"A Recipe for Disaster?": Female-Breadwinner Relationships Threaten Heterosexual Scripts.

ABSTRACT: Female breadwinner relationships (FBRs) occur when a woman earns more money than her male romantic partner. In four studies, we used diverse methods to document the threat that FBRs pose to heterosexual scripts (i.e., social conventions for heterosexual romance). First, a reflexive thematic analysis of 94 newspaper and magazine articles about FBRs identified themes concerning social stigma and feelings of gender threat (i.e., co-occurring feelings of gender nonconformity and inadequacy) that undermine well-being for FBRs, alongside themes concerning hope for a more egalitarian future. Next, two pre-registered experiments (Ns = 880 and 1612) revealed stigmatizing attitudes towards FBRs, which were perceived to be less desirable, worse quality, and less stable than male-breadwinner re

SUBMITTER: Fisher AN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11839713 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature