Do Men Really Sacrifice More in Marriage? Let’s Talk

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]I've often heard people say that men sacrifice their happiness for their families, while women will sacrifice their families for their happiness. And this is in reference to how women file most divorces. So, today I want to explore this idea, and I'm going to use an example from TikTok of a man who said work is not a sacrifice. And this is a man who is married, who provides for his family, and he actually made the argument that basically that's BS, and he is calling out this idea that working your job is somehow a sacrifice because you have a family. So, let's explore this together from my perspective as somebody who works in divorce, who sees couples breaking up, and who sees and goes through who does what, who has sacrificed, who has contributed what, and how labor in a marriage is often divided. But before we get into it, if you're new here, my name is Tanya and I'm a family lawyer and mediator. And on this channel I discuss all things relationships from dating to divorce. If that sounds like something you're interested in, I would love it if you could join me. Do all the things down there, and let me know what you think in the comments. Also, if you would like to work with me, my professional details will be linked below. Now first, let's look at a clip from the public offender's TikTok where he said work is not a sacrifice. Going to work is not a sacrifice.

[00:01:20]Now I will say from my perspective, I tend to agree with him in what he is saying. Because let's look at the definition of sacrifice first of all, so that we can understand what we're talking about. So, the definition of sacrifice, broadly speaking, means giving up something of value that you would otherwise have or be able to do in order to pursue some other higher purpose or for the sake of somebody else. And in order to kind of demonstrate my perspective, I would like to go through an illustrative example of your average couple. And I'm going to explain to you through this illustrative example why it is not a sacrifice to work your job. Because not working a job isn't really an option for most people.

[00:02:01]Most people have to work because most people need money. Most of you are not independently wealthy. You do not really have the option to just not work. So, you are not really giving up something that you would otherwise not have to do in order to have a family. But that is often how it is framed by men and by society in general. Now, that's not to say that being the provider financially is not important, okay? That's not to say that people, both men and women, but like anybody working a job to provide for their family is not working hard.

[00:02:35]That's not to say that that is not an important contribution. It's just that it's not a sacrifice that they are making, that they are not giving something up. And that is the important distinction because often it is framed like they wouldn't have to do this thing. They wouldn't have to be working hard to make money if they didn't have a family, as if they had some other means to support themselves. So, let me go through this example, but just keep that in mind because that is the framing that I'm looking at it through this lens of like, are you giving something up in order to have this family? Because that would be the definition of sacrifice.

[00:03:12]So, let me introduce you to Bob and Jane. Let's call them Bob and Jane for the sake of this experiment, thought experiment if you will. Bob and Jane work in a corporate job, some office job, okay? So, maybe they're not average average, but whatever. Let's pretend that they met at university. So, they went to the same university, got the same education. Let's say they got similar grades, they're working in the same position. They are now in a relationship, and they decide they're going to get married. So, what tends to happen after they get married? Not a lot changes. They both continue working similar hours in this same job that they have. Okay, cool. So, no one's really sacrificed anything. Now they're actually doing life together, which actually can be beneficial. They're teaming up, pooling resources, all of that stuff. Okay, let's fast forward and they decide to start a family. This is where things get interesting. So, the first thing that happens is, of course, Jane is the one who gets pregnant because that's just how biology works.

[00:04:07]So, right away, she's the one sacrificing something. She's sacrificing her body. She wouldn't have to carry a baby if they, as a couple, didn't want to have a child. Meanwhile, Bob gets the benefit of having a baby without having to be pregnant. And pregnancy is a huge physical sacrifice because it is hugely traumatic on your body. And it carries a number of health risks up to and including life-ending risks. In fact, if you look at the risks of pregnancy, it is actually riskier than most of those dangerous jobs that are male-dominated that men like to talk about often even when they don't work in those jobs. So, right from jump, Bob hasn't made any sacrifices here. He's still working his same job, and as I said, he gets to have a family without having to go through the risk of pregnancy. Jane, on the other hand, has made a sacrifice. Like I said, she has to sacrifice her body, her health, her life in order to have a baby. Okay, so they have this child.

