Their is a book called “Getting in Touch with Your Inner Bitch” by Elizabeth Hilts. In it she relates a story about this woman who had a good income who’s boyfriend was this wonderful guy - he could cook, was well read, great conversationalist, good lover, etc… but was an artist who lead a bohemian lifestyle and was dirt poor. In many ways she liked him but she also soon tired of having to pay for everything. Going out to eat, entertainment, travel - they guy didnt even own a good suit to go someplace nice.
So eventually she tired of this and sought out a man with roughly the same income.
I think many times, especially when dating, having to be the person who always has to pick up the paycheck can get a little old. Or when one is dating someone who is poor and they insist on moving in with you.
Dolly Parton. I think everyone knows who she is? Believe it or not she has been married over 43 years to the same man.
The funny thing is they have almost nothing to do with each others careers. He runs an asphalt paving company and, get this, has maybe been to 1-2 of her concerts and rarely even goes to events with her.
Loretta Lynn had about the same relationship with her husband.
I think this is something that in general women care about more than men. Of course, everyone is different, as I pointed out above, and there are lots of exceptions.
It’s funny, most of my women friends are either a) single, or b) married to unemployed men. I’ve wondered if it’s because men don’t think marriage is a good deal unless it’s sweetened by someone paying their rent. But it might also be that these men just aren’t very driven and the manufacturing jobs they probably would’ve taken a generation ago are now all overseas. The women I speak of are all professionals, with master’s degrees.
The unemployed husbands don’t seem to resent their wives’ success but in my opinion they’re not as grateful as they might be. I’m grateful that my husband out-earns me (I make poverty wages) and puts a roof over our heads, and I show it by doing more housework. (I also work part-time [not by choice] while he works full-time, so I think it’s fair I do more housework because I’m home more.) I hear these married women who work full-time to bring home the bacon complain that their unemployed husbands don’t do housework and I’m like… Whaaaaat?! What are they doing all day, then? It makes me wonder if there is a resentment there, expressed by un-mopped floors.
VERY interesting question. I’m very progressive and try to be a good feminist man yet I find I’m bothered by the idea of my spouse making more than I do.
What I am at this point used to in having a mate is that I make the great majority of the money and I pay all the joint bills except for groceries, and put $4000 per year toward groceries. My spouse makes less than a third of what I do. She considers my earnings “our money” and her earnings “her money”. I’ve never been with somebody who takes ownership of generating our income. That’s always been my job. I’m not aware I ever had any choice in this. All the people I have been with just don’t consider it within their life story to be breadwinners, and though this must have visible while we were courting, I don’t remember opting into this arrangement. Also, my experience growing up was that men contributed income and a house to the family, and women contributed children and making the house a home. I think I would feel out of whack if I wasn’t doing what I grew up thinking the husband contributes.
I don’t think this should be the natural order of things, and in the workplace I like working with all the professional women and seeing their careers grow (and helping where possible). I want them to succeed in life, including making themselves rich if it’s what they want to do in life. It’s as if there are three genders in this equation: my own gender, the gender of people I mate with who never try to be breadwinners, and women in the workplace who can and should function as successful professionals making the same incomes men do. Moreover, while I haven’t discussed this with many men in my age group (late 50s), the few with whom I have had the conversation agree that in their personal experience mates don’t expect or try to be significant breadwinners.
I honestly don’t know what is behind this and feel more curious and motivated than ever to understand it.
I think part of it might be cultural; women of different backgrounds are going to have different attitudes about marraige, money, and work. My wife comes from a culture where women work whether they are single or married (I joked to her that just as the Eskimos have a hundred words for ‘snow’, Mexicans have a hundred words to describe someone as ‘lazy’ ). They also tend to be the ones that manage the money as well. Something I admire about them is the emphasis for both men and women to marry someone who is hardworking, not necessarily rich, or in the ‘right’ kind of career, but someone with a good work ethic in general.
