So everyone I know is going to read the article about higher divorce rates for female MBA’s (Hat Tip: Brazen Careerist) sometime this week and I feel obligated to write about it, even though the numbers in the article will bother me until the study itself is published. Here’s an overview of the study’s claims:
- Education Level for Females – Divorced or Separated
- 12% MBAs (business)
- 10% JDs (law)
- 9% medical degrees
- 11% only bachelor’s degrees
- Education Level for Males – Divorced or Separated
- 5% MBAs
- 7% JDs
- 5.1% medical degrees
- only bachelor’s degrees not given
The first question I have is the statistical significance between women MBA divorcees (12%) and women w/only undergrad divorcees (11%). The article doesn’t list the details of the study, but there is a range of error for both these percentages due to the sample population. If that value is 1% or more for either (say women MBA divorcees are actually in the range of 10-12%), then comparing the two is moot. What makes these statistics more suspect is that both law and med. female graduates have a lower divorce rate than women with only undergrad degrees.
My second issue is that the author doesn’t compare these stats to all women, and studies show that women with any higher ed. degree are less likely to get divorced than those without.
So if there isn’t much of a difference between undergrad vs. grad degrees, and there is still a huge difference between no degree and any higher ed. degree, then getting a graduate degree is still a fine idea for a woman. Between these two issues, it’s doubtful that getting an MBA as a woman is an automatic marriage death sentence. My gut tells me it has little statistical significance actually; but I guess we’ll see when the study is published.
And yes, I have a third issue. For MBAs, the author fails to mention that the actual number of women and men getting divorced is about the same. With roughly 30% of MBA candidates as women, the number of MBA divorcees is about 7% total, with half men and half women. What’s interesting is in law and med programs, women make up roughly 45-50% of the population, so the disparity is much clearer there; though the gap between women and men is much smaller than with MBA graduates.
Despite disliking the way the study is portrayed, I do think there is some truth to the conclusions the author presented; namely that highly successful women are attracted to similarly successful men but might be better matched with men who have less stressful careers and thus more time to support a high-earning spouse.
This is not representative of all professional “high-earning” women, but every female MBA I know falls into one of two categories: “single” or “serious relationship with highly successful man.” My friends date dentists, lawyers, their fellow MBA candidates, or PhD candidates from other fields. My own husband is going to be an eye doctor.
But this partnership is difficult when trying to run a household, even without kids. My husband and I know we’re being pulled in different directions trying to balance two careers and the possibility of a family in the distant future; so we recently decided we each need to compromise on one thing until we finally meet somewhere in the middle. The first thing I asked of him was that he support my career decisions and trust me to make good financial choices while still following my entrepreneur dreams.
He asked that I cook at least once a week. I’m not joking. Way to waste your three wishes Aladdin.
So that’s the (impossible?) challenge for a woman who wants her dream career: conquer the world, but be home in time to start dinner. Because most men still just want wives who will take care of them the same way their mothers did (Hat Tip: Art of Manliness). And really, I can’t completely blame them, because I sometimes get irritated that I’m the sole breadwinner. It goes both ways.
Will this compromise work for us, or other couples who both want high-powered careers? I have no idea. But when posed the question: do you need an extremely supportive spouse to have a high-powered career as a woman? My answer is a resounding hell yes. I guess the article got something right in the end.
Image Source: Jeff Holt via FlickR
This is the first of many articles I will write about marriage and relationships, so I wanted to share my story about how I came to be married at 22 years old and what it has brought me so far.
Love at First Keg
I basically met my husband at a frat party. Technically we met 6 months before through a service organization we were both members of, but we didn’t become friends until our junior year when my sorority and his fraternity were on the same homecoming team. I had a boyfriend of 2.5 years that had been falling out of the picture for about a year at that point, so it wasn’t long before my future husband and I started dating.
We fell in love almost instantly. People thought we were crazy, especially when he proposed to me at the beginning of our senior year 10 months after we started dating.
Seven months later, we graduated from college and moved 4 hours away from all our friends and family to a town in northern IL, where we spent our first year as an adult couple.
The Worst Year of Our Lives… (Fingers Crossed)
If I had to describe my own personal hell, it would be that year right after college. I was at my first real job and my fiance/husband had taken a year off before grad school and worked as an optometry assistant, then a waiter/bartender. We were on our own for the first time, planning a wedding in a different state, trying to get into grad schools, and had literally zero friends and not much more in our bank account. It almost ripped us apart. At the end of our first year of trying to build a life together, all we had to show was a clean, sterile, white-walled apartment and wedding money equivalent to the down payment on a house.
So we moved again. Not just to another apartment or another town, but to another life – and it worked. I changed jobs, we bought a condo in Chicago, started our grad school programs, and ran the Chicago marathon together. Within four months, we were back to our college days where we had lots of friends from different social circles. We became students again, went out again, and quickly adjusted to the rapid pace of city life. Our condo is incredibly messy, but we are happy.
I thought I should retitle this article “My Life Post-Undergrad,” but then nobody would want to read it.
Instead, I’ll answer the question. How do you make young love work? You survive. You do what’s necessary and make it through the downs so you can enjoy the ups. You learn how to transition to a different life and still remember why you loved the person at the beginning. You spend lots of time doing the wrong things and screwing everything up until you accidentally do something right. You just make it work, because you have to. You’re married.
If you aren’t ready for that, don’t get married. Marriage is hard and being young only makes it harder. I don’t regret getting married because I’m very happy; I know, however, we will struggle again and change lives again and it will be a challenge to keep our marriage grounded in its roots – Love.
Image Source: Marika_te via FlickR
For 2008, my husband and I decided we are going to write Couples Goals to ring in the new year.
I believe this works best with two people in a serious relationship who live together because they have consciously built their lives with each other; hence why I coined “Couples Goals.” Having said that, you don’t have to be a part of a romantic couple to participate. All you need is someone who you spend a good deal of time with who wants to accomplish the same things you do. Other good choices would be family members, roommates, or close friends.
The idea behind this is simple. Rather than having individual goals, the couple creates goals they want to accomplish together.
The Benefits of Creating Couples Goals
- Accountability - Studies have shown that losing weight with a buddy can help you lose twice the pounds you would going at it alone because a buddy forces you to be accountable. This theory also applies to any other goal you create, and, not surprisingly, one of the main reasons most people don’t make their goals is because no one is holding them accountable.
- Twice the Talent – Two brains are better than one, right? Harmonious teamwork will always produce better results than two people working individually.
- Half the Work (usually) – This depends on the goal, but in general any goal that can be split up into a list of tasks should be less work for each individual.
- Setting Important Goals – With two people, there’s more chance of setting goals that actually matter and produce a maximum benefit to the couple
- Developing a Plan – Another reason people don’t see goals to fruition is because they don’t have plans to get there. When two people set a goal, they have to describe in detail to each other what exactly their goal means and how to accomplish it. Also, with two people to check over the details, there is less chance of gaps in thinking.
- Strengthening the Bond - When two people work on something together, they grow closer, and one of the secrets to a happy marriage is having common goals.
For more information on how to set goals, try my One-Time Commitment Plan.
What do you think about Couples Goals? Is this something you will try with your partner or spouse? Are there any other benefits I missed? Remember, you don’t need a new year to set goals – there’s no time like the present. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.
Monica O'Brien is the Director of Digital at Fizz and author of the book Social Pollination, which helps businesses leverage social media for crazy growth!