[00:04:59]Now, what happens next? Usually, Jane will take some time off work. Now, this will vary depending on where you live, and you know, maternity leave laws, etc., but almost always it is the woman who will take time off, and that makes sense because like I said, she went through pregnancy, that is, you know, like a huge thing to recover from. So, it makes sense that a woman needs time off to recover. But while she is taking this time off to ostensibly recover from pregnancy, what is happening? Well, first of all, this is usually not a good career move. So, she is, again, making a sacrifice because she is sacrificing her career projection in order to be able to look after the child and recover from the pregnancy that was required to have said child. She is also doing now all of the work for the baby. Because what is Bob doing? He's still going to work. So, we usually see it like, well, Bob has to work to support the family now because Jane has taken time off to recover from pregnancy, so she will then do everything else. And that will include things like night feedings because she's the only one who can breastfeed. Again, that's just biology. So, it usually ends up being like, oh well, it makes sense for her to do all the night feedings and stay up with the baby, and also, you know, Bob has to work. So, now, again, Jane has sacrificed something. She's giving up her health, she's giving up her sleep, she's giving up a lot to look after the baby. And Bob is still working the same job he was always working. And while before having a child, it would have been more common for Bob and Jane to have shared the household labor, even if it might not have been shared equally, let's not get into that, but let's even pretend that they shared it equally. Usually in the scenario where they have a baby and Jane has now taken time off, it is almost always going to fall onto her to now do all of the household labor. So, let's recap again.

[00:06:44]Bob is working the same job he always worked. Jane is now having to give up her career, take time off to look after their child, give up on sleep, her health, her physical body has, you know, changed potentially forever, and now she is doing all of the household labor, which actually makes Bob's life easier.

[00:07:02]So, has Bob sacrificed anything yet? I do not see the sacrifice. You know, tell me if I'm wrong. Explain in that scenario where the sacrifice is. So, again, let's fast forward a little bit and go with what is the most common trajectory in this scenario. And just to emphasize, this is just obviously one example, not all couples work out this way. This is just based on my experience and based on the research we have, the most common average type of scenario.

[00:07:32]Okay, so like I said, let's fast forward a little bit. Jane is now ready to go back to work. Again, how much time she took off will vary. So, I don't know.

[00:07:40]Let's give it a year or 6 months, something like that, average again. In the meantime, Bob's career has continued uninterrupted. And again, like I said, because Jane has been doing everything at work, sometimes Bob has been able to do a bit more in the office. Now, is not a sacrifice? Well, it's often presented that way because now he's working more hours for the family, but the result is very often that Bob will be offered a promotion. Remember when I said Bob and Jane were in the same position? Well, it's very, very common in this situation for the man to get a promotion after he gets married and has a family. And there is research to back this up, and I talked about it in the husband pay gap, where, you know, men who are married and have families tend to earn more over their career compared to their single counterparts, so men who never marry and have children. And there were a number of reasons for this, but some of it is just bias. Some people will still look at a man who is married, who has a family, and they will look at them as a more responsible employee. Because now they have responsibilities outside of, you know, just supporting themselves, which makes them more likely that they will stay in the job, that they have more on the line, they have more to lose, and so they're less likely to sort of hop around from job to job, or, you know, take breaks in their careers, or maybe go overseas, like whatever it is that they might otherwise do. That is the perception. That is sort of, you know, And is that a sacrifice? Well, maybe. Because there is a little bit a loss of freedom. So, I will kind of give Bob credit for that because now he is in a situation where he has to keep this job because he has other people relying on him. It isn't, I would say, like a sacrifice, but there's some intangible pressure there. And that might affect the way that he, you know, pursues his career, but the point is that even if it does, there are benefits that he is given, i.e., he is more likely to get promoted, he is more likely to get a pay rise, and he is less likely to be made redundant or fired. And that's just the statistics that we have. So, coming back to our example, Jane is already to return to work. Meanwhile, Bob has been given a promotion. So, the most common situation is that Jane will very likely negotiate some either part-time hours or flexible hours in order to accommodate her care responsibilities for her child.

[00:09:50]And this will also further have a detrimental effect on her career.

[00:09:54]Because what often happens is that while we look at men who have families as potentially better employees, we often look at women who have children as worse employees because we believe that their priority is going to be their children.

