A growing number of marriages are ‘egalitarian.’ But women are still doing more household work

“Egalitarian” marriages are growing increasingly common, at least when it comes to earnings. 

A new Pew Research Center study shows that the share of heterosexual couples in “egalitarian” marriages, in which both partners earn about the same amount of money, has more than doubled since the early 1970s — with 29 percent of opposite-sex marriages now fitting that description. 

Men are still the primary or sole breadwinners in 55 percent of heterosexual marriages. But women are the primary or sole earners in 16 percent — more than three times as many as in 1972, according to the study.   

Share of heterosexual marriages with each earnings situation 

Jana Burke and her husband are among the growing number of couples with an “egalitarian” marriage. 

That wasn’t always the case, however. When Burke, now 36, started living with her now-husband 18 years ago, he made more money than she did. 

“There was quite a lot of imbalance,” Burke said about the early years of her relationship. 

But that eventually changed. When Burke began graduate school at Yale University in 2014, the couple started earning roughly the same amount. 

A broader increase in women’s educational attainment has been linked to the shrinking number of heterosexual marriages in which husbands out-earn their wives. Smaller family sizes have also played a role in the shift. 

But while more husbands and wives are contributing roughly the same to their marriages financially, there is still an imbalance in how they spend their time. 

In most “egalitarian” marriages, men are spending more time on paid work a week than women, 44.2 hours compared to 41.1 hours. They also have more “leisure” time, spending roughly 25.2 hours a week socializing or relaxing while women spend about 21.6 hours a week doing the same, according to the study.   

Women in “egalitarian” marriages also spend more time doing household work and taking care of children or other family members compared to their husbands.   

Women in this type of marriage spend on average of 6.9 hours a week doing some of caregiving, while men spend 5.1 hours. Meanwhile, women in “egalitarian” marriages spend on average 4.6 hours a week on housework, while men pitch in for 1.9 hours a week. 

How husbands and wives in “egalitarian” marriages spend their time

This imbalance persists even in marriages where the wife is the primary or sole breadwinner.   

Women who are the primary earners in their marriage spend an average of 42 hours a week on paid work, while husbands spend 40.4 hours a week, according to the study.  

But women in these marriages still spend far fewer hours relaxing than their husbands: about nine fewer hours a week, to be exact.   

Men in marriages where their wives are the primary breadwinner spend about 29.9 hours a week on leisure while women spend 21.1 hours a week.   

Women in marriages where they are the primary earners also spend more time doing household chores and taking care of family.   

In those marriages, wives spend about 6.4 hours a week on caregiving duties and 4.8 hours a week on housework, while men spend five hours and 2.8 hours a week in the same areas, respectively, the study shows.   

“Part of that has to do with societal expectations of what women do and what people see as being more valued by society,” said Kim Parker, the director of social trends research at Pew and the study’s lead author.   

“Those attitudes tend to lag behind what’s actually going on in the labor force and in the economy.”  

The 5,125-person study uses three different lenses to examine finances in marriages: earnings, time use and public opinion.    

Almost half of people surveyed in the study said they believe society values what women do at work and at home equally, while 31 percent said they believe society values women’s work in the home more.  

Just 20 percent said they think society places more value on women’s contributions outside of the home.   

Women were more likely than men to think their work inside the home was valued more by society, the study found. Thirty-five percent of women who took part said they believed this, compared to 26 percent of men.   

Meanwhile, 55 percent of men said they believe society values women’s work in and out of the home equally, while 44 percent of women agreed.   

When it comes to men, 57 percent of people said they think what men do at work is valued more than their contributions at home and 35 percent said men’s work both inside and outside of the home is valued equally.   

Only time will tell how public attitudes will change, or not change, when it comes to distribution of housework and caregiving in marriages.   

But Parker believes more marriages will become financially equal in the future, particularly if young women continue to outpace young men in educational attainment.   

Data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center found that women made up 60 percent of all college students by the end of the 2021-22 academic year.  

“If women continue to make these educational gains, then those will probably translate into gains in earnings and potentially more egalitarian marriages or maybe even more wives as the primary breadwinner,” Parker said.  

But she noted that “in terms of the gender wage gap, progress has really stalled.” Though the gap narrowed significantly between the 1980s and the turn of the century, it has since remained largely unchanged, a previous Pew report found. In 2002, women made 80 cents for every dollar men earned. In 2022, they made 82 cents. 

“So, in spite of these educational gains that women have made in recent decades, the gender wage gap really hasn’t moved,” Parker said.