Men’s mental health strongly connected to their partner’s employment status, new research shows

While the pandemic hit thousands of Australians hard, the impacts on women were particularly seismic. Employment rates plummeted and the domestic burden increased tenfold. At the peak of the COVID crisis 8 percent of women lost their jobs compared to just 4 percent of men.

However, new research shows that men used this accessory in a surprising way, with Melbourne Institute: Melbourne University of Applied Economics and Social Research, discovering that men’s mental well-being now measurably responds to their partner’s employment status in a way it never has before. 37 percent of men whose partners are out of work report mental anguish, vs. 27 Percentage of men with a partner who are still employed.

Dr. Barbara Broadway, author of the research, believes this is largely due to the fact that everyone’s economic future felt uncertain during 2020-21. “Having only one income suddenly felt a lot riskier even for men who, under more normal circumstances, would have bothered less to be the sole earner,” he said. Women’s Calendar.

As such, having a dual income came to be perceived as a much-desired “insurance policy,” she says, that men were much more concerned about. This is an important point, as while women’s mental health has historically been shown to be negatively affected by a partner’s involuntary job loss, men’s mental health was much less so.

The research found that the prevalence of mental distress increased for men without children, and even more so for men with school-age children. However, men with at least one child below school age were less likely to report mental distress if their partner was unemployed, probably reflecting that in couples with very young children, one of the partners is often planned. parents leave the workforce.

But while the magnitudes of the pandemic should not be underestimated, Broadway believes that more than the risk of unemployment itself, it is the perception of risk that alters the psychology of men.

“Even if the labor market is not really bad, if everyone’s perception is that it’s going to be bad, it’s just as stressful,” he says. “Most normal people would not be monitoring the hard data on labor market developments so closely. They will only respond to a general feeling of whether things are going well. apparently seriously Or not.”

The fact that life continues to feel uncomfortable even with a national vaccination rate of 93 percent and most industries open is therefore the problem.

“The pandemic continues to surprise us,” says Broadway. “Particularly now in Melbourne, for example, it will reopen after a long lockdown. After a very short time of being open, Omicron suddenly happens, and everything is up in the air again. Everyone is thinking, ‘Is this going to last this time or not?’ And I think that leads to a level of uncertainty that could feel much stronger than the actual actual danger,” she says.

However, one factor that may represent more of a real risk than one’s perception is Australia’s flimsy social safety net. The escalation of mental anguish at the time the government’s Job Keeper subsidy was repealed was significant. Broadway believes this shows Australians’ lack of confidence in getting adequate financial support when they need it most.

“I think Australia has a social safety net, for sure, but it kicks in at a very late stage and really only provides for people who basically have nothing,” says Broadway.

“We have been arguing as a society, for a long time, that income support payments are not high enough for people to live a somewhat secure life. And I think that shows in situations like this, where there was a much better social safety net for a short time and then it was removed. People responded to that. I think that sends a very strong signal to us that Australians don’t seem to perceive our income support system as something that can really save them in times of sudden short-term need.”

While having a two-income family provides some security, this is not the only factor in keeping Australians protected in the event of another pandemic or similar crisis. “The other way to protect against these effects is to have adequate income support payments that help people if these events happen to them,” says Broadway.