[00:10:06]Whether that's right or wrong, that is often the perception. And so very very often in the situation where Jane goes back to work, she is still overlooked for things like promotions and certain career opportunities because it is viewed that she has other responsibilities and also in this type of situation, people might look at her and go like "Oh, we're just waiting for her to have a second child now so that, you know, and then she'll take more time off and potentially she may never come back." Again, this might not be Jane's plan, but that is how people will look at it. And that does impact the opportunities that she is given. And there is so much research on this topic that we even have words for it. It's the fatherhood bonus and it's the motherhood penalty. So again, having a family has cost Jane something of value. That is a sacrifice. She has sacrificed the trajectory that her career could have otherwise taken if she had not chosen to have children in a way that it has not affected Bob. So Bob has not really made a sacrifice here because even if his family life might impact how he views his career or what he might do at work, often that has positive impacts on his career because it makes him, like I said, potentially work more hours or potentially not do risky things like take different jobs or potentially start a business or things like that that he could potentially or more likely or more easily do if he didn't have a family to support. But there's a payoff. There's, you know, promotions or increases in pay that go along with that. So in a sense he is compensated in a way that Jane is not compensated for the sacrifices that she has made. In fact, she is financially penalized. So let's fast forward again. Bob and Jane are now both back at work, but Jane's career hasn't taken off the way Bob's has. She is still stuck at a lower level. Very often she is the one as a result who is doing all of the daycare pickups and drop-offs. She is responsible to take time off when their child is sick. She is the one who is still carrying the majority of the load at home, who is the default parent, and who is the one responsible for all of the parental responsibilities. And it usually comes about that way because again, Bob is now making more money. He is the primary income earner. They rely on his income more. It is more important for them to prioritize his job over hers. And this is where the problems start to seep in because Jane is doing everything else.

[00:12:24]She is trying to carry all of the load, the load of trying to work, but also trying to keep the household running.

[00:12:29]And this is such a common scenario that I have seen play out I can't tell you how many times. So the next most common thing that happens in this situation is that Jane is burnt out from having to try to rebuild her career, feeling like she's hitting wall after wall, not being given the same opportunities that Bob has been given, not being overlooked for promotions and for pay rises, still stuck in sort of the same job that she was doing before. Again, Bob is still working in his career. Yes, he's been given a promotion. Yes, he's been given a pay rise. Maybe he's working a few more hours, but on the flip side, he is doing a lot less at home. Remember, because now Jane is doing everything at home. So he actually has more free time.

[00:13:11]Again, where is the sacrifice? So Bob and Jane decide, now that he's been given this promotion, given this pay rise, maybe they should have a second child and Jane should consider just being a stay-at-home mom. I hate saying just because that is a huge job. Okay, it is a very important job. It's a difficult job, but I didn't want to downplay it, but I'm just saying.

[00:13:29]Instead of trying to be a mom and working in her corporate job, she can do just one of those jobs instead of two of those jobs. Okay, that's what I meant.

[00:13:39]So the point is, okay, they decide to do that. And it is one of those self-fulfilling prophecies because of the way that we then treat women in the workplace after they have children, often it actually pushes them to do exactly that because they feel like they're not progressing in their career and everything is so difficult. And they're not getting the support that they need at home and they're not getting the support that they need at work. And so it sort of pushes them to make a decision to go one way or the other. Plus they do the math and of course, you know, child care for two children is so expensive that would it even be worth it for Jane to try to work? Okay, this like common scenario.

[00:14:13]So okay, they decide to have another child and Jane is now going to give up her career. Again, sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice because she has to go through pregnancy again. Now she has to raise a baby and a toddler. Now she has to fully give up on her career. These are all things that she wouldn't be doing and her life wouldn't be like that if she hadn't had a family. She is sacrificing.

[00:14:36]Sacrifice is something of value. Your career is valuable. Your ability to earn money is valuable. Your financial autonomy is valuable. That is why women fought so hard to be able to have these things. It is why women fought to be able to not just earn their own money because women always worked and in some cases they were paid, although they were paid less. But in a lot of cases the problem was they didn't get to keep their money. Often their money was actually basically owned and controlled by their husbands. Or if they didn't have husbands, I guess their male relatives. Or at times they weren't even paid at all. But that's a whole other conversation. The point is women didn't fight for the right to work, they fought for the right to have financial autonomy, to be able to earn their own money, earn the same as men if they were working in the same jobs, to actually control that money themselves, to have their own bank accounts, to be qualified for their own loans, their own lines of credit, their own mortgages, to be able to buy property on their own. So doing any of those things in my opinion is not a sacrifice, it is a privilege. And that is the thing that Jane in this scenario has sacrificed. She has sacrificed her ability to earn her own money and have her own financial autonomy and pursue the career that she studied for and that she was working in before she, you know, married Bob and had his children. And again, what has Bob sacrificed? Please, that someone tell me. What? He's working the job that he studied for, that he was working before he and Jane got married, before he had children. His career has followed the expected trajectory that it would have followed whether or not he had a family. Like I said, you could even argue that his career has gotten a boost from the fact that he was married and had a family. So where is the sacrifice? I'll wait. Please, let me know. Write it down. I want someone to explain, based on the definition of sacrifice, where in this scenario Bob is sacrificing. And I want to come back to that quote from the beginning, that men sacrifice their happiness because I think it's actually sick to think of your family and being with people that presumably you should love, who love you, that is somehow not happiness, that you choose to get married and have a family and now you see them as a burden, something that takes away your happiness, that you have to sacrifice your happiness to be in that family.

