Does a promotion mean a person is more likely to get divorced?

A study looking into the adverse effects of a woman’s promotion on her marriage has highlighted a worry trend — many couples are in relationships that value a man’s career over his wife’s. As a result, a wife’s promotion can cause an “unequal” balance, whereby a woman’s supposed tasks are not being completed, straining the marriage. The study concluded that married women promoted, either in the public sector or in the private, were more likely to get divorced soon after their promotion.

The study found that woman who were either not working when they got married or were earning less than their husband, suddenly got a promotion at work or a career surge, found themselves divorced within three years of their new post. For example, women in the public sector, such as mayors or Parliamentarians, who won elections were seven percentage points less likely to remain married to their spouse than someone who lost the election.

Men, on the other hand, saw no effect on their marriage, regardless of whether they won or not. Similarly, a woman promoted to a CEO position of a private company with over 100 employees was twice as likely to have gotten divorced within three years of her promotion as her male counterparts.

The researchers contend that wife career improvement affects couples that were in gender traditional roles at the start of their marriage, and they measured this by looking at the amount of total parental leave taken by the wife. If the wife was taking 80 percent or more of the total parental leave, researchers assumed she was part of a gender traditional couple. Four out of five of the sample fell into this category.

There are many reasons a couple decides not to remain married to one another, and one of them could be because they no longer have the same priorities they did when they got married. This does not mean that every promotion threatens a Louisiana couple. But, it does mean that when there are marital problems that cannot be resolved, it might be beneficial to consult an experienced family law attorney.