It's an outcome of the expectation that people earn their living. People work less today than they used to, but a larger fraction of that work is paid.

And it's a consequence of making divorce legal and socially acceptable. Traditional marriage was primarily an economic contract. The wife assumed the responsibility for running the household, and the husband had a lifetime obligation to support her.

But if you stay away from paid work long enough, your ability to get a decent job diminishes. If you want to make being a stay-at-home partner a viable choice in a society, where divorce is available, you need a safety net of some kind. Maybe the working partner has to continue supporting their ex after divorce, regardless of what led to it. Or maybe we socialize the responsibility, meaning higher taxes and welfare benefits.

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hallole 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> "Traditional marriage was primarily an economic contract."

I don't buy this. You can, for the purposes of your argument, reduce marriage to being something like an economic contract, that's fine; but, in reality, that's not what marriage is/has been primarily about.

Also, solving the burden of work for one sex isn't a solution. Granted, it's better than nothing.

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JumpCrisscross 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> that's not what marriage is/has been primarily about

Ancient societies' marriages we have records about were principally about economics and politics.

Maybe the poor were having love marriages. We don't know because most of our sources couldn't be bothered with them. But to the degree we have evidence, it's in even poor landowners preferring to marry children off to the owners of adjoining plots. Like, maybe that's a coïncidence. But probably not.

	▲	monocasa an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I mean, your kids also just didn't travel much farther than your neighbor's plots for the vast majority of their life. If anything, political marriages are defined by a marriage outside your economic sphere of influence (which for ancient agricultural workers would generally be about a three day journey due to the ox problem), and to someone you don't know. These couples probably grew up together and went to social events like church together from birth.