The Green Room

I'm a happy wife!

Have you seen this 2006 study? You may have, because it got quite a lot of press at the time. It looked at the top predictors of a woman's marital happiness. In order of importance, they are:

  1. A husband's emotional engagement.
  2. Fairness. ("Women who think that housework (and other family responsibilities) are divided fairly are significantly happier than women who think that their husband does not do his fair share. Note, however, that most wives do not equate fairness with a 50-50 model of equality. Only 30% of wives in this study think their marriage is unfair, even though the vast majority of wives do the bulk of childcare and housework.")
  3. A bread-winning husband.
  4. A commitment to (life-long) marriage.
  5. Staying at home.
  6. Shared religious attendance.
  7. Traditional gender attitudes.
This applies to both less-educated women and feminists women with more progressive gender attitudes. (From the companion study: "Even women who affirm gender equality in theory are less likely to enjoy happy marriages if their marriages are constituted along egalitarian lines.") There's of course the caveat that these are just averages, but it seems that the more of these qualities in your marriage, the happier the wife will be!

I thought it was very interesting! Anything you think is missing from the list? If you had to pick just one, which would be the most important to you?

Check out the site: http://www.happiestwives.org/. And thanks to NFPworks for passing it on to me!