The Dynamics of Divorce 39
spend together, but also include the desire for a heightened level
of meaningfulness in their communication during that time.
Remember also that the sheer quantity of time that spouses
spend physically together has increased substantially given our
longer life spans and the additional leisure time in modern soci-
ety. Not only are today’s husbands and wives expected to talk
turkey to each other insofar as a sincere and serious level of com-
munication is concerned, they are also engaging in numerous
hours of formerly unheard of joint activities together. Traveling,
shopping, working out, eating out, attending professional or cul-
tural events, engaging in coed sports, etc., are all activities that
are now frequently shared by husbands and wives.
As my favorite Time magazine columnist Barbara Ehrenreich
points out, there is no other aspect of life in which we expect any
one person to fill such a “huge multiplicity of needs... only in
marriage do we demand the all-purpose, multi-talented, Renais-
sance person.” She argues that “marriages lasted in the past
because less was expected of them.” Her half-joking, but half-
serious, proposed solution is the availability of the “discreet, long
term, European-style affair” or “separate marriages” for separate
types of marital functions.
Kids = combustibility. Having kids puts extra stress on a mar-
riage. A few of the obvious ones are additional scheduling and
planning for more than two people; financial, time, and organi-
zational pressures; and the potential for disputes over parenting
styles and acceptable punishments—more authoritarian versus
more embracing and coddling styles of parenting. All of these can
increase the potential for a flare up. Stacy Rogers, a sociologist at
Penn State, conducted studies that repeatedly found that child-
less couples were generally happier than those with children.
One of the less-obvious consequences is that once a couple has
had children, the submissive spouse (often, but not always, the
wife) can’t continue to cater exclusively to the dominant spouse.
Loyalties get divided between the marriage and the children, and
so do the time commitments. The spouse who was accustomed
to being catered too often gets uppity and irritable about the fact
that they are no longer the boss.