Who Wears the Pants
In most American homes, it is the woman.
“Across all decision-making realms, it tilts to the woman,” noted Rich Morin, the Pew study’s lead author. “I was surprised by the percentage of men who made none of the decisions in any of the areas. A significant percentage were just bystanders.” Not surprisingly, one reason men say they are willing to acquiesce in their spouses’ wishes is that their wives usually have greater knowledge of the day-to-day activities and needs of the home than they do. They trust their wives’ choices the way they would any specialist’s. But what is rather unexpected is the deeper (and much sweeter) reason men have for giving in to their wives: They want them to be happy, or at least they don’t want to be responsible for making them unhappy.
The general consensus of sociologists is that, whereas a woman’s marital satisfaction is dependent on a combination of economic, emotional and psychological realities, a man’s marital satisfaction is most determined by one factor: how happy his wife is. When she is happy, he is. Working within this framework, most husbands are unwilling to dig in their heels on any issue unless they have a tremendous incentive to do so.
