Munsch’s research deals with how modern families are dealing with the consequences of those gender roles. At the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Seattle on Sunday, she will present research findings that challenge the stereotype of the emasculated, non-breadwinning husband. Her team tracked the relationship between married men’s and women’s income contributions and their health over the course of 15 years. All were between 18 and 32 years old, non-transgender, and in heterosexual couples.

Social identity theory suggests that, in men, breadwinning would come with better health—a sort of harmony with their understandings of themselves and the world’s. But the Connecticut researchers actually found that as their income increased relative to their wives’, men’s psychological well-being and health declined. The men’s mental and physical health (measured by self-assessment) were at their worst during years when they were their family’s sole breadwinner.

But the men’s psychological well-being and health increased when their wives took on more economic responsibility. In step, women’s psychological well-being also improved as they took on a greater share of the family’s financial contributions (though the women’s physical health didn’t change).

I’m no expert in this, but I told Munsch I would have expected that if these breadwinner-homemaker stereotypes are still around, then men could feel emasculated by not being the breadwinner, and that would be harmful to them.

“To be perfectly honest, that's what I expected, too,” she said. “I'm very familiar with the emasculation literature. I was really surprised to find this other relationship.”

She believes that anxiety is driving this effect. Depression scores don’t really change, but “their anxiety increases tremendously."

But why would the effect be essentially opposite in men and women?

She attributes that to gender performances that cloud our judgment. Men are taught to see breadwinning as an obligation; women to see it more as an opportunity. Women are less likely to dwell on what other people will think of them if they aren’t the primary source of income, while men feel the need to take on higher-paying positions, even when the role might just be an anxiety-inducing, taxing, stressful experience.

Of course, generalizations like that reinforce the gender binary at the root of this, but in service of understanding the flaws in that conceptualization.

“I would encourage men to feel more free to ask, ‘Do I really need to do this? Do we need this extra money?’” she said. “I think women are more likely to ask themselves that.”

Instead of taking a job to fulfill an expectation to make as much money as possible for their families, women are more likely to do so because they want to. When you enjoy a job, it’s not perceived as stressful. When it’s not perceived as stressful, it’s not detrimental to a person’s health.