According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 38% of American wives earn more than their husbands. However, where both spouses work, it’s 29% (which means 9% involve unemployed men).

This means that the wage gap between husbands and wives is narrowing. Since most women work full time jobs and more and more are getting college degrees and getting into career fields, this shouldn’t be surprising.

Hence, women are contributing to the marital assets in greater proportions than ever. Meaning the idea that upon divorce women get some windfall in marital assets that they didn’t substantially financially contribute to is overstated, and will continue to diminish as more and more woman find success in the workforce, and as more and more men start contributing more to the household. Modern American marriages are moving towards more egalitarian familial roles in these respects.

However, although men's role is growing, women continue to do a larger proportion of the housework and child caretaking than men. Even in dual income households, mothers continue to share a disproportionate burden of the household and child caretaking activities. But regardless, according to the Pew Research Center:

Roughly 60% of two-parent households with children under age 18 have two working parents. In those households, on average, fathers spend more time than mothers in paid work, while mothers spend more time on child care and household chores. However, when their paid work is combined with the work they do at home, fathers and mothers are carrying an almost equal workload.

Additionally, women continue to sacrifice more in their careers than men for the sake of the family:

One result is that while 42% of mothers with some work experience reported in 2013 that they had reduced their work hours in order to care for a child or other family member at some point in their career, only 28% of fathers said the same. Similarly, 39% of mothers said they had taken a significant amount of time off from work in order to care for a family member (compared with 24% of men). And mothers were about three times as likely as men to report that at some point they quit a job so that they could care for a family member (27% of women vs. 10% of men).

Given these stats, it’s difficult for me to imagine the stereotypical “divorce rape” scenario that lots of the men on this sub seem to be scared of. Women are contributing financially in record numbers and yet still do the lion’s share of career sacrifice and family caretaking for the wellbeing of the family unit. And yet plenty of men here say it’s unfair that the marital assets would be split 50/50 (generally) upon a divorce unless she contributed every penny he did. In fact, I’ve had a few argue with me that the “fairest” way to split marital assets would be to calculate her efforts at the going rate of a housekeeper/babysitter for the time she spent doing the larger share of the family caretaking.

But what this fails to account for is the small, yet ultimately meaningful, sacrifices women make in their careers. We’ve all heard of how the wage gap is flawed because men work more hours than women and have better paying jobs – and it’s true – but why do you think that is? Why is it that more women work part time than men do? Why is it women aren’t all taking the jobs which make the most, many of which involve long hours and some of which, lots of travel? Why is it women aren’t focusing their priorities on work as much as men are? Probably in large part due to women’s continuing role as the family caretaker/mother.

Why would women make this sacrifice if upon a divorce, it’s completely unrecognized? If I asked you to make small (or large) sacrifices in your career which ultimately could add up to be extremely meaningful in the long run would you agree to do that if I told you your compensation would be something on par with minimum wage? Do you understand that even seemingly small sacrifices like only working 40 hours a week instead of 45-50 add up and matter to employers and that this type of thing can affect your career potential forever? To those who are: why are you trivializing this, much less arguing it’s worth nothing upon a divorce?

So, given the fact that women continue to be the primary family caretakers and continue to sacrifice more career-wise for the family’s sake, I don’t see why 50/50 is so unreasonable. Marital assets are presumed to have been obtained due to the efforts of the parties in the marriage and this makes sense to me, especially given the above statistics. And at least one thing the worried men on this sub can be grateful for is the fact that as the financial disparity between husbands and wives decrease, the likelihood of "divorce rape" dwindles. CMV.