What impact do later marriages have in our lives? John Phipps, a Top Producer columnist, says it is changing the generational rhythm of our lives. Later marriages mean later children. Later children mean fewer children and the end result is a bigger gap between generations.
“As you spread the generations apart, it changes the flow of our lives,” Phipps said during the Online Top Producer Summit.
Watch Now: Men, Women and Babies: Work Won’t be the Same. by John Phipps
Data shows women are more likely to be the main breadwinner in the future. In 52% of all households, including single-person households, women are the main breadwinner now, Phipps says.
“The breadwinning capability for women has a much brighter future than for men in many cases (because of the educational gap),” he says. “It’s not helping things that our natural perception of roles in marriages and relationships is changing far more slowly than the economic and social circumstances.”
Phipps offers three bits of advice for farmers in light of this changing dynamic.
1. Take care of yourself.
Don’t look at your parents to figure out what your future is going to look like, take care of yourself, he urges.
“In order to have a successful career, you need to live a long time because your dad’s probably going to live a lot longer than we ever imagined,” he says. “There are farmers in their 50s, even their 60s, waiting for their chance to be the farmer on some family farm simply because people are living longer. If you are going to wait until your 50s or 60s, take care of yourself so you can be there and also do it well.”
One of the biggest threats farmers can control is their health. Obesity levels continue to increase and result in huge health problems. Make sure you live long enough to enjoy all that you’ve worked for, he adds.
2. Women will be everywhere.
“Get used to the idea that women will be everywhere, and they’ll be in charge,” Phipps says. “Women are eventually going to be the vice presidents in banks, they’re going to be taking over almost all of the service industry, your doctor will be a woman, your insurance agent will be a woman, and your lender is likely to be a woman as the future rolls forward.”
Men aren’t going through the training to get these types of jobs and the educational gap is widening, he points out.
3. Divorce is usually a farm disaster.
The same care that Phipps encourages farmers to provide for their personal machinery and for themselves, should also be extended to their marriages.
“Take care of your marriage and take it very seriously. Women are under tremendous pressure, so that changes the latitude they have to make all the concessions. Everything men can do to prevent this kind of sundering of a successful marriage is worth the effort,” Phipps says.
The concern in a divorce used to be the non-farm spouse would end up with a share of the farm and sell it off – ruining the family farm. Although that’s still a significant threat, Phipps says the bigger problem is non-farm income.
“Unless they were paying attention when their accountant or tax advisor talked to them, when the non-farming spouse takes his or her income out of the family farm, the family farm doesn’t work,” he says. “If you want to save the family farm, save the family first.”
Watch Now: Men, Women and Babies: Work Won’t be the Same. by John Phipps
Read more coverage of the Top Producer Summit
