To impress a woman, a man.

[xBaron Dants]

Well, just to state my own opinion..

First of all, it is very unfair to say that a career woman cannot take good care of the family. My mother, just as an example, has followed her career, has even taken courses to get diplomas to go further in her career. I think my brother and I have turned out quite alright.

To me a woman's power consists in being everything a man is not, meaning she is not aggressive, forceful, dynamic, muscular, ambitious, loud, and driven.

What is it that you want to marry? A blow-up doll who can cook? Ok, muscular is scary, aggressive can be annoying in everyone, but not ambitious, dynamic or driven? The reason why I'm not too excited about eventually getting married is because I DON'T want to have a wife who will stay at home and chop parsley the whole day, and then announce the big news that the tomatoes were on sale this week.

I find it to be the most annoying thing when guests come over and the husband speaks the whole time and the wife nods, and just repeats the last three words of each sentence the husband utters.

Are you not frightened to spend the rest of your life with someone so damn boring? I would think that a person as smart as you would like to come home and talk with somebody intelligent and opinionated.

I even think dynamic and driven women would make better mothers because my kids won't turn out to be pansies. And if I ever have a daughter, I definitely don't want her role model to be the woman who operates the vacuum cleaner so skillfully.

[loseyourname]

continued . . .

On the basis of prior research, and framed by the scarcity and enhancement hypotheses, we asked the following questions:

Are there differences between homemakers, women employed part time, women employed full time, and women employed high full time in frequency of intercourse, sexual satisfaction, or sexual desire? Are there differences among husbands of women in these four groups? The scarcity hypothesis and clinical theorizing would argue that women in the full-time and high full-time groups should engage in intercourse less frequently and experience less sexual satisfaction and less sexual desire. Furthermore, given the relational nature of sexuality, these effects should involve the husband as well so that he may experience less satisfaction, but his sexual desire should not be affected. The enhancement hypothesis, however, would argue that women experience enrichment from these multiple roles and that their relationship?specifically, their sexual relationship?should benefit. (The enhancement hypothesis, though, might not extend this argument to those employed high full time. Any benefits to employment should occur with part-time or full-time work; no further benefits should accrue with increased hours.)

Are there differences between men who are employed full time and those employed high full time in frequency of intercourse or sexual satisfaction? Although much of the research to date has focused on the impact of women's employment, both the scarcity hypothesis and clinical theorizing would predict negative effects on sexuality from high full-time employment for men. (Men who were not employed or were employed part time were not included in predictions because there were too few of them to permit analysis.)

In multiple regression analyses, are sexual outcomes (frequency of intercourse, satisfaction, decreased desire) better predicted by hours of employment or by role quality, specifically work-role quality? The more recent research on role quality suggests that it should be the better predictor.

Do wives' hours of employment and husbands' hours of employment interact in predicting sexual outcomes? This question is based on the notion that the two partners' hours of employment might act in more than an additive way; specifically, for couples who both have high work hours, there might be especially negative impacts on sexuality. Similarly, do wives' work-role quality and husbands' work-role quality interact; specifically, if both members of the couple experience poor work-role quality, does that have an especially negative impact on sexual functioning?

Insofar as the construct of workaholism is captured better by the combination of high work hours and high work commitment, do these two variables interact in predicting sexual outcomes?
What role does fatigue play in sexual outcomes (frequency of intercourse, satisfaction, and decreased sexual desire)?
What variables predict sexual outcomes for homemakers? Specifically, do fatigue and parental-role quality predict sexual outcomes for homemakers? If there is a relationship between women's hours of employment and sexual functioning, is that relationship mediated by fatigue or a sense of role overload, as specified by the scarcity hypothesis?

Fatigue and Role Overload as Mediators

According to the scarcity hypothesis, variables such as fatigue and role overload should mediate the relationship between work hours and negative sexual outcomes. It was unnecessary to conduct further statistical tests of this hypothesis because the first criterion to be satisfied in the mediational analysis (Baron & Kenny, 1986) was a significant prediction of sexual outcomes by women's hours of employment. This relationship was nonsignificant in analyses reported in previous sections of this article. In short, fatigue and role overload cannot be mediators of the effect of hours of employment on sexual outcomes if there is no effect of hours on sexual outcomes.

