this case concentrated mainly among men. In 1994, 83 percent of young men rejected the superiority of the male-breadwinner family. By 2014 that had fallen to 55 percent. Women’s disagreement fell far less, from 85 percent in 1994 to 72 percent in 2014. Since 1994, young women’s confidence that employed women are just as good mothers as stay-at-home moms has continued to inch up, but young men’s has fallen. In fact, by 2014, men aged 18 to 25 were more traditional than their elders.
Such slippage in support for gender equality may have been a factor in the 2016 election, even though voters 18 to 30 were more likely than any other age group to vote for Hillary Clinton. An analysis of exit polls by Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg of Tufts University reveals that millennial support for a white woman in 2016 was 10 percentage points lower than their vote for a black man in 2008. Furthermore, the gender gap among young people was larger than in previous elections. While 63 percent of young women voted for Mrs. Clinton, only 47 percent of young men did so.
The political scientist Dan Cassino suggests that the increased support for male leadership in home life among 18- to 25-year-olds may reflect an attempt to compensate for men’s loss of dominance in the work world. Youths surveyed in 2014 grew up in the shadow of the financial crisis, which accelerated the longstanding erosion of men’s earning power. During the 2016 primaries, when Professor Cassino asked voters questions designed to remind them that many women now earn more than men, men became less likely to support Mrs. Clinton. Perhaps a segment of youth is reacting to financial setbacks suffered by their fathers. Indeed, a 2015 poll commissioned by MTV found that 27 percent of males aged 14 to 24 felt women’s gains had come at the expense of men.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/31/opinion/sunday/do-millennial-men-want-stay-at-home-wives.html?em_pos=medium&emc=edit_ed_20170407&nl=the-edit&nl_art=3&nlid=73531149&ref=headline&te=1
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a working wife who earns a massive paycheck so we can get on with our hobbies! Failing that, an heiress or rich widow would also suffice.
