A man allowing his lady to pay for dinner? Cute. A man living with the fact his lady makes more money? Eh, slightly emasculating. Warning: may cause a brief sensation of boxer brief twisting. Career And Family: Can We Really Have Both?

Or so says The Wall Street Journal. Or rather, the study "The Impact of Relative Earnings Among Dual-Earner Couples on Career Satisfaction and Family Satisfaction" a research experiment conducted between 485 middle-class married couples in New York State between 1999 and 2002.

Within each couple, the man and woman's income was analyzed and broken down into household percentages. Example: man: 60 percent, woman, 40 percent, and so on and so forth.

Not surprisingly, the study found that men who contribute significantly more to the family than their wives (we're guessing a 75/25, 80/20 type of ratio) are "significantly" happier in their careers then men where the reverse is true.

Pamela Tolbert, the co-author of the study, says "husbands feel concerned when wives make more than them. We still have these kinds of models in our head."

This appears to be true for women also. Talbot reports that ladies who make as much (or more) then their husbands are happier with their job but less happy when it came to family life.

Men on the other hand, were happy (or unhappy) about their kidlets and marriage regardless of how much dough they raked in. Money seemed to have little impact on how they viewed themselves at home, which is interesting.

Perhaps this is just further proof of male compartmentalizing? Female guilt?