Discussion

Concerns that couples' sex lives suffer when women are employed full time or even more than full time are generally not supported by these data. Our results are consistent with those of Call et al. (1995), who found that the variable "both members of the couple working full time" was not associated with frequency of marital intercourse for a large national sample. In our analyses, neither the 4-group ANOVAs nor the multiple regression analyses in which hours of employment were used to predict sexual outcomes yielded effects for hours worked. One exception is that husbands of women who work high full time expressed less sexual satisfaction than the other three groups of men, and these couples were less likely to have engaged in intercourse in the past month, but this result occurred only at T3 and not at T1 or T4. T3, just 4 months after the birth, seems likely to be the most sensitive time for role overload. Moreover, this effect is not found for women's ratings of their sexual satisfaction. Comparisons of sexual outcomes for men working full time or high full time indicated no significant differences between the groups for frequency of intercourse or sexual satisfaction.

The hypothesized interaction between husband's work hours and wife's work hours was not significant for any sexual outcome measure (frequency of intercourse, sexual satisfaction, or sexual desire) at any time, for husbands or wives. Thus, the notion that the combination of a husband working many hours and a wife working many hours is particularly disastrous for their sexual relationship was not supported.

How can we explain the general lack of differences in sexual functioning in couples as a function of the wife's (or husband's) work hours? There are several possibilities. One is self-selection. This study was not an experiment, and women were not randomly assigned to the four work-status groups. It may be that women with higher energy levels elect to work full time or high full time, and these same high-energy women have plenty of energy left for and interest in sex. A second possibility is to view scarcity and enhancement as processes that are not mutually exclusive. It may be that for employed women, scarcity processes in the form of role overload do exert some negative influence, whereas at the same time, enhancement processes from employment occur so that the two balance each other out, resulting in no differences between employed women and homemakers. A third possibility is that homemakers are as overloaded as employed women, a hypothesis that is considered further below.

Although the regression analyses demonstrated that some variables predict sexual satisfaction and decreased sexual desire, no variables were substantial predictors of frequency of intercourse. Although the scarcity hypothesis has some commonsense appeal for this outcome variable?the more hours wives and husbands are employed, the less time they have for sex?this prediction simply was not borne out. It seems likely that frequency of intercourse is controlled by variables not included in this study, such as a couple's sexual script (Gagnon, 1990; Gagnon & Simon, 1973), for example, intercourse every Friday night after the children are asleep.

The Importance of Role Quality

As hypothesized, work-role quality?both as a main effect and as an interaction?was a stronger predictor of sexual outcomes, especially sexual satisfaction, than the sheer number of hours worked. Wives' work-role quality significantly predicted their sexual satisfaction 4 months postpartum, and husbands' work-role quality significantly predicted their sexual satisfaction during pregnancy and 12 months postpartum. Moreover, wives' work-role quality interacted significantly with husbands' work-role quality in predicting sexual satisfaction for husbands at T1. These findings are consistent with a number of studies that have documented the importance of role quality for a variety of psychosocial outcomes (Barnett et al., 1993; Hyde, Klein, et al., 1995).

The finding in the interaction shown in Figure 2 was that sexual satisfaction was greatest when both husband and wife had rewarding jobs. However, the prediction that the lowest levels of sexual satisfaction would be found when both husband and wife were low on work-role quality was not upheld. Instead, we found that the lowest levels of sexual satisfaction occur when the husband has an unrewarding job and the wife has a rewarding one. This finding is intriguing and is consistent with social comparison theory (e.g., Festinger, 1954; Shaw & Costanzo, 1982). According to this perspective, evaluations of outcomes depend on which person or group one uses as a frame of reference or basis of comparison. It is likely, given their extensive social contact, that spouses use each other as a referent for evaluating outcomes. Our results suggest that dissatisfaction with one's job is most likely to affect the sexual relationship when one's job dissatisfaction occurs in comparison to a spouse's satisfaction with his or her job.

