At one time, it was commonplace in Torrance and indeed across the country to believe that women should not work outside of the home, or, if they did, that they should be restricted to a narrow scope of professions, such as teaching and nursing. Eventually, society's view of women and the workplace evolved. Now anyone who holds to the old view would be looked on as either ridiculous or openly hostile toward women.

But the flip side of the old-time view of "a woman's place is in the home" was the belief that a man should be a breadwinner. While society's view of women's roles has changed a great deal, the fact is that the idea of men as breadwinners is still firmly in place. Men who "violate" this "rule" often face serious consequences, including a greater likelihood of divorce.

Torrance divorce lawyers were interested by the results of a study that looked at survey results from the National Survey of Families and Households, funded by the National Institutes of Health.

One of the things the study looked at was the likelihood of either spouse to initiate divorce. The researchers found that women were more likely to commence a divorce action if they were employed than if they were unemployed. This could be attributed to women being more comfortable ending a marriage if they had their own source of income. An unemployed woman might feel less inclined to strike out on her own if she does not have a job.

A wife's employment or unemployment had no discernible effect on a husband's decision on whether or not to initiate a divorce.

In contrast to what the researchers found about women, men are more likely to initiate divorce when they are unemployed than when they are employed. The researchers said that for men, unemployment is much more likely to lead to depression than it is for women, due to the societal pressure on men to be breadwinners. This led the researchers to believe that male unemployment, and thus depression, led more unemployed men to consider divorce.

The really bad news for unemployed men is that women were also more likely to initiate divorce when their husbands were unemployed than when the husbands were employed. The unemployed husband faces the greatest likelihood of divorce initiated either by himself or his wife.

As one of the researchers summed it up, "For men, not having a job increases the risk he will initiate leaving the relationship, and it also increases the risk women will leave the relationship."

Source: TIME "Stay-at-Home Dads Are More Likely to Divorce" 7/11/2011