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‘Please let us not interfere with the other's work and play, nor let the world see our private joys or disagreements. In this connection, I may have to keep some place where I can go to be myself now and then for I cannot guarantee to endure all the confinements of even an attractive cage.”

With those words – written to her fiancé, George Putnam, on the day of their wedding in 1931 – Amelia Earhart expressed her unease about marriage. That the pilot's unconventionality in how she chose to live her life is still considered daring nearly 80 years later – and resonant enough to be the subject of a recent Hollywood movie starring Hilary Swank – shows how long it takes to change ideas about marriage and the freedom husbands and wives should have (or not) within it.

We haven't come such a long way, baby.

The culture is rife with double standards (not to mention confusion and debate) about the choices husbands and wives make to pursue their dreams – other than domestic ones, that is.

Consider American astronaut Randy Bresnik, whose child was born on Earth last weekend while he was orbiting the planet in the International Space Station. Did anyone suggest that he was an irresponsible father by going ahead with a space mission when he knew his wife was pregnant? Did anyone wonder why he chose to hang out in a space station – a job he could presumably have taken at a later date – over participating in his daughter's birth?

Of course not. Now what if the astronaut were a woman who had given birth a few months before and had chosen to go on the mission and leave her newborn with a caregiver? Would she be a role model for how to balance the pursuit of a dream with domesticity? Or would she be considered somehow un-natural – a selfish woman?

There would be cultural chatter about it, that much is sure.

Hotly divergent views on when it's appropriate for a man or woman to explore personal pursuits boil over in the context of divorce.

Roz Savage left her husband and her job to row solo across the Atlantic, an adventure she documents in her recent book, Rowing the Atlantic: Lessons Learned on the Open Ocean . “When you're in a relationship, you always have to compromise to a certain extent,” the 38-year-old environmental activist told The Globe and Mail. “I felt like I needed to be on my own to have the freedom without compromise to follow my own path.”

Readers' reactions were varied – perhaps not surprisingly. “Husbands, houses and kids are so overrated!” one woman posted online. “Go girls – live some life – have some stories to tell.” Others thought Ms. Savage's husband was better off without her. And some complained about a double standard: “When a man leaves his wife to pursue adventure or further his career he is an unfeeling, uncaring cad and a blight on women. When a woman ditches her husband for adventure and to save the world, it's called empowerment.”

Well, it's a good thing for Ms. Savage that she and her ex didn't have children. If they did, few would have seen her bid for a different life as empowering. She would have been a true savage in that case. She was only free to pursue a different cultural script – other than wife and mother – because she was relatively unencumbered domestically. As a childless woman, she could reject the white-picket-fence life and win praise for it because of persistent notions about the subjugation inherent in the wife identity. She got out before it was too late, in other words, before any dreams she had for herself had to be dropped.

Would a husband who left his marriage for adventure or career advancement be a cad? He would be if children were involved. But the more important question is: Would he have to leave his marriage to pursue those goals?

“Husbands take off all the time,” observes Elizabeth Abbott, an academic whose latest book, A History of Marriage, will be published in January. “There's nothing unusual about that.” Modern husbands may have to explain their actions to their wives, but their extended absence is more acceptable, especially if connected to work. Historic example is on their side. Sir Edmund Hillary never had to justify his need to disappear for months on end to climb mountains while his wife stayed at home, dutifully minding the children. By wanting (and expecting) that freedom, he was not confounding the notion of marriage as Ms. Earhart was.

It was not long ago that some ambitious women rejected marriage because they knew it would prevent them from pursuing their dreams, Ms. Abbott explains, pointing to the example of Florence Nightingale, a pretty, young woman from an upper-class British family who was expected to marry and have children. She turned down proposals in order to become a nurse, a decision that deeply upset her parents.

But the debate around these marital issues is healthy, Ms. Abbott believes.

“We may have egalitarian standing in marriage, in theory, from a legal point of view, but we are still filling in our thinking about it culturally. That part comes very slowly,” she explains. “It's the same as when slavery was abolished. People didn't immediately drop their attitudes and assumptions about African Americans. Many white people didn't like it.”

It is through discussion that we explore “the meaning and comprehensive scope of the double standard,” she says. “And we can learn from that.”

This is also the stuff of couples counsellors who are try-ing to help define a standard

of equitable marriage. “I use the term ‘interdependence' to describe a quality of partnership or marriage that includes both dependence on one another as well as independence within the relationship,” says Deborah Brakeley, a Vancouver-based psychologist and therapist.

Culturally, we are inching toward a more progressive attitude about the unconventional pursuits of wives. Female soldiers to go off to war, even if they have children at home, Ms. Abbott points out. “We are able to understand that when it's framed in the context of what a sacrifice she is making. No one makes comments about how she is not a good wife or mother. …This is demonstrable progress.”