Basic Trope: A character (usually female) gives up their job when they marry.
- Straight: Alice is about to marry Bob, so she quits her job.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice is the successful and celebrated CEO of the world-leading Widget Corporation and enjoys her job, but steps down the minute Burger Fool Bob proposes.
- Alice is still in High School, and drops out of school to get married.
- Downplayed:
- Alice decides to work part-time or casually for the same employer, on marrying Bob, and her contract accommodates this.
- Alice is engaged in High School, and decides that she's going to marry Bob the summer after graduation instead of going to college.
- Alice has a job with a very high market in any area, while Bob's job is one with a lower market. It would make more sense for her to quit and just find a job closer to where he lives rather than have him quit and have far more trouble finding a job.
- Justified:
- The setting is a time and/or place where this was the norm.
- Alice wants to have kids and be a "full time mother", since she wants to avoid Family Versus Career conflict.
- Alice is socially conservative and thinks wives should be homemakers. At least, that's her choice.
- Alice is a priestess of a virgin goddess cult that requires all priestesses to be celibate. She can't do that and be married to (or even intimate with) Bob at the same time.
- Alice is a nun, and has to give up her vocation for the same reason.
- Alice and Bob are in the army; Bob is Alice's commanding officer and the army's code prohibits this sort of fraternization. Rather than risk Bob's military career, which they agree is more important, Alice gets a discharge.
- Inverted:
- Alice is unemployed until meeting Bob, then immediately gets a job or sets up a husband-and-wife business partnership with him.
- Alice has to get a job after getting married to support the family she’ll have with Bob.
- Gender Inverted: Bob quits his job on marrying Alice.
- Subverted:
- Alice thinks about quitting her job, but decides not to.
- Alice only quits her job because she wants a better one, not because she's getting married (as everyone assumes).
- Alice stops working about the same time as she marries Bob. It turns out that she didn't quit — she was fired for Stealing from the Till.
- Double Subverted: Until they have their first child, then Alice quits her job.
- Parodied: Both Alice and Bob quit their jobs when they get married and don't understand why doing it that way is a bad idea.
- Zig Zagged: Alice plans to quit her job, then decides not to. Then she has kids and takes time off to raise them, returning to work when they're of school age. Then, Bob decides to take early retirement so he can spend more time with his family.
- Averted:
- Alice keeps her job when she marries and still when she has children. To do otherwise wouldn't be fitting for a modern woman and besides, why should she?
- Alice married Bob right after she graduated from High School or college, and was never a part of the workforce in the first place.
- Enforced: The executives pressure the writers to have Alice's character arc end with her quitting her job to marry Bob, in order to cater to the social conservatives who don't approve of a working wife.
- Lampshaded: Alice gives an Author Tract about how the idea that women ought to work outside the home, and that such work is more satisfying, important, or worthwhile than working in the home, was all a clever ploy by capitalism sold to society under the veneer of feminism—and that she, for one, wants no part of it.
- Invoked:
- Alice's employer offers no maternity benefits, expecting women to quit when they get married.
- Alice is the sole heir to her eccentric and conservative millionaire Uncle Charlie, who inserted a clause in his will whereby Alice will only inherit if she gets a husband and gives up her career, else he will leave his entire fortune to the local bat sanctuary. So, Alice decides to marry her boyfriend Bob and quit her job.
- Exploited: Alice is a Burger Fool who hates her job. Once she marries Bob and has an excuse to quit, she does just that.
- Defied: Alice's employers try to force her to quit when she gets married, but she successfully sues them for discrimination.
- Discussed: "Why is Alice quitting just because she's married? Doesn't she realise it isn't The '50s anymore?" "True, but there are people who choose to do so, rare as they are."
- Conversed: "So this show ends with Alice quitting her job to get married... huh. I'm surprised that the audience doesn't pay attention to it much."
- Implied: Alice is a bored housewife, but it seems she once had a good career. Notably, her job photos disappear after her wedding photos.
- Deconstructed:
- Alice quits her job, but finds life as a housewife boring, lonely and unfulfilling compared to work; she ends up spending most days watching trashy daytime TV just to distract herself. Moreover, the couple are finding it impossible to pay off the mortgage and the increasingly large gas bill on a one income household; how can they even think of affording to raise kids?
- At some point, Bob decides he's bored with Alice, and leaves her for his much younger and prettier mistress, Carol. Alice has been out of the workforce for many years, and now has to go back into it, seeing as she can't depend on Bob's income anymore...only now she has no relevant skills, and an immediate need for income to support herself and her kids.
- When the kids grow up and leave the house, Alice feels as if she's lost some meaning and purpose in her life, because she's based her entire identity around her roles as wife and mother.
- Bob is abusive towards Alice, and since she doesn't earn her own income or have bank accounts or credit cards in her own name, she's totally dependent on him, making it that much harder to get out of that situation.
- Alice's work as a homemaker is often taken for granted, even though it's hard work, because she doesn't get paid for it. Alice begins to feel unappreciated and resentful.
- Reconstructed:
- (To Deconstructed #1): So Alice decides to take up her long-neglected hobby and turns it into a successful online business, volunteers for local charity work, and homeschools little Diane after having her.
- (To Deconstructed #5): When Alice is sick for a couple of weeks, Bob finds out just how much she works and learns to appreciate it — and show his appreciation.
- Played For Drama: Alice loves her job, but society tries to pressure her into giving it up to become a housewife.
Back to Quitting to Get Married.
