I’m guessing it’s
1) lack of men’s confidence to support a family on their own income, which is a reality in most places and for most families
2) greed. The more spendable money the better for the husband and for the wife if they don’t put the money into one pot for collective spending 

 I think it's also:

3) They dislike working and want her to suffer along with them out of solidarity/fairness.

4) They are completely unaware of how much more sleep and leisure single women (including mothers!) have, and how much women like self-directing their lives, so they don't realize that their wife is missing out on anything.

5) Worrying about female infidelity (not unfounded, particularly if he is away a lot).

6) Worrying that she'd spend all of the money on shopping and spas (makes sense, if she does a lot of spending while working, she might not stop merely because the income is lower).

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I think we underestimate how many men see their wife's employer primarily as a sort of adult babysitter, rather than a source of income.

And I think college is an alternative way that women fulfill #3, as it's tedious to sit in lectures and write exams, so she isn't "relaxing or having fun" during that time.
So, women who find working difficult because their families move around a lot or their husbands have demanding hours, etc. can use that as their fallback "We Are Suffering As A Team, Everyone Is Struggling" option. 

 JFC You’ve thought a lot about this. 

From your reply seems there’s a lot of love and trust lost.

Taking care of the home is hard fucking work. Taking care of children and a husband is perhaps 10x more.

I could never be positive force as a stay home husband.

 

 I've read a lot about it, yes. 

 Most people have had bad previous relationships or have seen them in their immediate environment, and their choices in their current relationship are aimed at defending against this.

Many wives want to work, for instance, to protect themselves against being financially trapped in a bad marriage, for instance.

It's all very reactive. 

 Yes but can’t hedging against a bad marriage actually be a lack of commitment to a marriage? Like having one foot out the door?

For example, should a man keep in touch with old girlfriends to protect himself from being emotionally trapped in a bad marriage? (Obviously not - but why is a woman having her own job outside the home so different?)

The needing each other to survive and committing to each other no matter what is the important part and if you take that away, marriage is just another relationship (and you see this with the rise of the vague term “partner” for even heterosexual relationships - people are too non-committal to even using specific language about the deal) 

 I think hedging is normal and natural (spouses eventually die or become incapacitated, for instance).

A healthy society takes common risks into account in the structure of the marriages. Our society does not do that. Rather than ensuring that men have emotional connections outside of marriages and housewives own property independently, we set everything up as if bad things never happen and let everyone slog it out in court or squabble over child support.

So people increasingly hedge by avoiding marriage, altogether, or approaching their new marriage like it's a war zone. Which collapses the birth rate and we all suffer. 

 Maybe oversimplified, but still seems like a form of deferred responsibility. Which I keep finding myself pointing fingers at. 

 You can point wherever you want, but it isn't going to help us get the birth rate back up. 

 Monkeys don’t masturbate in the wild, but they’re widely known to do it in captivity. 

I think it’s important to realize we’re in captivity in the modern world. Nihilism and anti-natalism are part and parcel. 

 Perhaps, but I have yet to see anyone make any suggestion toward reforming marriage to better fit our new reality. 

 There's also the fairly strong possibility that they don't want a new reality and instead are doing everything that they can do to return to the old ways. Cognitive dissonance can take a huge mental toll. A surprising amount of the global population flat-out doesn't like to learn and adapt to changing circumstances. 🤷‍♂️ 

 That's always been the case. There are a few forward thinkers and everyone relies on them to show how to adapt. 

 True enough. Or these forward thinkers will be ignored almost completely. A bit of both most likely. 🤔 A type of societal based modernistic natural selection. 

 Also, my suggestions are actually a return to (Germanic) tradition, focused on property ownership, away from the modernist system of income redistribution, based upon monetary debasement. 

 I think this has become so normalized in our societies, that we don't even question how crazy the whole setup is. 

 We also should account for the fact that berating people to stay committed to their marriage, while their acquaintances are divorcing, is fruitless moralizing.

If people see parallels between the lives of the people divorcing their own lives, they will be inclined to follow suit. That is why divorce tends to be "contagious".

Better would be, if they saw fewer commonalities and could view the divorces as "weird, personal unfortunate" incidents. That requires removing such commonalities. 

 Berating people to stay unhappy and unhealthy is definitely wrong. 

It’s hard to have strong marriages and strong families when everyone is here in modern captivity, instead of engaging with survival every day together. When people needed each other acutely, marriages and families were stronger. 

 I think adjusting incentives toward making productive behavior more attractive than unproductive behavior can go a long way to strengthening families. 

 At the end of the day it comes down to communication and balance. If those don’t happen every marriage is doomed to fail. 

 Temptation to sin is a real thing and avoiding sin is a real defense against this temptation. 

 Unpopular view: A piece of paper from a government does not undo sacred vows taken before God and men.  

Also, government marriages were a 20th century invention in the US - and the initial purpose was anti-miscegenation.  Segregation is useful to totalitarian rule. 

 Muting conversation as it went too deep in mythology  

 I think that's a very popular view. It doesn't fix the underlying issue, but rather discourages marriages from forming, but I'm sure it felt good to write it down. 

 Don't forget the 40% taxes and severe stagflation. 

 I think it's important to note that my system works just as well for any marriage or partnership, where one income stream is significantly higher than the other.

Stay at home fathers are arguably in the worst financial position, in fact, as they don't have as much political/legal power as women do. They're a relatively large group (in some demographics, almost 25% and climbing) and anything too gender-specific would preclude them, unnecessarily. 

 Now we’re talking. I do think it’s detrimental to a marriage for both spouses to have two totally unrelated jobs with two totally different sets of bosses, co-workers, clients, etc. But working together in a family business? That sounds like the dream. 

Obviously many people make the two separate careers thing work, and they find other ways to connect and integrate. I just think they are starting from a challenging position. 

And then, yes, of course, the home-making and child-raising is a more demanding job early on, so being able to transition in and out of that is a question to address. 

 Part of being female is being agile and adaptable.