A Rousing Oui For Married Men

How wedlock affects careers

Whenever French Sociologist Franc,ois de Singly stopped in his wife's office in the early evening, the pattern was almost always the same: the married men and single women were working overtime, and nearly all of the single men and married women had gone home. "It was striking," says the sociologist, who has specialized in family studies and taught for twelve years at the University of Nantes. "It was married men and single women working the longer hours."

De Singly decided to do a study on the matter. The result, a 14-page report that has triggered substantial interest in the French press, helps confirm one of the assertions of American feminism: marriage helps men in their careers and hinders women.

Basing his study on surveys going back to 1970 that covered 37,843 French workers from all income levels and all kinds of jobs, De Singly analyzed data for executive achievement in the 35-to-52 age bracket. Married men far outscored single men, and single women far exceeded married women. Among all men and women with at least two years of professional or university training, 43% of married men reach the executive level, compared with about 29% for single men, 21 % for single women and a feeble 6% for married women. De Singly's conclusion: married men do best, and married women worst, because in traditional marriage the wife lives to support her husband's career and takes her own less seriously. Says the sociologist: "The family provides a kind of support system for the husband, pushing him up the job-advancement ladder. That doesn't happen for a single man or woman, and certainly not for a married woman, who is charged with performing domestic tasks."

But why should the single male score so poorly? Despite all the job prejudices that favor males, he barely outperforms the single woman. De Singly's answer echoes that of the American writer George Gilder in his book Naked Nomads: the single male is a kind of social misfit who earns half as much as married men and less than single women. In the U.S. he is more likely than a married man to commit suicide, become a criminal, be institutionalized.

"On the truly high educated level," De Singly says, "statistics show that it is almost normal for a woman to be single, while the case is not the same for men." For a male, he says unkindly, being single "may already represent a kind of maladjustment." In fact, what De Singly calls the one surprise in the study is that among single people with three or more years at a university, single women have a better chance of reaching the executive level than single men. His explanation: French women who have overcome the obstacles of three years at traditionally male-dominated French universities are tougher than single males.

Some of De Singly's assertions sound odd to American sociologists. His finding that educated single women do better than their male counterparts "really puzzles me," says Harvard Sociologist Lee Rainwater. "It sounds very improbable." According to Viviana Zelizer, a Barnard sociologist, De Singly's study "does fit the general finding that marriage is good for men, not so good for women," but the depiction of the single man as a misfit is "nonsense," though she concedes that "single men will have a harder time in a society that is so marriage-oriented." Still, in France at least, De Singly has shifted the focus of debate on gender and economic success, just by directing his attention to marital status. The institution of marriage, he declares, is "an important variable."

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