All of those hours you're logging at work could help your relationship down the road: Couples with young children are more likely to stay together if the wife earns more than the husband, according to a new study published in the journal Sociology.
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For the study, researchers from the U.K. monitored 3,944 British couples with children (some married and some co-habitating). They looked at who was the primary breadwinner in each couple and noted how that corresponded with relationship changes as the children grew from 8 months to 7 years old.
The results? On the whole, it didn't matter who was the breadwinner in the relationship—there was no significant difference in breakup risk no matter who was bringing home the bacon. But when children were between the ages of 4 and 7 years old, married couples were 80 percent less likely to split if the woman had a larger salary. The stats were similar for cohabitating couples.
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Study authors say further research is needed to fully understand how partners' wage differences affect couples, but they do point out that these findings help debase the myth that higher wages for women increase divorce risk. Somewhere in California, Sheryl Sandberg is smiling.
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