Women would rather go it alone than be the primary provider

There's an undeniable link between the rise of women and the demise of marriage

Meet Rachael Gosetti, a 33-year-old real-estate agent in Savannah, Ga., who was featured in a recent Wall Street Journal article entitled “American Women Are Giving Up on Marriage.” Gosetti broke up with her boyfriend, with whom she shares a 5-year-old son, because she was “tired of doing most of the child care, cooking, and scheduling” while also earning almost double her boyfriend’s salary.

That Gosetti and her guy aren’t married goes unmentioned since the stigma of being unmarried parents is gone. But that’s a clear oversight. I had a coaching session this week with a woman who also lamented the “unpaid labor” she does as an employed girlfriend who’s pregnant with her live-in boyfriend’s second child.

Women like Gosetti and my client are in this boat precisely because they’re not married. Being roommates with the father of your children does not provide the same advantages as being married to the father of one’s children. “Unpaid labor” isn’t a phrase a married mother who’s not employed would use, for example—because her husband’s paycheck is her paycheck, too.

Marriage matters.

But let’s put that conversation to the side for now. Every woman highlighted in the WSJ article represents the same group: unmarried, liberal women. (It’s worth noting that the author is also part of this group.) And while the increasing political divide between the sexes is a factor in these women’s choice to remain single, it isn’t the overriding reason they’re going it alone.

The real reason couldn’t be clearer: More and more women are out-earning men and as a result are struggling in love. They either can’t find a man who they consider their equal (oh, the irony!), or they did find one but discovered later that he can’t keep up. It’s a classic case of unrealistic expectations resulting in unmet expectations.

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It is undeniable that American women are surging ahead of men educationally and professionally. What is rarely recognized are the massive implications this has on love and romance, as well as on marriage and family life.

Most authors who write on this subject will happily focus on the economics of marital breakdown. They’ll concede that it’s harder to get ahead financially as a party of one. (The wealth gap between single people and their married counterparts proves this in spades.) But few authors will concede the biological imperatives of marriage.

Yet that is where the rubber meets the road.

You’ll recall that Gosetti broke up with her boyfriend because she was “tired of doing most of the child care, cooking, and scheduling” while also earning almost double her boyfriend’s salary. This is a distinctly female response.

How many men do you know who would divorce their wives because she makes half as much money as he does? Or because she isn’t as career-oriented or as educated as he is? Or because the labor involved in running a household—paid work, housework, and child care—isn’t evenly distributed?

Men and women are deeply different, yet we treat them as though they are one and the same—and then wonder why relationships fail.

The greatest impediment to younger Americans’ success with marriage is that they’ve been raised with a deafening silence on the differences between the sexes—particularly as it pertains to what each looks for in a spouse and their respective behaviors re work-family matters once they do make a choice.

The article makes women like Gosetti sound like victims. Indeed, the author, Rachel Wolfe, specifically refers to American women as “victims of this demographic reality” in this podcast about her article. The implication is that life is unfair, or stacked against, women—when in reality it’s the choices they’ve made that have landed women right where they are.

Apparently no one told women that all choices have trade-offs, and all progress comes at a price. High-status women such as doctors, lawyers and business owners are at a disadvantage when it comes to marriage because they resist marrying down, and the pool of single men who meet their standards is small.

Men, on the other hand, have no problem marrying women who earn less or who are less educated than they are. Indeed, the title of this piece wouldn’t work at all if the sexes were reversed.

This is the true source of women’s retreat from marriage. Ms. Wolfe insists in her interview that women want to get married but would rather stay single than “settle” for a man of lower social or economic status.

That’s called hypergamy, and it’s alive and well in 2025.

Biology doesn’t change

To put it another way: Women would rather go it alone than be the dominant partner in their relationship.

People don’t like that word—dominant. But being the dominant partner in a marriage or relationship doesn’t mean being better or more important than the other person. As a rule, it means being older or taller or richer or smarter. Or some combination thereof.

Most women (yes, there are exceptions) don't like being older or taller or richer or smarter than their man because they want to feel as though they can lean on and/or depend on him should they need to. They want to know that the man they love is capable of handling anything and everything life doles out, even if they’re perfectly capable of doing so themselves (which they often are).

This is not my opinion; it is a truth grounded in evolutionary biology. Women are the ones who get pregnant and thus become vulnerable in a whole host of ways that men will never experience. This fact was ignored when women began their rise to power. They thought it would be a win-win, and they’ve since discovered it’s actually a win-lose.

Another great example of biological differences: Married women tend not to respond to breadwinning the way men do. Men are providers and protectors by nature and thus want to hand over their earnings so their families can thrive. That is not how most wives feel about the money they earn.

When a married woman earns money, she thinks of it as hers and hers alone. You’ve probably heard the phrase “What’s his is ours, but what’s mine is mine.” (For the record, I don’t agree with this unless it pertains to a husband who’s an addict or otherwise irresponsible person.)

Women rarely turn over their paychecks to their husbands to manage the way men do with their wives, a clear indication of the difference between a breadwinning wife and a breadwinning husband. The two are not interchangeable, and acting as if they are causes all sorts of conflict and confusion.

Men and women also don't respond to childcare and household chores in the same way; they have different standards. Men aren’t “nesters” by nature and are thus more flexible about what goes on at home, often ceding to their wives about what needs to be done domestically.

It is ironic, to say the least, but women actually had their greatest power when they weren’t economically independent. Women thought they could become men’s “equals” by living lives as though they are men and experience no repercussions on the home front. But they can’t—because they’re women, not men.

In reality, women simply traded one form of power for another. They may be richer, but they’re poorer in all the ways that matter.

Are women really better off single?

One way they’re “poorer” is that they’re single. The article insists this is a good thing, that women are better off single. But is this true?

Multiple studies demonstrate the answer is no. Look here or here or here, for example. Or look at this 2022 General Social Survey, which found that 40% of married women with children report being "very happy" versus just 22% of unmarried, childless women.

That’s not to suggest that no one who’s single is happy. But life is long, and most people come to realize there’s nothing more meaningful or rewarding than marriage and family. Why do you think most people go on to remarry after getting divorced?

Conclusion

As uncomfortable as it may be to admit, there's an undeniable link between the rise of women in the marketplace and the implosion of love and romance, and marriage and family life.

That doesn’t mean the answer is for women to stay out of the workforce. But it does mean women need much clearer guidance about the reality of life’s trade-offs. And they need an education about the biological differences between women and men that make interchangeability (the modern meaning of equality) an impossibility.

There’s a reason a more traditional marriage structure (which, for the record, does not translate to a mother never working outside the home and a father never changing a diaper) works, while modern marriage is falling apart.

It works because it moves with the biological tide, rather than against it. The more people try to fight human nature, the more frustrated and unhappy they will be.

Forty percent of married women with children report being "very happy" versus just 22% of unmarried, childless women.