Married Fathers Do Better in the Workplace?

[Bumped up from Oct. 21, 2014 because it is still relevant.] On the episode of the Michael Medved Show still airing as I type this, Medved is talking about how a study says being a father can increase your success in the workplace while being a mother can limit your success in the workplace. While some of Medved's point is that men and women are different, he also again is trying to sell marriage to men. He cites all of the effort unmarried men put into "chasing women".

The problem with these statistics is that they lump everyone unmarried together. That means guys who can't get a date are lumped in with men who deliberately avoid marriage and fatherhood.

Things have changed a little bit since Medved was a single guy.

Today, the unmarried guys who aren't avoiding women entirely can spend very little time, money, or effort to get sex with a variety of women (thanks, feminism!).

Also, unmarried guys can work more and longer hours and don't have to check in with the "control tower" to get approval to do so. It is easier for unmarried, childless guys to go on business trips, network at happy hours and business lunches, and move for promotions. Married fathers are now expected by their wife/child to take time off to go to school, sporting, and performance events. That's a detriment to work.

Yes, there are the masses out there who let life wash over them and those guys who can't get dates because they have no game. However, there is a growing percentage of men who think these things through and are deliberately avoiding marriage and fatherhood and are better employees as a result.

I know with certainty that I was a better employee when I was single and childless. I know I'd also be taking home more pay, if not outright having a more advanced career.

In a culture in which women are becoming more and more difficult (more personality disorders, etc.), having a wife is increasingly becoming a liability to a man's career. (Remember, I'm talking about men dealing with women. If you're a woman, you might have found men increasingly problematic.)

When people like Medved tout stats about married men earning more, they want us to believe that marriage has "civilized" the man and encouraged him to work harder. But once again we're dealing with a correlation that could have a different explanation: maybe it is the men who are likely to earn more who attract a wife rather than the men who get married who are likely to earn more? Ever notice that women tend to prefer a man who earns more over one who doesn't earn as much? Implying that a man will do better professionally if he marries can be very misleading and set people up for failure.

Finally, even if I did earn more than I would have if I never married and never became a father, since half of my earnings legally belong to my wife, I'd have to earn twice as much to be personally better off. Also, so much of my money goes into raising the children. So a slightly better income is more than offset, isn't it?