For them a big part of it was the immigrant experience- immmigrating to the US with nothing means you have to work very hard just to survive. The concept of stay at home moms is rather foreign to them, because the types of jobs they might be working initially pay so low that often both partners need to work long hours in order to stay afloat. While there is a stereotype about them having huge families, in fact one or two generations into the US they tend to have the same amount of kids as most other people (my sister-in-law had two kids and decided that was enough, my wife’s adult cousins have 1 or 2 kids each). Even though both spouses typically work, they’re also very tight knit with their families and use retired parents or other relatives to help babysit- the cost of childcare in their culture is not a prohibitive factor in having moms that work like it seems to be with some white couples.
In their culture there is often this running gag where the husband acts macho, acts like he rules the roost but its generally the wife. The wife is the one that sets many of the long-term goals, saves money, and does many other tasks a white person might consider a ‘guy’ thing to do. For them, the idea of a wife that makes more money than her husband is irrelevant because often every penny counts- its just more money for both of them.
Careful with your comment. While you restrict your experience later, pointing out that it is in the Mexican culture initially, you include groups that do not necessarily are like that, and that (to other communities and Latinos) should not be included in your later description.
What you characterize (at least partially correct) within the Mexican immigrant community consisting of blue collar/working poor people, also occurs in other poor (immigrant or not) communities and subsets.
Also, keep in mind that while you don’t see sexism, it is there. You’re in a privilege position, as a male outsider looking in, so you won’t necessarily notice it. Also, what is mentioned above on the “coolness vs moneymaker” job also applies. And finally, two people in the same work area, if the woman makes more, it may not matter. After all, he has the status as male by virtue of being male. It doesn’t matter what she does, she’ll never get his “status”.
The author’s jist is that people have a tendency to equate “modern white middle-class American values” with “normal”. When really, there is a diversity of lifestyles and strategies out there, challenging assumptions about what is “proper” and “good”.
My ideas about gender roles are absolutely traditional - but from a tradition where “oh, it’s great that you’re an engineer” and “it is not acceptable for a wife to make more money than her husband” are considered a non-sequitur even if they’re several minutes apart.
I think that’s the issue for me. I don’t really care who earns more, but I would not want to be with someone that strikes me as lazy. Even if they had a trust fund that made it unnecessary to work, I would still want them to WANT to do something productive.
But in the end different people are comfortable with different things. I had a rich friend once who dated a poorer guy. She liked nice things and was perfectly willing to pay for both of them to go to nice restaurants. He was always very uncomfortable with it and tried to convince her to eat at cheaper places. Their relationship didn’t last very long.
Never bothered me in the least. Happened two times between Mrs. FtG and me. I have no idea why just money difference would be a problem. Other things like status, prestige, job demands, sure. But dollars?
Anyway, I’m surprised no one has referenced Phyllis Schafly’s recent opinion piece denouncing equal-pay-for-equal-work as being bad for women. Colbert played with it. (Autoplaying video with ads.)
The part that’s quoted that gets me (around 1:25 in) is that if woman got equal pay, than “many” would not be able to find husbands. (Ugggh.) But let’s just stick to the “simple arithmetic” part.
Take 100 men and 100 women. Assume that income-wise, they are perfectly paired. The richest man and woman make the same, the next two, etc., all the way to the bottom two. If you pair off woman 2 with man 1, woman 3 with man 2, down to woman 100 with man 99, you would then have 99 couples where the man makes more than the woman. Only two people left out. And since, as this thread proves, it’s quite possible than man 100 is happy to be with woman 1, then they all pair up. Simple arithmetic doesn’t prove anything about many women being unable to find husbands.
The money differential: does it get brought up? By whom and exactly when? Is it a true non issue or a club held under the table to beat you with as a veto during any discussion or dispute?
Times are also hard; is the pay disparity because one of the two lost a job and is trying to get back to that prior income level? The Huffington Post had an interesting recent article on the subject ( this one in The Telegraph is good too, but older).