Fatigue

One of the most striking findings of this study is the extent to which women's fatigue is associated with decreased sexual desire, at all three waves of data collection, for both employed women and homemakers. Sex therapists have long recognized fatigue as a cause of sexual dysfunctions in populations seeking therapy (Bullard, 1988), and our results with a community sample strengthen the evidence for that association. Moreover, the magnitude of the association was impressive. Fatigue accounted for 10 to 26% of the variance in decreased desire across several regression analyses.

The twin findings?that fatigue is a strong predictor of decreased desire for both employed women and homemakers and that there are no differences between employed women and homemakers in fatigue?have strong implications for the scarcity hypothesis and beliefs that women's employment has detrimental effects for them and their relationships. The scarcity hypothesis appears to rest in part on a romanticized notion that the homemaker, with fewer roles, lives a relaxed life with plenty of time and energy for everything, including sex. In fact, though, homemakers do not live stress-free lives, and their work hours and level of fatigue may equal those of employed women.

The Scarcity and Enhancement Hypotheses

The results from this study provide no support for the scarcity hypothesis, and specifically for the assertion that multiple roles for women create stress and negative psychosocial outcomes. The scarcity hypothesis is likely not based on a realistic view of the stresses and fatigue involved in being a full-time homemaker, nor does it adequately recognize the ways in which employed mothers cope, for example, by doing less housework or by hiring someone to do some of the household work.

In addition, the enhancement hypothesis did not fare well; employed women did not show enhanced sexual outcomes compared with homemakers. It should be noted that our data were collected during a particularly stressful time in the family life course, namely, during pregnancy and the first year after the birth of a child. It might well be that enhancement effects would be detected if parents of older children or couples with no children were studied.

The data presented here make it clear that although hours of employment are not predictive of sexual outcomes, work-role quality is. This finding points to the need for more complex formulations of role theory that emphasize the importance of role quality over the number of roles. In their simple forms, the scarcity hypothesis takes inadequate account of the benefits of employment, and the enhancement hypothesis is based on an assumption that all work is rewarding. Moreover, the interaction between wives' and husbands' work-role quality in predicting husbands' sexual satisfaction indicates that if we are to understand close relationships, we must also take account of discrepancies in role quality between partners.

[sSsflamesSs]

It is good to know your opinion. You have not stated anything you hadn't already stated before and again, it's good to know. Yet you still don't see my point. Perhaps I haven't been clear enough so I will give you my opinion just as you clearly gave me yours. A woman can be BOTH dominant in her own right, have a career at some point, be ambitious, and still be submissive to the husband in the marriage, she can be those things and still crave the body of a strong man next to her, someone she feels protected by, someone she loves and trusts with everything she has in her. Someone who makes her want to do better- do better by him, by the children she wants to give him, and the family she wants to make with him. These things are not like oil and water. One can be assertive with her opinions, debating with the best of them, well-educated and smart and successful as she wants to be, it does't mean that she will not give everything she has and more to be with the man she is in love with. It doesn't mean she won't give up everything that needs to be given up when the time comes to have children, as most women will tell you they don't want anyone else raising thier children and rearing them the way they should be with a mother and a family and someone there to kiss every scraped knee and read every bed time story from here to eternity. It doesn't mean that she won't be there too cook and clean and have a house with this man that she loves and would do anything for, just as he would for her. When it comes down to it she knows she can lean on him for support just as he can lean on her when times are rough. That's what you need to make a relationship work. Two strong people who come together knowing full well that they will be there for eachother when the tides turn. Just because a woman is strong, smart, successful, dynamic, ambitious, and driven does NOT mean she can't also be calm, patient, graceful, faithful, tender, soft-spoken, submissive, and sacrificing. There is such a thing as having a strong enough character to know when it is the time to work hard and try to succeed and do your best and when to put those things aside and cook dinner and play leggo's and help your son write his book report. In fact, some women would prefer to be all of those things and would think that it takes all of those things to be complete.

Beautiful post, ck. I agree wholeheartedly.

And Anon, if this is what you have been trying to say all along, you sure did a poor job of articulating it.

[ckBejug]

I hope ck doesn't mind me saying this to the whole forum, but her and I did go out a couple of times, on actual dates, and there just wasn't any physical chemistry, but you know what I liked about her? She didn't let me walk all over her. Women are always letting me abuse them and take advantage of them. I get away with too much, but I couldn't with her. I can actually respect her, because she stands up for herself.

