As long as you are happy, honey!

A recent Wall Street Journal article entitled Who Wears the Pants discusses the role of women and men in making decisions.

The article cited a widespread opinion that "incomes give women power in their marriages," says Leslie Bennetts, a Vanity Fair writer and frequent "Today Show" guest. Apparently money is not a factor in the influence of women in marriage. The article reported that:

A Pew Research Center study released a couple of weeks ago found that when it comes to decision making in the home, wives in a majority of cases either rule the roost or share power equally with their husbands, regardless of how much money the women earn.

Of the 1,260 men and women whom Pew pollsters surveyed over the summer, 43% responded that the woman makes most of the major decisions for the family, with 31% saying that the couple makes most decisions together. There was a small difference (within the margin of error) between the control exerted by wives who earn more than their husbands and those who earn less (46% versus 42%). But in both cases, women wielded sole decision-making power far more than men did, indicating that what "father knows best" is when to defer to mom.

Certainly that was what University of Iowa researchers found last year when they measured how couples negotiate conflict over household decisions. That study not only confirmed that men will usually go along with their wives but found that when couples do disagree, wives are far more persuasive than husbands in changing their spouses' minds.

This is an interesting social phenomenon, and perhaps it has to do with the natural distribution of tasks, that is women are more attuned to how things are run in the house (e.g., kids' school, family events, etc.) relative to men who are more preoccupied with work. But if more and more women are also working full-time these days, why then wives are still dominating the decisions? How do you make decisions in your family? What has been working best for you?

Interestingly, the article continues by suggesting another more important issue, that is the perception of men and women on marital satisfaction.

The general consensus of sociologists is that, whereas a woman's marital satisfaction is dependent on a combination of economic, emotional and psychological realities, a man's marital satisfaction is most determined by one factor: how happy his wife is. When she is happy, he is. Working within this framework, most husbands are unwilling to dig in their heels on any issue unless they have a tremendous incentive to do so.

For husbands, it's really about "I am happy as long as you are, honey". Does this imply that women are more complex than men when it comes to trying to understand each other to make marriages work?

The Bible teaches that a marriage is like an advertising billboard for Christ and the church. A Christian husband must be like Christ, who was willing to lay his life down for the church. On the other hand, a Christian wife must be like the church, that obeys Christ as the head of the church. A temporal marriage on earth is supposed to reflect this eternal reality of Christ and the church. In that context, it is true that a husband should endeavor to make his wife happy, but that is not the main goal. The main goal is to present the wife before God without blemish. The main goal is not to make her happy, but to set her apart for God, which is why a husband must spiritually lead and become a role model for his wife to relate to God in gratitude obedience.