I’ve always heard the problem as the woman re evaluating the man as less ‘lover’ and more ‘millstone’, someone who is holding her back from reaching her full potential.
Then again, maybe all I heard was a really crappy rationalization meant to make someone look good while at lunch with friends.
Maybe you should ask some of the women you work with?
My husband supported me through grad school. After I finished and started working full time, I suggested that I’d be willing to return the favor by doing the bulk of the breadwinning while he did something to invest in his career. The idea surprised him - he’d never thought of being anything other than the primary breadwinner. Currently, he’s unemployed. He would rather have a job, but as he looks for one, I think his primary feeling about my salary is gratefulness.
In general, I have no objection to being the higher earner and I’m glad I have the ability to support my family. However, I would feel very resentful if my significant other wasn’t doing something valuable with his time.
You mean like housework/childcare is required for women but extra credit for men?* Where men feel totally comfortable talking about “helping” take care of the house they live in and the children they produced? You know, when they say things like this:
I guess it depends on your perspective. That re-evaluation is usually the death knell of the relationship, but I would argue that it’s not the actual problem. The actual problem is the fact that some guys really are millstones. They’re not holding you back from reaching your full potential, they’re just an extra weight you have to carry around all the time, making the regular day-to-day running of the household significantly more work. You might be willing to trade the extra work for other stuff–more money, better sex, social prestige, whatever–but when that other stuff starts to evaporate you become a lot less willing to carry that burden.
*Men’s and women’s expectations in this regard have, I think, shifted at very different rates. [gross, probably wrong generalization]The lessons boys and girls take away from having grown up watching their moms work full time and do the vast majority of the housework and childcare are very different. Boys think this is a normal, acceptable division of labor and if they’re doing more than their dads did they’re feeling pretty virtuous. Girls look at the exhausting treadmill their moms are on and think “Oh hell no, that’s some bullshit. If I’m making half the money, his ass can do half the cooking and cleaning.” So guys expect to do maybe 25% of the housework, and women expect something much closer to 50%. So when a guy does 30% or so, he feels really virtuous and can’t grok why his wife is frustrated and angry rather than giving him a cookie.[/gpwg]
I was with my wife all the way back in high school- before either of us knew what we would be doing professionally in the future. I ended up doing computer work, and the pay isn’t shabby- but she ended up a pharmacist and her take home is on the better side of doubling mine.
I think it depends on both people. If she was happy, I’d probably be ok with the situation. However, now that we have just had our first child, she constantly laments going to work (I get to work from home). I feel guilty for not being able to provide enough for her to stay at home… especially because her cousin ended up marrying rich (“happy valentines day, here’s a maserati” rich). She claims she’s not envious but I can tell that if she had the option she’d rather have it that way.
I bring home twice what my husband does, and all the health/dental insurance is through my job. That’s because he’s been disabled and unable to work since 1998, and is on Social Security Disability. It’s never been a problem for him, as far as I know, since the more money I make, the more money we have. And my job provides excellent health insurance, which is better than what he gets through Medicare.
I’ve been on the point of asking a followup question to this post ever since you wrote it, and kept backspacing out because I couldn’t find a politic way to ask it. I’ll just ask - please fight my ignorance while believing in my good intentions.
In your relationship, do you or does your partner (or do neither of you) take what might be considered a more traditionally feminine role? I know that there’s no reason one of the men in a gay relationship must be the woman surrogate, just as there’s no reason every lesbian couple necessarily has a “bitch and a butch.” I guess my real question is, do you think your partner would have answered the question the same way you did? Would he be happy to be the SAHD (stay-at-home-dude) if you made enough bread to keep you both in style?
). They also tend to be the ones that manage the money as well. Something I admire about them is the emphasis for both men and women to marry someone who is hardworking, not necessarily rich, or in the ‘right’ kind of career, but someone with a good work ethic in general.
It’s never been a problem for him, as far as I know, since the more money I make, the more money we have. And my job provides excellent health insurance, which is better than what he gets through Medicare.