What’s Mine Is Yours: Managing Student Loans Within Different Gender Couples

In the United States, borrowing student loans from the federal government or private market to attend college has become increasingly common. Roughly one in eight Americans has student loans (Looney, Wessel, & Yilla 2020). Reports on federal student loans indicate that roughly 1.6 billion dollars was outstanding in May of 2022 (Hanson 2022b). Additionally, about 43.4 million borrowers each owe an estimated $37,014 in federal education loans (Hanson 2022a). Privately, as of July 2023, $131 billion dollars was outstanding for education loans. Sociologists have begun researching the consequences of student loan debt on borrowers and their families. Consequences of student loan debt range from delaying marriage and having children (Velez, Cominole, & Bentz 2019; Dwyer 2018; Nau, Dwyer, & Hodson 2015; Bozick & Estacoin 2014), buying a home (Draut & Silva 2004), poorer mental health outcomes (Walsemann, Gentle, & Gee 2015), and exposing students of color to predatory lending practices (Seamster & Charron-Chénier 2017). Alongside these difficulties, borrowers often face challenges repaying and managing their loans. While federally subsidized student loans have lower interest rates and more generous repayment plans (Addo 2014), one out of every ten Americans has defaulted on a student loan (Hanson 2021). However, despite these findings few scholars have explored how student loan debt repayment is managed within different gender couples despite financial management being a couple level activity (Streib 2015; Cooper 2015; Vogler, Lyonette, & Wiggins 2008). Therefore, I asked: how do young different gender couples manage student loan debt together? After interviewing 20 couples, I determined that student loan debt repayment is a piece of the puzzle for how couples manage finances. As women consider the threats of financial dependency and precarity, they look to men to prove themselves as reliable financial partners. This determines if couples will share financial authority and responsibility with each other. However, it is not guaranteed that sharing will happen as anxieties about precarity and dependency at times win out. These findings support that men in many cases are interested in a shared financial arrangement but concerns over disadvantage on the part of women can make this process challenging.