Single-income couples have more fun.
But not much more than two-income couples, said two University of Virginia sociologists.
The amount of time couples spend together having fun is important because it relates to marital happiness, the sociologists said.
When it comes to fun, the non-working wives of single-income couples are 18 minutes per day happier than the working wives of dual-earner couples.
On the average, non-working wives said they spend 46 minutes a day having fun with their husbands, while the women of dual-earner couples contend they have only 28 minutes of fun a day with their husbands.
But among the 177 two-income couples and 144 single-income couples studied nationwide, men and women seemed to interpret fun differently.
The husbands of the housewives said they spend 40 minutes a day having fun with their spouses-6 minutes less than their wives say. The men in two-income households said they spend 32 minutes a day having fun with their wives-4 minutes more than their wives.
For the purposes of the study, fun was defined as social activities like recreation, going to the movies, visiting friends, attending sporting events and so on.
It does not include watching television, eating meals together, talking to each other or having sex.
NO TIME FOR SEX
Sex, in fact, plays an insignificant part in the amount of time couples spend having fun together, the sociologists said. Analyzing the couples`
busiest workday of the week, they found few married people are having sex at all.
”What we find is that on the days they work the most, they don`t report having sex,” said Steven L. Nock, associate professor of sociology at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
”Either people don`t mention sex,” said Paul William Kingston, University of Virginia assistant professor of sociology, ”or sex life in America is in very bad shape.”
What surprised the sociologists the most was not that couples don`t have sex during their busiest workdays, but that the difference in time that two-income and single-income couples spend together is not great. Altogether, dual-earner couples spend 3.2 hours a day together, while single-income husbands and wives spend 3.8 hours together.
”The fact that the difference is so small indicates that people are making an effort to get together,” Kingston said. ”Apparently, spouses are trying very hard to spend time together.”
The picture Nock and Kingston paint with their togetherness time analysis is one of two-income couples having some success in overcoming the conflicting work schedules that reduce their time together. Only 11 percent of the two-income couples surveyed had the same work hours.
BALANCING ACT
”Couples throughout America are struggling to balance out family with worklife,” Nock said. ”In that struggle there is time lost being together, there is time lost being with our children. There is the possibility that if too much time is lost, the marriage will suffer.”
When it comes to the activities that couples would consider ”quality time” together, two-income couples spend slightly less time together than the single-income couples, Nock and Kingston said.
While single-income couples spend about 18 minutes a day talking to each other, dual-income couples spend about 11 minutes together talking. Housewives and their working husbands spend anywhere from 40 to 48 minutes a day eating meals together. Two-income couples spend 33 to 42 minutes eating meals together.
”Talking and having fun and having meals together seem to be the indispensable parts of the relationship,” Nock said. ”It certainly seems that the last thing they are willing to lose to their jobs is the quality time (activities).”
TV TOGETHERNESS
Both dual-income couples and single-income couples spend most of their
”together time” watching television. Housewives spend 62 minutes a day watching television, while wives employed outside the home watch 44 minutes of TV a day. Single-income husbands watch 74 minutes of TV a day. Husbands of two-income families watch 57 minutes a day.
The sociologists explained the couples` discrepancies in time spent together as the different interpretations of the activities. If the couple carry on a conversation while watching television, one spouse might report the activity as watching television while the other said they were talking.
Although the sociologists believe there is a definite relationship between couples who spend less time together and marital unhappiness, nothing in their study proves which is the cause and which is the effect.
”It is hard to tell whether people are less happy together because they don`t spend much time together,” said Kingston, ”or they don`t spend as much time together because they aren`t happy with each other.”
Obviously, more study is needed. –
