According to this theory, it would be unlikely that a man and a woman with widely discrepant definitions of the husband role or the wife role would select each other as marriage partners. Interpreted positively, role theory says that people tend to seek marriage partners whose marital role definitions or expectations are in agreement with their own. For example, a man with a traditional –patriarchal orientation who believes that the husband should be the sole family provider and the boss in the family would tend to select a wife who he expects to be a conventional housewife and mother rather than a career woman or a woman’s liberation activist. So according to role theory it is the anticipated compatibility of future marriage and family roles that are important in mate selection.
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