Posted on 11/29/2011 1:01:34 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
After dropping off their children at their East Side private school one morning, Betsy and another mother shared a secret. “It was one of those things where you circle around each other,” Betsy remembers. “I assumed they had a pretty conventional marriage.”
By that she means, as with most of the other families at the school, the other woman’s husband was a chest-beating breadwinner who set off for Wall Street each morning in his Town Car to bring home the six- or seven-figure bacon. Or, alternatively, both husband and wife slaved away at medium-to-high-powered jobs, neglecting their children, to pay for the August rental in the Hamptons and their $25,000-per-kid tuition bills.
The embarrassing truth the other mother confided to Betsy was that she was her family’s sole support. She worked in advertising while her spouse, an “artist”—predominantly in his own imagination, since he had not a single gallery show nor even a commission to show for his talent—puttered around the house. “She kind of indicated they were living on her money, and I was surprised,” Betsy says.
And perhaps a little relieved. Betsy thought she was the only mother in their grade supporting a stay-at-home husband—especially one who refused to polish the surfaces. “It’s like one of those things,” she says, “where you realize you’re married to people who drink.”
Well into feminism’s second generation, there are finally a significant number of women reaching parity with the men in their fields—not to mention surpassing them—and winning the salary, bonuses, and perks that signify their arrival...
(Excerpt) Read more at nymag.com ...
And maybe Santa will drop a Lexis off in the driveway.
/s Vilest commercial going.
whew...thanks.
I’m not a big expert on this, and I’m certainly not a high-powered executive woman. But I’ve seen a few situations like this, and one of the sticking points is that there isn’t real reciprocity: that is, the stay-at-home husband may really not do much during the day. He sits in front of his computer and thinks about his novel, or he takes the kids on errands when they come home from school at 3 or so, or he may work on his “art” or type a few lines on his dissertation. But the house is a mess, or at least it isn’t kept the way any normal woman would keep it. That doesn’t mean fake flowers everywhere, just the ordinary cleanliness that lets you stay healthy and find things you want to find amidst the mess. If Miss MBA comes home after a 14-hour day and finds she still has housework, laundry, and cooking to do because her husband has been pecking away at a novel instead of putting a few dishes in the dishwasher, she is not going to feel sexy and admiring. Parasites are parasites whether they’re male or female.
The question is, how do you stop this? How do you turn this process around? I don’t know.
Is it any wonder that the death of traditional male/female rolls coincides with the decline of America, the rise of the welfare state, the entitlement mentality, and soaring socialism?
There’s no question that the person who stays at home is responsible for the day to day running and upkeep of the house and kids. Period.
But I also know some stay-at-home wives/mothers who really do not do that much toward keeping everything going. They are lazy or spend their time shopping, the house is not clean, the kids are not what we would think of as “thriving”, etc. Sounds like this guy who wanted to stay home and do his artwork but not house cleaning was borderline freeloader.
Not necessarily. There are still on average different preferences between husbands and wives, as well as simply biological realities in having a family.
Outcomes don’t necessarily reflect opportunities.
“I can bring home the bacon,
“Fry it up in a pan,
“And never ever let you forget you’re a.....
(Please, someone fill in the blanks preferably with an all-caps epithet suggesting both indolence and incompetence on the husband’s part)
She's in for a rude awakening. A very successful man is not looking to marry a very successful woman. There is no value add. He's looking for some combination of youth, beauty, personality.
All my friends were in two-income families. For most of us the position of primary breadwinner varied over time. In only 1 of 6 couples was hubby consistently prime breadwinner. That wife, incidently was one of only 2 who were not college grads. We lived in Westchester County, NY, where a family would need to earn close to 200K to manage with some hope of owning a single family home & college option for kids. Actual earnings would need to be higher for some sort of breathing room.
We wives worked to support our families, not to neglect our kids. Property taxes on my nearly 100 year old home were almost 18,000 last year. I resent the tone of the article. My education enabled me to make a very significant contribution to my family’s situation and not require my husband to kill himself working and missing our kids.
Number one - It's not, "He makes, She makes". It's a FAMILY.
Number two - If, and I say IF, the husband is the one thaat stays home then the husband is responsible for the home. That includes all the domestic chores needed to keep the home comfortable and happy. If he can't handle that then he's not much of a husband.
Number three - Respect is not, or should not, be dependant on how much money a person makes.
All in all, a marriage is about two people that help each other, not about who makes more money.
Not really. Not when you consider delaying up to 1/2 a year of a career when you have a child. And it’s their choice, it isn’t unfair. If you’re not there doing work, there’s nothing on which to base a promotion.
Hardly ... maybe I missed some payoff, but to me it was just another breathless urban liberal article about a bunch of urban liberals with their heads up their asses. So ... these females marry whiny losers, then act surprised when they're no longer attracted to a whiny loser?
I hate New York. And Washington. And San Fransisco. And every other big city. They're all full of sickening, self important, ignorant, unintelligent leftists.
Puke.
I may catch flack for this, but it seems we've bred a culture of men that don't know what a woman wants or how to care for them in the basic sense. It can swing both ways (unreasonable expectations on both sides), but reasonable expectations are not to be ignored...
Hat’s off to you!
I couldn’t agree more.
As a single father of an energetic 5-year old boy, I am a walking zombie.
But I am not complaining; wouldn’t trade one minute of the joy received in watching him grow.
And a big pat on the back for your hubbie as well who seems to understand the hard work you make day in day out 18 hours a day with no weekends.
Hope you both have some backup family or community support to get you both a moment to yourselves to collect your sanity.
In the years out there will be a day when you and I and all others like us will wake up and wonder “Who am I?” because we sacrifice so much for the little ones that we forget we are people too.
Um...actually this took place a number of years ago. My kids are grown now—daughter graduated and out the door, son a high-school senior, about to enlist in the USMC. My ex and I have been divorced for a number of years, and I ended up doing all the child-, house-, and yardwork solo (no family in this time zone). The kids love and respect both of us. Yes, it was worth it, though the years of putting the kids first mean I’m not at all in a good career position. There are times when I wonder if I was smart to not be an aggressive career woman earning a lot of money.
My son is married to a doctor. He is the stay-at-home spouse. He cares for their baby daughter, and keeps house and yard spiffy. When mom comes home, he encourages her to spend as much time with the baby as she can, and he attends to other things. He is also a web designer and tech guru. I have never heard him complain. He loves the “mommie-track.” For him, every minute he spends with his infant daughter is an adventure. She is beginning to crawl, cut teeth, and all the fun little baby stuff.
I worded that poorly.
If the world were structured entirely as feminists claim they want it to be, with men and women achieving exactly proportional status in their careers, half the women would be married to men of lower status.
Which I believe would piss them off, as women still believe they have a God-given right to “marry up.”
Those men are the giants among us. They praise their wives when the think nobody's looking, and that's the definition of character.
Have I mentioned my wife is the hardest working California babe I've ever met? True dat.
No big deal.
My day starts at 6 AM. I make a latte for my wife, breakfast for the girls, then wake them up.
Then I get one or both to school and/or bus.
THEN I go to work.
When I come back, I get to clean up the kitchen.
When I work from home I do the laundry, too.
If someone comes up during the night, I get up to handle it.
So I don’t want to hear about “A women’s work is never done.” It doesn’t work that way any more.
Depends on the family, Ray. In some families there is still a very traditional division of labor.
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