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.
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.