According to a recent study by Men’s Health and Spike TV, most men say it’s OK for women to earn more money than they do. Even though I can see why they would say that, it’s surprising that they admitted to it! Keep reading after the jump!!
Seventy-three percent of men said they would not have a problem dating a woman with a higher income, and 45 percent of men said they wouldn’t mind staying at home if their spouses made more money.
The study, which was featured in the December issue of the magazine, polled 1,511 men across the nation.
Men’s Health Editor Peter Moore shared his thoughts on the findings with the New York Post: “…if one of the things a woman knows best is how to bring in a big income, more power to her — and more money to pay for the holiday trip to Aruba,” Moore wrote. “You would hope that, after the twin shocks of 9/11 and the Great Recession, we’d be able to look beyond money and who’s making what.”
According to a February article in Slate, women under 30 are making more money than men in the same age group in 147 of the country’s biggest cities. However, 67 percent of Americans still say that men must be able to provide for their family before they get married, while only 33 percent believed this was a necessity for women.
Additional data from the Men’s Health study show that 44 percent of men in relationships agreed they did more work around the house than their fathers, though only 22 percent said they did more than their mothers.
Nevertheless, not all of the survey’s results point to a full departure from the traditional view of what makes a man. For example, 50 percent of men said they had to “give up some masculinity to be loving and nurturing fathers.”
That’s not terribly surprising given that, as Andrew Romano wrote in Newsweek in 2010, men’s view of their gender has remained relatively static over the last 50 or 60 years.
“Since the 1950s, the image of the American woman has gone through numerous makeovers,” Romano wrote. “But masculine expectations remain the same — even as there are fewer opportunities to fulfill them.”
