A story has recently lit up social media and sparked some controversy.
Here is a bit on it:
For my part I have an issue with this.
I think a wife (or any stay at home spouse) deserves a piece of the pie. Hell, in divorce proceedings (barring pre-nups) they get half of the joint assets.
My issue is the almost mercenary angle to it.
Who is it that assesses her “performance”? Are these performance metrics clearly laid out? She is now incentivized to do “better” at being a stay-at-home mom than she otherwise might have been? Since it is also dependent on how well her husband does at work does this mean she has an incentive to be more forthcoming sexually to help him relax? Is she incentivized to not get in fights (even if one is deserved) so as not to upset him unduly which might impact his job performance? Will women compare notes and start negotiating for better bonuses or “quit” if they are not being paid enough?
The whole thing is creepy in my view.
To be clear, the wife (or stay-at-home partner) absolutely should get to enjoy the benefits of their income same as she would have to share the stress if things were the other way and they were in crippling debt.
For my part my (now ex) wife and I solved this with an “allowance” that we both got. We went over the household finances and would determine some spending money we would take for ourselves (in our case it was like $250/month or something…I forget exactly). The money could then be used as each person saw fit. She wanted shoes? Fine! No problem. She could use the money for that. I wanted a computer game? Fine! No problem. I could use the money for that.
Note this was just some spending money for luxuries we wanted for ourselves and of course we would spend money jointly for trips and so on but it seems to solve whether the non-income earning spouse can have money to do stuff with without feeling bad. Worked like a charm for us (inasmuch as we never fought over money or buying shoes or games or whatever). Solved the issue of who can spend what on what without the creepiness of a “wife bonus”.
Also, not sure I buy that it makes that woman more of a feminist.
Another piece of this I find challenging is the implication that the father has abdicated the responsibilities of fatherhood to his wife, who is owed financial renumeration for being a good mother and cleaning up after herself? It all seems rather disgusting.
I understand figuring out how to divide money between spouses where one does not work (or earns significantly less) is important, but turning your marriage into an employee/employer relationship is the twisted work of people who can’t look at relationships outside of the framework of economics.
I’m not really concerned with how people choose to arrange their marriage. If they’re both on the same page and happy with it, I’m as happy for them as I would be for any other married couple.
But I would agree with you that this doesn’t strike me as feminist in any way. If you’re your husband’s employee or allowanced dependent, then you’re either the equivalent of a subordinate or a child. I would vote that the latter is closer to the pre-modern condition of most housewives.
Feminism only asks that people are allowed to choose their path through life. One option of that is to choose a submissive, traditional lifestyle just as it is an option to try and become an astronaut or a CEO. But choosing a submissive role isn’t “feminist”, it’s just doing what you like to do. You may as well call ordering fettuccine for lunch “feminist”.
That’s exactly what bugs me. It turns a marriage into work for hire as opposed to two people with one set of goals but a division of labor based on various factors. Not partnership, employment.
I don’t have a problem with this. It’s kind of a stupid name for sharing your bonus, but that part seems tongue and cheek anyway.
We are a dual income family, and we spend an enormous amount of money (mostly to day care-- but also to takeout and grocery delivery and the like) to the people that take care of our household work for us. I assume those people get to spend some of that money on fun stuff.
I assume this started as a gimmick to increase the bonus for the husband, and I assume it’s actually paid to the husband who is an employee. I hope this trend continues and includes husband bonuses too.
Companies are free to compensate their employees however they see fit, and if some companies want to do so by offering bonuses to their employees’ families, that’s their choice. That said, though, I would not offer this sort of incentive were I an employer, nor would I consider it particularly enticing were I a prospective employee.
There seems to be a disagreement on what “wife bonus” means. In the NY Times article, it seems like husbands decided that they would give their wives money based on how good of a wife she was, if she was a good spouse, she got more spending money. If she didn’t wife very well, she got little to none. In the NY Post response, it looks like that couple has decided that when his yearly bonus comes, as a couple they split it 20% to her (to do with as she pleases), 20% to him (to do with as he pleases), and the rest for the household. Those are two totally different ideas.
