This article examines the relationship between female breadwinning and life satisfaction in heterosexual couples. We extend previous research by treating the man’s employment status as a variable that helps to explain rather than confounds this relationship, and by comparing multiple countries through regression analyses of European Social Survey data (Rounds 2–9). Results provide evidence of a female-breadwinner well-being ‘penalty’: men and women are less satisfied with their lives under the female-breadwinner arrangement versus the dual-earner and male-breadwinner alternatives. The penalty is marginal when the male partner is part-time employed but sizeable when he is jobless. However, there are gender differences: after controls for composition, gender-role attitudes, and partners’ relative incomes, the penalty becomes negligible for women while remaining large for men. Analyses suggest these gender differences are linked to high male unemployment among female-breadwinner couples: whereas women appear roughly equally adversely affected by a male partner’s unemployment as by their own, men report substantially higher well-being when she is unemployed instead of him. Country comparisons indicate that while this female-breadwinner well-being penalty is largest in more conservative contexts, especially Germany, it is fairly universal across Europe. So, even in countries where women’s employment is more widespread and cultural and institutional support for the male-breadwinner model is weaker, unemployed men with breadwinner wives are not immune from the social stigma and psychological difficulties associated with their gender non-conformity.

中文翻译：

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女性养家糊口的幸福“惩罚”：男性（未）就业和国家的差异

本文探讨了异性伴侣中女性养家糊口与生活满意度之间的关系。我们通过将男性的就业状况视为有助于解释而不是混淆这种关系的变量来扩展之前的研究，并通过对欧洲社会调查数据（第 2-9 轮）的回归分析来比较多个国家。结果提供了女性养家者幸福“惩罚”的证据：与双职工和男性养家者相比，男性和女性对女性养家者安排下的生活不太满意。当男性伴侣从事兼职工作时，惩罚微不足道，但当他失业时，惩罚就很大。然而，存在性别差异：在控制构成、性别角色态度和伴侣的相对收入后，对女性的惩罚可以忽略不计，而对男性的惩罚仍然很大。分析表明，这些性别差异与女性养家糊口的男性失业率高有关：虽然男性伴侣失业对女性的不利影响与男性伴侣失业对女性的不利影响大致相同，但男性在她失业而不是他失业时报告的幸福感要高得多。国家比较表明，虽然这种女性养家糊口的幸福惩罚在更保守的环境中最大，尤其是德国，但它在整个欧洲相当普遍。因此，即使在女性就业更为普遍且男性养家糊口模式的文化和制度支持较弱的国家，拥有养家糊口妻子的失业男性也无法免受与其性别不一致相关的社会耻辱和心理困难的影响。