ABSTRACT
Previous studies indicated a relationship between wives’ employment and marital instability. Although there are several notable exceptions, the theoretically predicted positive link between wives’ employment and marital instability/divorce remains popular. This paper explores the extent to which wives’ employment affects their attitudes toward divorce, once religious and other socio-demographic variables are statistically controlled. The data are taken from the 1983–1984 Canadian Fertility Survey of 5,315 women aged 18 to 49.
The overall effect of wives’ employment on divorce attitude is substantial, indicating that employed women are more likely to favour marriage as a permanent union. Many popular notions about the influence of demographic and socioeconomic factors such as age, age at marriage, children and occupational prestige on divorce attitude, are not supported by this research. At the same time, religious factors significantly predict divorce attitudes. The results suggest that the less educated, employed, highly religious and heterogeneous are more likely to agree that marriage is a permanent union which should only be broken for very serious reasons.
