Wendyl Nissen: Working women help to glue couples together

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I have spent the week flirting with the possibility of giving up work. Of walking away, for the first time in 32 years, from a career, an income and the right to call myself a working wife and mother.

My role as a supportive wife for a year has meant that I am supposed to take a step back and support my husband in his career and his life. Making it all about him.

I have enjoyed pottering around the house, starting up the vacuum, washing and folding clothes and cooking and cleaning. I like asking him if there's anything he needs me to do that day to help him out.

I'm not supposed to because my feminist upbringing taught me to believe these household jobs and roles were all part of male domination and the suppression of a woman's right to work outside of the home.

But I would love nothing better than to wake up in the morning and just have the one job of housewife. To plan the day's meals, to set myself up a daily cleaning roster, to arrange flowers in vases and clean windows. To have friends over for coffee and do volunteer work after the gym.

But I do all that, and work quite hard earning money to pay for a lifestyle I have become accustomed to. My husband works hard too, but he loves it and will no doubt be working the day he kicks the bucket. I'm convinced I would be happier not working so surely it's time I laid my laptop down to rest?

Every time I suggest this possibility my husband gets a look in his eye which is the early glint of sure terror. I'm not sure if the thought of my not working is horrific because we can't really afford it or because he would then be faced with a woman with time on her hands. Which is fair enough. When I get bored it is terrifying.

I have also spent the past week wondering what my early retirement would do to our marriage. Would he still respect me if I didn't bring home half the bacon? Would he still find me interesting to talk to if my conversation revolved solely around how pretty the hydrangeas look and whether I should upgrade the vacuum cleaner to a bagless version?

And would I find, after the initial honeymoon of waking up to a day spent in an apron wafting around my home, that I would get bored and take it out on endless social media rants and long phone calls to friends who are really too busy to spend the time?

Would I resent having to account for every dollar I spent to the man who earned it rather than indulging in some online shopping "because I deserve it and I earned it".

Then I found a study of 4000 couples in Britain which set out to test whether the traditional theory that women being "dependent" on men is an important bond holding families together, could be established statistically.

As I read through the study I really hoped it would. But I was disappointed. They concluded that, while this might once have been the case, there now appears to be no evidence for it.

In fact, couples in which the female partner is the main breadwinner can be less likely to separate or divorce than traditional households. Especially if there are preschool children running around.

One of the study's authors, Dr Shireen Kanji of the Leicester University School of Management, explained that "sociological and economic theories have long predicted that women's increased economic independence would undermine the institution of marriage.

"The reasoning was that interdependence, in the sense of specialisation in paid and unpaid work between husband and wife, was the glue keeping couples together.

"Such perspectives did not envision that women could be the ones to specialise in paid work, or that a desire for greater gender equality or a need to mitigate the risk of relying on one male-earner income could keep relationships together."

So instead of daydreaming about being dependent on my husband for money I should actually work harder and become the main breadwinner.

Time to hire a housekeeper.