Why Guys Love 50/50

More career options, more companionship-your job gives your husband a lot of benefits he can discuss with his parents when they wonder if your career is good for him. But men smile most broadly when we get to the private reason couples enjoy life when they share roles: more sex. (Probably best to let your husband decide if he wants to tell that to his mom.)

In 2006, a survey of 360 married men found that men who did more chores at home fared much better in the bedroom. “The more satisfied a wife is with the division of household duties, the more satisfied a man is with his marital sex life,” according to the survey. These married men reported that when wives were happier with their husband's household work, the frequency of sex was also higher. And, confounding many skeptics, the survey found that “the more hours a woman works at the job, the more sex she has at home.”

Why would this be? Aren't dual- career couples more harried and tired? Maybe, but fatigue may be a smaller factor in who gets sex than how couples interact. If you look at the wealth of research, couples who share work and family life more evenly have three factors on their side. First, wives are less likely to see their husbands as slackers at home (less “you jerk” effect); instead, wives may find husbands more appealing because they snuggle their kids (more “Baby Bjorn” effect); third, employed wives are statistically more likely to be happy with themselves (more “self-confidence” effect).
—read more here (PDF)

Imagine a Full Life – There’s No Need to Choose

  “I’ll never find the right guy if I can’t ever leave the office,” Joanna, then a lawyer in her first 24/7 job, complained to her mother. At her second corporate law firm, still unmarried but curious about the future, Joanna went to a meeting on work/life balance. The discussion leader, the only female partner with children, started to cry. Not inspirational. Joanna had grown up with a mother who mostly stayed home. So the discouraging signs around her at work did not give Joanna much conviction that she would want to keep working after she had kids.

Sharon, a child of divorced parents, assumed she’d always earn her own living. No man Sharon dated could miss the point. She grilled boyfriends for double standards and gave them books such as The Women’s Room and The Feminine Mystique—which largely went unread. Working stock-market hours in San Francisco, Sharon was in the office close to 4 a.m.—and asleep by 9 p.m., making her an even more unusual date. As she was turning thirty- one, Sharon walked down the street after work one day with tears in her eyes. “No marriage is better than a bad one,” she thought, “but how did I end up alone?” Then we met our husbands and learned this: The most important career decision you make is who you marry. (And the deals you make with him.)
—read more here (PDF)