I grew up with (and still subscribe to) the ideal that marriages are between equal partners. If one person is getting a “bonus” from the other based on spousal performance, that’s no longer true. That’s no longer equal. One person is clearly subordinate to the other. To me, it’s icky at best. It’s the same as the religious right “husband is the head of the house” doctrine, just in a much higher income bracket.
If that’s how people want to live (especially people who do have resources and choices, which these women do), that’s their thing.
In my opinion, couples are allowed to play whatever sort of mind games they want with their money, but the reality is that the word “married” means joined together. Her money is his money and vice versa. Really, all these couples are doing is making up rules about who can spend the joint money, and in what ways, without the other being upset about it.
I wouldn’t really call it icky unless one of them decided the other has somehow broken the rules and stops sharing. Then it’s not really fulfilling the ideals of marriage.
You should read the article linked to in the OP. The company has nothing to do with this. They pay the husband a standard bonus, and he chooses to split it with his wife.
I have no problems however they decide to split it. I don’t have a problem with either of them splurging and spending some of the money on non-essentials - they can certainly afford that. I have a problem with it being “performance based.”
There are 2 ways to take this, 1 is what I would call a unconventional marriage where the finances are separate. If that is the way the couple wants it, then that’s how it works for them and it is their deal with each other, so though I don’t desire that type of relationship, who am I to judge for another. In this case the wife would get that bonus.
Or if they share finances, they both will benefit.
But either way I take it as is not recognition for her being a stay at home wife so much, but recognition that what she is doing is allowing the husband to be a better employee by allowing him to focus more on his job. So part of that bonus is related to her support.
I’m not sure that the “bonus” necessarily comes from the husband to the wife, like an employee relationship. It seems to me that it’s coming from objective measures, and I’d guess the wife probably leads the conversation. I’d also guess that money not in the bonus goes to shared household goals, not just back into the husbands pocket for discretionary spending.
There is a difference between “Well honey, you did pretty good this year, but there are still spots on the windows. 15%!” and “This year I cut the food budget 25%, saving $1500 annually, and we’ve switched to 80% home cooked meals. Household repairs were typically managed in less than one day of time, and two out of three kids have raised their GPA by at least .05 points. I’m thinking we do 20% this year.”
Doing stuff “for the good of the family” is a great ideal, but in reality it becomes pretty formless and it’s hard to stay motivated- especially if you are an ambitious person who didn’t exactly expect to become a full time homemaker. I could see this helping a lot in terms of developing concrete goals and building a sense of accomplishment for what is often a pretty thankless set of tasks.
If the bonus for the working spouse went into the same pot, or got divided up the same way salary does, this would be a non-issue. So, I’m guessing there is some goal-setting going on.
Ambitious people don’t need lots of external goal setting. After all, it is their houses and their kids also.
Screw that. You get a job where you get recognition, money, social status and all kinds of benefits, and you expect wifey to find scrubbing the dishes intrinsically rewarding because she should find joy in the fact that you get to use clean silverware every day?
Maybe for some people it like that. But for most people, housework is dull, tedious, and unrewarding. Very few people feel any deep sense of reward from, say, changing a baby’s diaper, and it’s hard to get too excited about “well, the baby isn’t covered in poop.” It’s necessary, it’s important, but it’s still WORK in every sense of the word, not some fun hobby women do out of love and joy. Just like jobs are mostly something people do because they have to eat.
And so if you don’t find your work particularly rewarding, some kind of structure may help.
Women whose husbands are getting six figure bonuses are probably not doing a lot of dish scrubbing and diaper changing. (Though I actually enjoyed changing diapers. I know, I’m weird.)
The town we used to live in had lots of SAHW’s because there were a lot of research companies nearby. No one got gigantic bonuses, but the women who stayed home were locked in with the toilet brush. There was a massive amount of civic work they did, and our town had lots of activities for a place a square mile in size. Even for people who can’t afford nannies, the time kids are at home is very limited.
People who work can make their jobs boring or exciting. People who stay home can make staying home boring or exciting.
I was in an over 2 hour meeting today. If you said that I could trade that meeting for changing ten diapers or washing dishes, I’d say hell yeah! And it was an important meeting, not deciding on a mission statement or some diaper filler like that.