Yeah I blame your weak hug-giving powers. Hehe. I KNEW you were hooked once I started putting you in your place! Anytime... Anytime!

Beautiful post, ck. I agree wholeheartedly.

And Anon, if this is what you have been trying to say all along, you sure did a poor job of articulating it.

I agree too.

[ckBejug]

Well, just to state my own opinion..

First of all, it is very unfair to say that a career woman cannot take good care of the family. My mother, just as an example, has followed her career, has even taken courses to get diplomas to go further in her career. I think my brother and I have turned out quite alright.



What is it that you want to marry? A blow-up doll who can cook? Ok, muscular is scary, aggressive can be annoying in everyone, but not ambitious, dynamic or driven? The reason why I'm not too excited about eventually getting married is because I DON'T want to have a wife who will stay at home and chop parsley the whole day, and then announce the big news that the tomatoes were on sale this week.

I find it to be the most annoying thing when guests come over and the husband speaks the whole time and the wife nods, and just repeats the last three words of each sentence the husband utters.

Are you not frightened to spend the rest of your life with someone so damn boring? I would think that a person as smart as you would like to come home and talk with somebody intelligent and opinionated.

I even think dynamic and driven women would make better mothers because my kids won't turn out to be pansies. And if I ever have a daughter, I definitely don't want her role model to be the woman who operates the vacuum cleaner so skillfully.

I do believe that from now on every time I read anything Baron writes I will first have a good laugh at the thought of the 'blow-up doll who can cook' HAHAHAHA! Thank you! lol

See Baron, now that you see how many Armenian girls out there actually try to embody both parts of the spectrum I mentioned, you can rest easy that you will not just have to resign yourself to being with a wife who only chops parsley all day Nono, for you, only the best!

[hyebruin]

To me, for any marraige or relationship to find fullfillment each sex must assume its instinctive and God-given role. And hence when people "make love" it is an expression of this mystical alchemy. A couple in love with a successful marriage has no desire to have sex with other people or "cheat", if each individual adjusts to their instinctive role.

wow, so beautiful, my thoughts exactly making love = becoming one =experiencing God = sacred act....

too bad not many get to experience it on that level...

[Anonymouse]

I stand by my opinion whether it insults the forum ladies or the loser, it matters not. Loser went so far as to search google to find a nice case study to have to post against me. That is how much I bother him.

By the way loser, I never once said that I want ladies to conform to my view. In fact I constantly reiterated my position and that this was my opinion. The so called "tolerant" "liberated" minds are the least tolerant.

[dusken]

I am right and everyone else is wrong.

[loseyourname]

Loser went so far as to search google to find a nice case study to have to post against me. That is how much I bother him.

Yes, Mousy. Some of us actually research what we're posting about instead of just pulling sh*t out of our asses.

By the way loser, I never once said that I want ladies to conform to my view. In fact I constantly reiterated my position and that this was my opinion. The so called "tolerant" "liberated" minds are the least tolerant.

Who the hell are you calling tolerant? I tolerate you and other men like you about as much as I tolerate a full bladder.

You may not have said that the women here should all conform to your view, but you did say that to be independent and ambitious is unnatural and unfeminine, despite the fact that research shows otherwise. As hard as this may be for you to believe, opinions don't become facts just because you hold them. When they go against all of the evidence, I would say there is even a decent chance you might be wrong. I know you've never been before, but maybe just this once.

[Anonymouse]

Yes, Mousy. Some of us actually research what we're posting about instead of just pulling sh*t out of our asses.



Who the hell are you calling tolerant? I tolerate you and other men like you about as much as I tolerate a full bladder.

You may not have said that the women here should all conform to your view, but you did say that to be independent and ambitious is unnatural and unfeminine, despite the fact that research shows otherwise. As hard as this may be for you to believe, opinions don't become facts just because you hold them. When they go against all of the evidence, I would say there is even a decent chance you might be wrong. I know you've never been before, but maybe just this once.

Nope, sorry, I stand by my word, over your desperate attempt at smearing me because you're jealous that I threaten your naked and effeminate manhood.