MALE PRIVILEGE: Breadwinning Men Are More Anxious and Less Healthy.

“When you’re a breadwinner, your family’s standard of living is very much dependent on your salary, much more so than your partner’s salary, and that’s a lot of pressure,” Munsch says. For the purposes of this paper, breadwinning is defined as earning a higher relative income than your partner. The anxiety — or lack thereof — associated with breadwinning was found to be indicative of gender expectations. For women, earning more money didn’t predict significant gains in health, but it did correlate with higher well-being.

“For men, they can be at status quo, but always lose it,” Munsch says. “For women who are breadwinners, they’re not at the status quo — they’re knocking it out of the park. In everyday interactions, people say, ‘Wow, you’re the breadwinner! You’re such a rock star.’ And if they lose it, they don’t become losers: They go back to the status quo.”

Is it any wonder so many men are going on strike?