MacKenzie Bezos helped Jeff start Amazon – and then stayed home to take care of the family (and become a successful novelist). She is one of the more than one-quarter of American mothers who stay home (only 7% of men do so). That number includes about 10% of all highly educated mothers (those with a master’s degree or higher) who opt out of the workplace to take care of their families. These women opt out to support the careers of their husbands and to engage in the intensive mothering that is expected of them.
While the women may explain they are voluntarily deciding to stay home, that choice gets strong public support: more than half of Americans believe that mothers will do a better job of caring for a new baby than believe that both mothers and fathers would be equally good -- and only 1% believe that fathers, not mothers, would provide better care. Thus, “for many heterosexual couples, it’s more of a foregone conclusion.”
When these women get divorced, the law in virtually all states requires that property be distributed equitably, but only a few states require equal distribution.
That’s where this gets complicated. Should the caretaking that stay-at-home moms do be valued as equal to the breadwinning of their husbands? Consider whether that means the stay-at-home mom should be entitled to half of all assets, and whether we do not adequately “ value the often invisible and unpaid labor that so many women do to enable their husbands to build wealth and find professional success.”
This question of how to value caretaking at divorce was at the core of an innovative recent study by two Vanderbilt professors. Law profs Joni Hersch and Jennifer Bennett Shinall recruited more than 3000 subjects to find out their thoughts on the property that a stay-at-home spouse should receive on divorce. All participants read the same basic fact scenario.
John and Susan began dating in 1995, shortly after they began their first professional jobs. They married in 1998, and both continued to work until 2003, when the first of their three children was born. After the birth of their first child, John and Susan decided they could live comfortably on John’s income. Susan left her job in 2003 in order to focus on raising their three children, and she has never returned to work. (p. 12)
They were all also told that John was the one who had filed for divorce after 17 years of marriage. But then, they were given one of six different scenarios with variations in the spouses’ educational levels and occupations as well as in accumulated property, and asked how the property should be divided.
Women were more likely to give Susan a larger share, and their decisions as to Susan’s entitlement varied little, regardless of the spouses’ educational level or occupation. By contrast, men’s awards differed, and they were more likely to give a larger award to Susan if she had a higher education.
When it comes to why they made these awards, most participants believed that John’s financial contributions were an important factor. Beyond that, more men than women rated a breadwinner’s entitlement to earnings as important, and more women than men believed that the value of staying home was an important factor (although the good news is that a majority of both sexes did recognize the value of caretaking).
This study shows the impact – at divorce – of being a stay-at-home mom who gives up her own career: she is unlikely to receive half of all property earned during the marriage. And other studies show that she will probably not get long-term alimony. The study also shows the tough questions of just how we think of the institution of marriage today, according to June Carbone, my co-author of Marriage Markets and a law professor who teaches at the University of Minnesota Law School. She suggests that an alternative to trying to value caretaking is instead to treat marriage as a promise to share equally, irrespective of contribution and irrespective of fault (although she doesn’t necessarily favor that approach).
As a society, we are still working through what is right when a marriage ends, how to value caretaking versus breadwinning (and leading).
For MacKenzie Bezos, this doesn’t make a difference, of course. Based on her divorce settlement, she will become the third richest woman in the world.
