In a column for Slate, Tim Hartford explains why divorce is good for women using nice, neat, bloodless rational choice theory. I like rational choice theory. It can be a useful way of analyzing why individuals behave in certain ways. It assumes that people rationally look at option A and option B, weigh the alternatives, and then choose the option that benefits them the most.
In this column, Hartford explains how the greater ease of a “no fault” divorce has lead to happier women.
...once divorce started to become conceivable, women knew they could no longer think of themselves as one part of an economic unit. Rationality, you will recall, is about thinking ahead and responding to incentives. Realizing that the economic unit might break up, at which point a woman who simply specialized in having children was in serious trouble, it became rational for a woman to maintain career options as divorce insurance. In the division-of-labor world of the 1950s, unhappily married women would rationally stick it out: they had few alternatives. But as more older women were finding jobs, managing their housework more quickly with the aid of washing machines and electric irons, women started to realize that there was an alternative to an unhappy marriage. Divorce was still financially tough but it was no longer economic suicide. And then the contraceptive pill came along, making women—as we have seen—more highly educated, career-minded and employer-friendly...
That started a second reinforcing loop—some people regard it as a vicious circle. Because divorce was conceivable, women preserved career options. But because women had career options, divorce became conceivable. It became less and less likely that a woman would become trapped in a miserable marriage out of pure economic necessity...
The serious entry of married women into the workforce has meant that they spend a little less time baking cookies, and perhaps also that their husbands spend a little more time with the children. It has empowered them to leave marriages that are not working, making them happier and safer from abuse. It has truly been a revolution, and the price of that revolution is more divorce and less marriage. That price is very real—but it is almost certainly a price worth paying.
Really interesting and I agree with much of what Hartford said. But I can’t resist poking holes in his argument. Hartford makes the same mistake that all rational choice economists make. They assume that people’s preferences are all the same.
So, the looming spectre of poverty from divorce has pushed women to enter the workforce in droves. They need the insurance of a paycheck. That sounds about right. However, is full time employment good for all women? Hartford assumes that full time employment makes people happy. Writing legal briefs is better than baking cookies.
Full time employment is great for people who do cool jobs, like writers, pundits, and economic professors. Full time employment sucks for the person doing data entry in a direct mail company or the person who fills up coffee cups at a diner or the person renting cars at an airport. How many daycare workers would rather be watching their own children, instead of spending most of their paycheck to have other people watch their children? My father-in-law is marking off the number of weeks until retirement on his desk blotter.
And even some people with enough education and privilege to have access to cool jobs, still would prefer to be home watching their kids. They would rather change diapers, than prepare legal briefs. All those women are forced into the workforce, because they need that insurance, but they aren’t really happy about it. Being a stay at home mom is now a high risk sport.
Then there is the whole problem with the double shift. Many working women return from a full day at work to put in another shift at home. They are still making dinner, minding the kids, doing the laundry. Divisions of labor from the 60s still apply in many households, even though women are now doing the bread winning, too.
The availability of divorce has been great for some women – those who have access to great jobs, those that need the threat of a divorce to keep their men in line, those who are in genuinely abusive situations. But it hasn’t been great for the women who have been pushing unwillingly into the workforce and now face a double shift at home.
My husband and I went to Nyack for Indian food this evening. Before dinner came, Steve pulled out his blackberry to check results in South Carolina. Then I called my mom for more information. Life of the political junkie.
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