Study: Sex life doesn’t suffer for dual-earner couples

Most dual-earner couples know the standard line: If you want to find time for sex, pencil a date onto your spouse’s calendar.

Conventional wisdom aside, a new study finds that the daily employment grind for two-income couples actually has little effect on the frequency or quality of their sex life.

Janet Hyde, a UW–Madison psychology professor, surveyed more than 500 couples for her study, which is reported in the Sept. 11 issue of the Journal of Family Psychology. The study found no significant differences between homemakers and employed women on their frequency of intercourse, sexual satisfaction or levels of sexual desire.

“These results were very surprising, because there’s a pervasive lore among psychologists that dual-income couples don’t have time for sex,” Hyde says. In fact, most of the prevailing theories in psychology hold that employment and sex are natural enemies, but Hyde’s study provides the first large-scale evidence on the subject.

The real effects on the libido, according to the study, came from the amount of fatigue reported by women. However, Hyde found that both homemakers and employed women reported the same levels of fatigue, suggesting that society has a very romanticized view of the homemaker’s workload.

“We have underestimated the amount of work that goes into being a homemaker, and on top of that many women might not find that role as rewarding,” Hyde says.

Another big contributor to a quality sex life was not number of hours worked, but rather the quality of their work life. The couples that had low reports of sexual satisfaction were those that reported very low regard for their jobs.

The lowest sex ratings of all, Hyde says, came when men reported low job satisfaction while their wives reported high regard for their jobs, suggesting that the combination might be “galling” for men who still carry the mantle of family breadwinner.

The study, co-authored by UW–Madison sociologist John DeLamater and psychologist Erri Hewitt, gathered information from couples who were recruited for a separate study of Hyde’s on maternity leave and multiple roles. The couples, all of whom were expecting a baby, were surveyed at five months pregnancy, four months post-partum and 12 months post-partum.

Hyde says this was an appropriate group to survey about sexuality, since the addition of a baby to the family presents an added responsibility and the stress of multiple roles might be felt more intensely.

The data collected for couples 12 months post-partum fairly well illustrate Hyde’s findings. On the average frequency of sexual intercourse per month, homemakers reported 5.96 times while women working full-time averaged 5.63 times. On their satisfaction with their sexual relationship, on a scale of one to five (five being highest satisfaction), homemakers averaged a 3.84 while women working full-time averaged 3.66. On whether they were experiencing decreased sexual desire, on a scale of zero (never) to 4 (almost always), homemakers averaged a score of 0.67 while the employed women averaged 0.80.

Aside from debunking a myth about sex, Hyde says this new information can promote a deeper understanding of sexual problems in a relationship. “The danger of attributing sex problems to overworking is that it allows people to overlook deeper problems,” she says.

“I think there’s still some stigma attributed to dual-earner couples, so the finding might be relieving in some sense,” Hyde adds. “Some younger people worry about how they’re going to manage a career and a family and a healthy marriage. But we’re finding that things don’t fall apart in dual-earner relationships.”

Dual-earner couples have rapidly become the majority in America, with about 60 percent of all households in 1992 reporting two incomes. They have become an intensely studied group as well, with much of the psychological research focusing on how well they fare in juggling multiple roles and staying mentally healthy. Hyde says this is the first study of its kind looking at sexual issues.

Hyde says two prevailing theories exist about dual-earner couples. The first is called the “scarcity hypothesis,” a basic rule that says that time consumed by one “role” will naturally drain from another, and multiple roles will inevitably cause conflict. The other is the “enhancement hypothesis,” which states that a variety of different roles creates a more rich and varied life, and the positive experiences become amplified.

Applied to sex lives, Hyde says the “scarcity” scenario would likely be true for couples who are classic “workaholics,” clocking 60 or more hours per week. But no participants in her study group worked more than 45 to 50 hours per week.

So what about all those couples who have relegated sex to an agenda item, something for the weekly calendar? Is a planned sex life somehow less satisfying? Hyde doesn’t think it’s such a bad idea.

“We idealize spontaneity in sex so much in this culture,” she says. “But if you’re going to make sex a priority, make it a priority. The things that are a priority are usually on your calendar.”