[00:16:55]Like I can't think of something that is more sick than that mentality. Because as much as women sacrifice, okay, as much as they give up, I have never seen them or heard them say that having a family was sacrificing their happiness.

[00:17:10]That is actually the one thing that makes it all worth it for them, that it is the joy that they get from raising children and having, you know, more people in your life to love. That is the goal. That is why they're giving up all these things for the goal of having a happy family. And the often the only reason that they will ever walk away from that is if the happiness has been sucked out of them. And usually it's sucked out of them by the partner who is himself miserable because he sees his family as a burden and not something to be joyful about, not something to be grateful for. And that is the problem, that they view marriage and children as the ultimate sacrifice. That despite the fact that their lives do not change at all, that they just continue doing exactly what they would be doing if they didn't have a family, they view somehow like they've given up so much of their freedom and what they would otherwise be doing and what they otherwise could do with their lives if they hadn't had a family. And I kind of think that that narrative is so detrimental to people in general and to families and to like I can't even find the words. Because if we take Bob and Jane again, we roll time back. Just go all the way all the way back, right? All the way back to when they were young, unmarried. Imagine that they had broken up and that they never got married and had a family. Let's compare and contrast what Bob's life would look like. He would be, again, working the same job. Maybe he wouldn't have even gotten the same promotions or the same opportunities or the same pay rises. But like let's be generous and say that he did. But he might not have.

[00:18:51]He might not have. He might have even been overlooked for Jane who now doesn't have a family and was devoting more of her time to her career, more of her energy, more of her focus, right? And her career would have taken off in a way that it didn't when she had children. So she sacrificed. That was a sacrifice because her life as a single, unmarried, and child-free woman would look different. I'm not saying better or worse, but it's different. That is the definition of sacrifice. She gave up something of value, her career, her financial autonomy, her independence, right? In order to have a family. And Bob, his life as a single, unmarried, child-free man looks shockingly similar to his life as a husband and father.

[00:19:36]Because again, he's working the same job. But now he has to do his own laundry, his own cooking, his own cleaning, or pay someone to do it, basically. Like that's the the main difference. And then he also doesn't get all of the benefits of having a family, which according to some men is a sacrifice. Like that, just having a family is a sacrifice, which I will never understand and will never accept.

[00:19:58]As somebody who's married and who has, like, child Well, a child, to me, Bob's life as a married man with a family was like all net positive, right? The impact was all positive with no sacrifice. Like he didn't have to give up anything in order to get all of the tangible benefits of having a family. And yet Jane had to give up everything in order to get the benefits of having a family.

[00:20:20]And I'm not saying that that's wrong.

[00:20:23]I'm just saying let's stop the narrative that men are sacrificing more, that they are sacrificing their happiness. Because if a man does not want to be married and does not want to have children, if he sees that as some sacrifice to his happiness and his freedom and the life that he would otherwise be able to live, then he's free to stay single, okay? But I do not like when I see that situation and then they're trying to sell me on the idea that they sac- sacrifice. They sacrificed everything and worked so hard for their family. Because I'm not seeing the sacrifice. It's like they keep using that word. I don't think it means what they think it means. But you guys let me know what you think. And like I said, if you can explain the sacrifice to me, please do, because maybe I'm wrong. I'm always welcome other people's opinions, but they need to be from a logical place, let's say. I want real logic, not just feelings. So yeah, let me know your thoughts in the comments. If you like this video, consider checking out this other video over here, and hopefully I will see you there. Bye for now.