Bargaining Bonus or Breadwinning Burden? Wives’ Relative Earnings,Childrearing,and Depression

Abstract

This study examines the relevancy of household bargaining processes, childrearing demands, and traditionally gendered breadwinning norms for explaining the implications of married women’s earnings relative to those of their spouse for depression. Drawing on 1992–2014 data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 Cohort, results indicate that shared breadwinning is negatively associated with depression among wives without minor children. Yet despite the salubriousness of employment, shared breadwinning is linked to worse depression for wives with a youngest child aged 0 to 12 or with two or more children 18 and younger. Contrary to expectations from the gender performance perspective, there is minimal evidence that greater relative earnings worsen depression among wives who out-earn their spouse. Results imply that when childrearing demands are high, mothers’ contributions to couples’ earnings function as an additional demand rather than a resource for their own well-being.