Does It Matter Who Is the Breadwinner?

I need not tell you that we are all so sophisticated culturally that we reject categorically the notion that men should be the family breadwinners. Right? Feminists have decreed that gender is a social construction and thus it cannot really matter who is winning the family bread-- or some such.

Now, unfortunately for those who traffic in today’s illiberal pieties, a recent study out of Spain has discovered that a man’s job loss has a direct and negative impact on his children’s grades. The worst part is that a mother’s job loss has no such impact.

Evidently this must mean that the human mind is chronically sexist, or else that we have not done a good enough job indoctrinating children.

Beth Ellwood reports on the research for PsyPost, an excellent compendium of psycho research, the good, the bad and the ugly.

The researcher’s analysis of the data revealed that children whose fathers lost their jobs during the Great Recession suffered a significant drop in their average school grades. This drop was substantial — about 15% of a standard deviation.

The findings further suggested that certain subgroups of children were more impacted than others. The adverse impact of job loss appeared to be driven by those whose fathers had suffered longer periods of unemployment and children whose fathers had previously held stable employment (as measured by at least three years of tenure at their former jobs).

But then, sexism rears its ugly head:

Interestingly, a mother’s job loss was not found to significantly affect children’s school grades. The author said that this falls in line with research suggesting that job insecurity is linked to financial anxiety among men, but not women. It could also be tied to the fact that the men in the study tended to contribute a greater share of the household income than did women.

Then again, it might also mean that when a mother loses her job she will be spending more time with her children. Could it be that a mother’s presence will help improve a child’s academic performance? Surely, feminists will need to fight this, with everything they have.