After all, more divorces are initiated by women than by men...

Amanda Zuckerman Klarsfeld is a freelance writer in New York City.

Although I’ve been intrigued by the concept that marriage is bad for women, I’m a natural skeptic, so I did research. While some studies do show that marriage isn’t great for women’s health or longevity, others suggest the opposite. 

Kate Anthony, author of The D Word: Making the Ultimate Decision About Your Marriage and creator of The Divorce Survival Guide Podcast needed no time to think about her response. “Marriage tends to benefit men on the backs of the labor of women,” she asserted. Even when both partners work, she explained, women still manage the household and childcare, along with a tremendous amount of emotional labor.

This perspective feels familiar. In my marriage, I worked full time yet also did the cooking, cleaning, childcare, and all of the related planning. I was overworked, but told myself that because my husband made more money, ours was an equitable arrangement. It wasn’t. I only made less because my domestic responsibilities prevented me from striving for a more lucrative job, and allowed him to build a successful business without worrying about folding the laundry.

I next consulted with Dr. Ashwini Nadkarni, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She explained that although both men and women are affected by marital challenges, research suggests that they experience and express stress differently. “Women tend to be more susceptible to the negative emotional effects of stress,” she said. This resonated with me. After my husband and I fought, I would feel numb – unable to eat, sleep, exercise, or have casual conversations with friends. Meanwhile, he was able to compartmentalize, to go about his business, and often forget that we’d been arguing. 

This last statement rang true for me as well. I raised my only-child daughter in Florida, while my family lived in New York and California. I had nothing resembling the communal caregiving of yesteryear, yet my spouse and I still held traditional roles when it came to housework and childcare. If my daughter was sick, I had to skip work. If I was sick, I could take a day off from work, but I couldn’t ever call in sick from parenting. My husband, who was not used to my parenting routine, needed detailed instructions each time I suggested he help with our daughter, which was more exhausting than just doing it myself.

Edelman concurs. “I see women thrive in marriages with devoted partners who enhance their quality of life. In these equitable unions, mutual support improves a woman’s emotional and physical health, fostering the longevity we all strive for.”

Carbino, too, has hope for the institution of marriage. “If people have candid conversations about what their roles look like as a couple, they’ll be better off going into the relationship,” she said.

I’m not a complete marriage skeptic. I do know people in mutually supportive, equitable man-woman partnerships. But I also believe that this is not the norm – not yet. If you’re in one of these unions, you’re lucky. But if you’re a single woman because you haven’t found the right partner, you’re also lucky because this means that you didn’t settle for the wrong one. 

Amanda Zuckerman Klarsfeld is a freelance writer in New York City. Her work has appeared in The Guardian and Slate. 

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